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　　"New York Times" August 25th article, original title: We may never know how many facts the Internet hides from us   

　　The Internet brings together the most comprehensive human knowledge ever created, but is its sheer size an advantage or a vulnerability? Does its size undermine its utility as a source? How often is it burying valuable data under a flood of spam? When you search for someone famous or somewhat famous, are you getting an accurate picture of that person's life, or are you being manipulated into a fake picture?

　　This is not a new problem. As the Internet changes, the answer changes all the time. In the midst of so much digital noise, I'm concerned that it's harder than ever for people to hear an accurate signal. The Times reporter Karen Weiser recently published a sensational report documenting the vicious abuse of Dan Price. In 2015, Price became an internet celebrity by mandating a minimum salary of $70,000 a year at his company. After interviewing a number of women, Weiser said: "Price used his fame to chase women online who claimed to have been physically and mentally hurt by him."

　　But this isn't the first time Weisser has debunked the myths surrounding Price. In late 2015, a few months after Price first gained media buzz around the world, Weiser published an article in Bloomberg Businessweek exposing his many scandals, including one of Price's scandals. An ex-wife accused him of being extremely violent and explained that he was more selfish than he advertised for raising employees' wages. Since then, Price began to use Twitter skillfully, eventually attracting hundreds of thousands of followers and becoming a benchmark for some left-wing Twitter circles. "His online presence was restored with one tweet after another," Weiser wrote, "and the bad news faded into the background. Just as social media can destroy a person, it can also bury a person's chaotic past through time. "

　　The internet shouldn't work this way. Various tech giants have claimed that the dissemination and organization of online data is the responsibility of the company. In Weisser's first report on Price, there is important information about the little-known Internet personality. As he builds an online following, that information should be highlighted, not buried. Even more disturbing, how often is this happening? Price's story may be an extreme example of buried information, but there's reason to suspect that something like this happens all the time online.

　　Why? There are three reasons. Love the new and hate the old: Tech companies are far more focused than ever on highlighting current rather than past information, making it harder for people to make sense of the past. Organised manipulation: Online thugs who blindly create online reality appear to have the upper hand, despite platforms claiming to be concerned about the issue. And of course there is capitalism: Tech companies have little energy to address these issues due to the pressing need to improve performance.

　　The situation gets worse when ill-conceived parties try to influence the information the platform shows people. This is more likely due to the influx of bots and trolls on the platform, as the researchers have shown. The platforms say they have been fighting such behavior, but what the platforms are doing is opaque and half-hearted at best.

　　All this should come as no surprise to many readers. When I tell you not to believe anything you see on the internet, I'm not making any news. But after reading Price's story, I think it's worth repeating: maybe the internet doesn't do you justice to what's going on in the world. For any given story, you may never know how much information you haven't seen.