A HuffPost article that critically covered a Democratic political action committee abruptly disappeared from the top results in Google search after a contractor hired thousands of workers outside of the U.S. this spring to help suppress negative coverage of the PAC’s activities. ECU, which worked to elect Democratic candidates who support campaign finance reform, used aggressive and expansive email campaigns to rake in millions of dollars in online donations. The contractor paid each of the workers 20 cents to click on stories and sites that portrayed the PAC positively, bumping those stories up in Google at the expense of critical coverage. HuffPost’s story dropped from the second place on the first page of the Google search to the second page of search results. End Citizens United did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment before publication.

Source: Huffington Post November 01, 2018 18:46 UTC