Ask HN: My first job is SEO manipulation, Is it ethical? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My first job is SEO manipulation, Is it ethical?

(Sorry for bad English. Not my first language.)

I had just began work at my first job after finishing university studies. About 1 year back, my first task was to hide negative results about an Israeli start-up that had bad news articles about their business stealing code from competitors.

It was never wright with me but it was my first job and I followed instructions of the lead who I was working on this client task with.

After a weeks of work, we showed the results to client and the news stories were not appearing in the first pages of Google any more longer.

I am stuck on visa and finding jobs is challenging. I have now completed multiple projects of this type of work. I just want to check what does everyone on HN think of this? Is this considered wrong?

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In my opinion it is wrong, but not more wrong than the hundreds of thousands of people working on advertising, violating people's privacy and manipulating them to make them click on ads, buy garbage they don't need or fall victim to scams/malware (off which the advertising company makes money too).

The fact that you recognize this is wrong and are at least looking for advice makes you better than the aforementioned people who "look the other way" as long as the money keeps coming.

It pays your rent, puts food on the table and you haven't found alternatives yet, I don't see your current situation as wrong on your part, especially if the alternative is to starve or live jobless on government benefits. I hope you will find a situation where you're more comfortable in the future, and all the best.

Ethics is a personal choice. If it is not illegal, do what you want to do. If your conscience says it is not right, then don't do it. I say this because there are lot of things in life that could be argued as unethical so you need to pick and choose accordingly.

SEO is a Google invention anyway, so it's not unethical to manipulate the rules at will (if you're able to) to gain an advantage. It's their rules anyway, so if a method works, it's acceptable by default.

That said, if the work requires actually hiding useful news or unconvenient events, that's more of a grey area. Dark-grey, actually.

"Mama's got bills", as they say, so keep doing it until you'll hopefully find a better job. I'm assuming refusing to do it, while keeping your position, is not an option.

Optimisation is a necessary process, and is amoral. It has no right or wrong by itself. If I make good cupcakes and you help me get my order page in front of people near me who want my cupcakes, you’ve done the world some good.

If you do unethical things to get there, like false reviews, stolen copy, ripped off images, etc, then of course that’s unethical and often illegal.

It’s what you do for the SEO that matters.

No. Google is not the law, and they do a lot more unethical things with their search results than anyone trying to promote themselves in them.

And for something like removing negative news, you could definitely argue you're doing the morally right thing.

If you don't do it, someone else will. This is a systemic problem that needs to be dealt with systemically. So whether you do the job or not, doesn't change much about the situation.

But there may be something greater than that, your own personal integrity. You acknowledge that it isn't right with you. It's up to you whether or not that personal integrity is worth the money.

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