UC Davis thought it could pay to erase a scandal from the Internet

wash ington post story

This seems like a monumental waste of money.

The incident occurred Nov. 18, 2011, when Occupy demonstrators ignored orders to leave the UC Davis campus and university police started spewing pepper spray into the crowd. The police response prompted massive protests on campus, which gained national media attention and ignited a debate about police brutality and use of excessive force against peaceful protesters.

Try a google search and see what comes up. After spending 175,000 to try to erase this online they haven't as such succeeded. What they have done is try to keep google from returning links about the incident when someone types in uc davis. If you use the search term pepper spray and uc davis it's still there.

There's really no way to stop online information completely yet but I'm sure they'll find a way one day.

a reply to: Seiko

If protesters are obstructing access or gathering outside of designated areas I say hit them with pepper spray. If you want to be part of a peaceful protest it better not inconvenience me or deny me my access to needed services or I might spraty them myself.

I don't support the whitewashing of the internet, but I support UC-Davis's actions.

a reply to: Seiko
Images like this will keep us from forgetting that despicable behavior.

a reply to: ugmold

How about this one?

a reply to: Metallicus

Speaking of tax money... gawker.com...

I just found the whole idea of trying to erase it to be preposterous. It's not just they're wasting the money, they're wasting tax payer money to do this. They should know it won't work.

People get screen captures of things that are only up for minutes. There's no hiding.

a reply to: damwel

I've seen screen captures of tweets and other postings that were up for seconds and taken back down still online. This pepper spray incident was all over the news.

deleted tweets by politicians

There's one on this page that says

Deleted after 4 seconds 36 minutes ago

Thanks for the daily lol. They might have been able to when I was in middle school, today it's a joke to even think you can erase anything on the web.

The administrators who tried this should be arrested and imprisoned for the theft of taxpayer money. They are liars and criminals and the UC system is a police state run by gangsters and student loan racketeers. But that's a good summary of government in general.

a reply to: Seiko

Working in the field of internet marketing, content and SEO, I could have told them exactly what would happen.

You see, what they did was spend an awful lot of money on something they could never have achieved. Sure, if they created enough content and wrote enough pages they could have pushed their results to the top temporarily, but there is far too much content out there showing exactly how they treated their students, there was no way they could compete with that organic content.

And now that this story has been exposed too, they have another few thousand links promoting this negativity.

Here's what they should have done:

1. NOT assault protesting students with chemicals in the first place.
2. Admitted they were wrong, make public apologies, take responsibility.
3. Spent the following years showing how they've changed.

Instead, they took the cowardly path and tried to spend money to make what they did to their students just go away. It was pathetic, it was weak, and anyone who took money to provide this service was conning them.

originally posted by: Metallicus
a reply to: Seiko

If protesters are obstructing access or gathering outside of designated areas I say hit them with pepper spray. If you want to be part of a peaceful protest it better not inconvenience me or deny me my access to needed services or I might spraty them myself.

I don't support the whitewashing of the internet, but I support UC-Davis's actions.

Oh, another American who thinks their right to protest is only for them, only about the issues they are passionate about, anyone protesting about something they personally don't like is a "commie liberal hippy" who deserves no Constitutional rights.

Your being "inconvenienced" is NOT more important than their Constitutional right to protest.

originally posted by: Rocker2013

Your being "inconvenienced" is NOT more important than their Constitutional right to protest.

If they're blocking the door to a building and physically preventing me from going where I need to be or shutting down a highway (BLM) stopping me from traveling then they are infringing on my rights.

And just being jerks.