Sidewiki was a web annotation tool run by Google, from September 2009 to December 2011. Sidewiki allowed anyone with Google Account to make and view comments about any website in a sidebar. A powerful tool, I’d say.
Carter-Ruck law firm website was hacked. Their homepage had been Sidewikied by a third party. The original Carter-Ruck Sidewiki, however, did not disappear. But if you type in the company’s official web address, you will learn that it is simply not where it was supposed to be. If you google it or type in the Sidewiki page directly, you will find out that there is nothing.
Hacked Sidewiki displayed the following text:
“R.I.P. Carter-Ruck In loving memory of the people that gagged the Guardian reporting on the British Parliament. Was brought down by Twitter on the October 13th, 2009.”
It was online until it received 21 positive responses, and then I disappeared.
Another Sidewiki appeared on the official website of the Carter-Ruck company. It appeared with rather explicit words, that contained provocative content and references to the Minton report. According to Wikileaks, the Minton report is addressing Trafigura toxic disposal incident that happened along the Ivory Coast and affected the lives of over 108,000 people. The report appeared in the United Nations report in September 2009. The UK media did not hear about this, since there has been a secret gag order against the Guardian newspaper on September 11, 2009. The UK media can’t provide a link to the Wikileaks page on this issue or any other page for that matter that would show the public what became one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time.
How has Sidewikis vanished?
The author removed them? The third-party reported the ‘report abuse’ button and marked pages to be either spam, illegal content, advocates hatred or violence, or other. Google network itself provides a political list, namely Comment posting policy, provides an arm’s length list of unwanted behavior, and (at the end) reserves the right to review and remove any comment for whatsoever reason there might be. Pick one.
