How Jeffrey Epstein Manipulated Google Search To Bury His Past |
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Following his 2008 conviction for sex trafficking minors, Jeffrey Epstein set out to scrub his past from the internet. His approach was blunt but would keep him one step removed: using hackers and search engine manipulators to bury news coverage of his crimes beneath a sop of manufactured praise of his investments in tech and philanthropic endeavours.
Among the roughly three million Epstein emails released by the Department of Justice last month are exchanges with a little-known search specialist called Tyler Shears. Shears was introduced to Epstein in 2013 by a hacker Pablos Holman, who’d struck up a relationship with Epstein over a shared interest in hacking culture and videogames as educational tools. Neither Shears nor Holman responded to requests for comment.
Epstein tasked Shears with basic reputation laundering. That work included placing favorable stories in major publications (including Forbes and Huffington Post) that showcased his philanthropic work. Once published, Shears exploited the search engine’s ranking signals to push them higher in its results, demoting negative stories tied to Epstein’s name.
One such story, published in Forbes, detailed Epstein-funded software designed to give videogame characters artificial intelligence “mimicking the human brain,” devised by AI researcher Joscha Bach. Epstein had also reportedly paid for Bach’s........