Go read this investigation into the online slander industry and who’s making money on it

Websites promising to “fix” an online reputation that has been damaged by so-called gripe sites often are run by the same people, a new investigation in the New York Times reveals. Times reporter Aaron Krolik tested the system by writing a fake nasty post about himself on one such site, and watched it metastasize across the internet. Companies offering “reputation management” can charge upwards of $20,000 to scrub such false reports from the internet.

The unverified claims are on obscure, ridiculous-looking sites, but search engines give them a veneer of...