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Advice for Son/Daughter On Removing Internet Content?

T

tsellis

Junior Member
Growing up, my son/daughter was very outspoken and opinionated. Luckily, though, his/her worldview now is much more nuanced and balanced.

Yet, as a teenager, he/she made several posts (without my knowledge or approval) to the Internet--articles, book reviews, comments, etc. To me, some of the posts seem dogmatic and even inflammatory, which S/D now realizes. There are roughly a dozen or so posts, and his/her uncommon name is linked to them.

S/D is now a young adult who will soon finish his/her post-secondary education and look for work. He/she worries that the Web postings could affect his/her employment prospects and personal life.

We were able to call some of the webmasters and get roughly 20% of the content removed. The remaining sites have no phone numbers (and sometimes no email) listed.

For the ones with emails, how would you phrase the email message to the webmasters. Since the ball is in the webmaster's court, I advised S/D to be polite, state that it was a youthful indiscretion made as a minor, kindly request a removal, and thank the webmaster for the consideration. Is there anything else that you recommend saying or doing?


For the sites without emails or any other contact information, how should we proceed?

Also, what if the webmaster(s) either doesn't respond or outright refuses? What can we do then?

Should we persist? Should we offer to purchase the content, or even try to backorder the domain name when it expires? S/D's best friend facetiously suggested hacking into the site, but I think that could create even more problems.

There is some positive content (scholarships, volunteer projects, achievements, etc) about S/D on the Web. I just worry what impact everything else would have on him/her.


Feel free to PM me.
 
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If you don't want it to bite you in the ass...don't post it.

That's one of the best lessons your kids can ever be taught.
 
You can do very little about this, unless the sites in question are using your copyrighted content without permission, or they just decide to be nice about it. Even if they agree to take down the old content, which they probably won't, it's still archived and will be for all eternity or until the power goes out for good.
 
Markbnj said:
You can do very little about this, unless the sites in question are using your copyrighted content without permission, or they just decide to be nice about it. Even if they agree to take down the old content, which they probably won't, it's still archived and will be for all eternity or until the power goes out for good.
Click to expand...


Well, we have successfully removed about a quarter of the content that he/she wrote as a minor.

For the remaining sites, we are still deciding how to most effectively approach the webmasters.


No, S/D is not facing an identity crisis; I have my reasons for not disclosing the gender.
 
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If we don't hear back, I'm going to assume Son of Syringer 😀

OP - try changing your kid's username on the sites. Then it will update all the other posts. Or have a mod do it if the system doesn't allow. That way all of the posts would be linked to a non-realname name.

Edit: Or see if they can go back in and edit the posts like this 😉
 
if the individual used his uncommon name, they can't find him by searching the name on google. Unless the individual filled out the details, you can always edit those though.
 
tsellis said:
Yet, as a teenager, he/she made several posts (without my knowledge or approval) to the Internet--articles, book reviews, comments, etc. To me, some of the posts seem dogmatic and even inflammatory, which S/D now realizes. There are roughly a dozen or so posts, and his/her uncommon name is linked to them.
Click to expand...

"dogmatic" and "even inflammatory" don't seem all that severe to me. are you sure it's as big a deal as you seem to think it is? your language suggests an unwarranted level of concern and distrust over posting on the internet.

i'm guessing you are using a lot of euphemisms here
 
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jesus, that was one annoying ass post to read. you couldn't have just said "my child"?
"my child did this and now i want to help them. "

my spawn? my minion? the fruit of my loins? my whippersnapper? my offspring? my minion? my underling? my kid? my youngster?

also,
BoomerD said:
If you don't want it to bite you in the ass...don't post it.

That's one of the best lessons your kids can ever be taught.
Click to expand...
 
tsellis said:
Well, we have successfully removed about a quarter of the content that he/she wrote as a minor.

For the remaining sites, we are still deciding how to most effectively approach the webmasters.


No, S/D is not facing an identity crisis; I have my reasons for not disclosing S/D's gender.
Click to expand...

Yes, for stuff posted as a minor you can sometimes get a site to pull the content, however, it's not gone. Nothing posted to the Internet is ever gone, because Google and others archive it every day, and those archives are accessible to searches.
 
Good luck. It is a real problem. More parents should be coaching their kids to not post stuff like this online and never use the real name, either.
 
Doppel said:
Good luck. It is a real problem. More parents should be coaching their kids to not post stuff like this online and never use the real name, either.
Click to expand...

Ditto.

After this experience, D/S uses social networking a lot less.
 
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