A website called CelebrityNetWorth provides estimations of the entire wealth and business dealings of famous people. Corte Lodato LLC, which was established by CEO Brian Warner in 2008, runs it.
Since there is no way to confirm the authenticity of what CelebrityNetWorth says, the site has come under fire for its lack of transparency regarding its computations. Instead of journalists or computer scientists, freelance writers produce the majority of the content used for data analysis.
Activities
A celebrity's name, a brief biography, and an estimate of their net worth and salary are all listed on web pages made by CelebrityNetWorth. According to The New York Times, there are no computer scientists employed by the website, despite its claims that it uses "a proprietary algorithm" to assess net worth based on publicly available data. Regarding their estimates, Warner stated that "There is always some form of backlash if we err too much. In a few instances, it has been shown that we were mistaken, and we have fixed it." The website also offers independently authored news pieces about celebrities' financial dealings, such as the purchase of a home or legal activities.
In addition to ranking affluent people according to their wealth, CelebrityNetWorth also produces lists. King Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire came in first on the list of the 25 richest persons in history, which was put together in 2012 and adjusted for inflation. In the same year, it compiled a list of the richest DJs in the world and identified Ringo Starr as the richest drummer in the world according to a survey.
Interactions with Google
Google asked Warner for permission in 2014 to use CelebrityNetWorth data in its Knowledge Graph. Warner objected. In contrast, starting in February 2016, Google started leveraging data from its CelebrityNetWorth search index to show featured snippets with net worth at the top of their search result pages for pertinent queries. The search results, including those for CelebrityNetWorth, were listed below the featured excerpts. As a result, between January 2016 and January 2017, CelebrityNetWorth's site traffic dropped by 65%.
As part of its inquiry into Google's anti-competitive activities, the House Subcommittee on Antitrust requested the site's on-the-record testimony in July 2019. The evidence gave a timeline of how Google's use of "Featured Snippet" response boxes and scraped content interfered with CelebrityNetWorth's operations. Three main points were stated in the testimony: (1) Google abused its dominant position to destroy competitors while benefiting itself; (2) Google's activities had a negative impact on the open internet; and (3) These actions impacted regular Internet users.
Criticism
Since there is no way to confirm the authenticity of what CelebrityNetWorth says, the site has come under fire for its lack of transparency regarding its computations. The accuracy of CelebrityNetWorth's news items was challenged in a piece in The New York Times, which also labeled them as typical "clickbait." Observing that most content is generated by freelance writers rather than journalists or computer scientists to analyze data, they questioned the veracity of their findings. The number is "ballparked" rather than "dollar level accuracy," according to Warner. Despite this, many publications frequently duplicate their data. Geoffrey Owens' former net worth of $500K was reduced to $300K after he was discovered working as a store cashier, according to the article, which also identified symptoms of tampering.