A few years ago, I got a weird message through the PFA contact form. The person said that they represented "a famous person" and they wanted to pay me to delete a thread here.
I assumed this was a prank or some kind of scam, but I was curious enough to respond.
I told the person that I don't accept money to remove content here, but I would be willing to remove something for free if it's either untrue or causing someone harm when they haven't done anything wrong. I also asked them who they were representing.
This person said they would not reveal who they're representing, and simply wanted to offer me bitcoin to delete a therad here. They promised they would send the bitcoin first (which is obviously irreversible), and that I wouldn't have to do anything else in return, except delete the thread.
I told them that, again, they could not bribe me to remove threads. However, I told them to send me the link to the thread, and explain their concern, and if I agreed, I'd remove the thread for free.
They sent me a link to a long thread on PFA. They declined to state why they wanted it deleted. They just wanted it gone.
I told them that there was no way I would be removing that thread, even if they offered me a lot of money. That thread had a lot of good discussion, and I didn't want it removed, nor could I even have explained to the userbase why it was gone! (I did wonder just how much they were willing to pay, though! What if, say, they offered me $100k just to remove that thread?)
The person responded that they were really only concered with one post in that thread. I told them to link me to the post, and said I'd consider removing that one post if it was objectionable, harmful, or very low quality.
Surprisingly, the post had about 5 words, and indeed had a picture of a celebrity in it. The thread was NOT about this celebrity, and this celebrity's pic was posted by a user while they made an unrelated joke. The picture was not a nude photo or anything else embarrassing or private. But why was it so important to have that picture -- which was clearly grabbed from the web somewhere -- removed from here?
I asked the person, and they told me that "search results" were the problem.
From there, I figured it out. A google search about that thread subject -- which had to do with a scam -- brought up that celebrity's photo, because that was posted in the thread. The celebrity (or a friend of theirs) must have discovered this, and an anonymous party (or perhaps the celebrity themselves) tried to bribe me to remove it, thus fixing the problem.
Well, I was willing to remove this post. It was an old discussion from years back, the celebrity in question had nothing to do with the matter, and apparently google searches were causing people to get confused, thus unintentionally harming this celebrity's reputation. PFA would not be any worse off from that 5-word post being removed.
However, recall that I run this site at a loss. If this celebrity wanted to pay me for my trouble, I was willing to take it.
"How much will you send to remove just that post?", I asked.
"$200", they replied.
Not a fortune, but given that this took a few seconds to do, and caused no harm to PFA or that old discussion, I agreed to do it. They sent the bitcoin, and I deleted the post.
The hidden income of forum onwership!
No wonder the Russians paid a million bucks for 2+2.
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Originally Posted by TheXFactor
