I'm not saying that these companies should exist for the example in the article, a high profile business person that failed miserably and tried to do the same thing a second time, yes it is just downright wrong he has a bunch of apparently fake PR about him claiming he's great and a genius and give him your money.
However, there are valid use cases for such a service. There are things you and I might say or do in haste that quickly get forgotten and are never even seen by most of the population but...
The "1%" are in the spotlight, they can't go an ice cream cone without articles about their ice cream appearing online [1].
What if a high profile individual is falsely accused of rape, or of fathering a child, and it turns out it was a false accusation. Those dozens or hundreds of articles/tweets/videos aren't going to go away. It will quietly be announced by a handful of places "so and so was cleared, person was lying" and for months or decades those accusation articles are going to stay high on search results.
If John Smith gets a DUI, unless he did a bunch of property damage or killed someone in the process, an article isn't going to be written. If a billionaire does it [2] articles get written.
If a billionaire calls someone a pedo in a heated exchange, articles are written about it [3]. If Jane Doe calls someone a pedo (or worse) on twitter, one of her 13 followers might favorite the tweet, if another human being even reads it.
I imagine a significant percentage of people using these services aren't trying to defraud people, but simply trying to hide something embarrassing that has been preserved digitally, widely, that John and Joan Public simply never have to worry about. (nipple slip, porn tape, telling someone to eff off when they're having a bad day, tweeting something in haste like calling someone a creepy pedo, etc).
What if someone was formerly a neo-nazi, and they've spent the past decade fighting against hate (several of these types exist [4]) and living a completely different life? Should they not be allowed to bury their past and be judged on their current works instead of the foolish things they did in their youth?
There is an article in the local newspaper about my brother being arrested for driving while intoxicated and being in possession of a controlled substance. He's certainly not a billionaire.
In a local newspaper, not on a dozen tech/finance major publications with dozens of video clips talking about it from national and international broadcast outlets.
Reporting crimes in newspapers at varying levels has existed effectively as long as newspapers as they were a convenient means of notifying the public of happenings. That's why you still have to publish certain things in newspapers in many states, like when you want to change your name (for something other than marriage/divorce) so companies/persons you might be trying to hide from (for non-life or death situations like a battered spouse) have a reasonable chance of detecting an attempted evasion.
What about when your brother buys ice cream? I bet he doesn't make international news within hours, that then gets talked about for months by radio/tv/online news/blogs/reddit/twitter/etc.
I bet when he flies somewhere he doesn't have paparazzi waiting for him at the airport to take his photo, or people waiting to shove merchandise at him to sign (this happens to a lot of famous people, people find out they're coming in on a flight via various means and are waiting at the airport to try and get merch/photos signed that they then go attempt to sell).
There is a world of difference between public notice of a DUI and international press coverage before charges are even filed.
I'm not justifying the example case listed in the article, but put yourself in the shoes of someone that has used one of these services. Are you telling me, that if your brother could write a check and make any public record of his DUI outside of a law enforcement system vanish, that he wouldn't? (also, you gave a bad example as DUIs can be expunged in many states under various conditions and a random newspaper article about him, if even found, would be dismissed by any employer/lender/investigator when they ran his record and found it if he had it expunged and if he didn't have it expunged they'd find it anyway).
If an ex-girlfriend accused him of something, I bet it never left facebook. It would likely stay in the post and get ignored by a few people, a few people would take her side and believe her, and that would be that. It would be lost to time next to impossible to find in a feed. But what if a major business person is accused (falsely, which is later verified as false). Guess what, there are gonna be tons of articles that stay high in search results, there might never even be an article "the accuser admitted they lied, they wanted attention and money, they have a history of accusing people".
However, there are valid use cases for such a service. There are things you and I might say or do in haste that quickly get forgotten and are never even seen by most of the population but...
The "1%" are in the spotlight, they can't go an ice cream cone without articles about their ice cream appearing online [1].
What if a high profile individual is falsely accused of rape, or of fathering a child, and it turns out it was a false accusation. Those dozens or hundreds of articles/tweets/videos aren't going to go away. It will quietly be announced by a handful of places "so and so was cleared, person was lying" and for months or decades those accusation articles are going to stay high on search results.
If John Smith gets a DUI, unless he did a bunch of property damage or killed someone in the process, an article isn't going to be written. If a billionaire does it [2] articles get written.
If a billionaire calls someone a pedo in a heated exchange, articles are written about it [3]. If Jane Doe calls someone a pedo (or worse) on twitter, one of her 13 followers might favorite the tweet, if another human being even reads it.
I imagine a significant percentage of people using these services aren't trying to defraud people, but simply trying to hide something embarrassing that has been preserved digitally, widely, that John and Joan Public simply never have to worry about. (nipple slip, porn tape, telling someone to eff off when they're having a bad day, tweeting something in haste like calling someone a creepy pedo, etc).
What if someone was formerly a neo-nazi, and they've spent the past decade fighting against hate (several of these types exist [4]) and living a completely different life? Should they not be allowed to bury their past and be judged on their current works instead of the foolish things they did in their youth?
[1] https://time.com/2982204/paul-mccartney-warren-buffett-selfi...
[2] https://money.com/a-billionaire-22-year-old-was-fined-30000-...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593
[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578745514/a-former-neo-nazi-e...