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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

I don't like pepper, but I don't expect the pepper industry to disappear overnight.

Or in other words, I don't know why your personal experience is relevant to the parent comment, there's entire entertainment industries that are funded by gossip and gossip alone so obviously there are people out there who would care about that kind of thing.

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Yeah, people dig celebrity gossip, but does it follow that HR is going to be interested in Joe Smoes divorce five years ago? I don't think so, particularly when they are looking at dozens of Joes a day. It would be a waste of their time to read that stuff, and boring to boot.

Sure, someone out there will probably do it, but I just can't wrap my mind around this becoming a pandemic.

HR isn't the concern. If it's public, anyone who gives a shit about that kind of stuff can find it, usually with just a simple focused Google search.

It used to be that you had to hire a private detective to find dirt on people... I get that Google is going to make that easier but we don't have to go out of our way to help that along. :)

Can't you just pay 10 cents per page for this stuff right now? I don't think using a suboptimal non-google search should present that much of a hardship. I don't really see this being a game changer for someone who just wants to smear a particular person; only if you need a very large amount of documents (in other words, are using it for its intended purpose.)

The difference between "free" and 10 cents is quite stark. That's the famous problem holding back microtransactions in general.

So what about when Joe's colleagues circulate his divorce case details around for a laugh or, worse, to character smear the guy to damage a promotion or gain political points in the workplace?

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