I've seen it fail as well, an old friend had some rather intimate pictures leaked. They sank a lot of money into suppressing them but ultimately it seems to be a fruitless endeavour.
You cannot guarantee suppression but you can discreetly reduce frequency until very few available versions exist, and hope they quietly die in the long run. You see this happening with certain videos and pictures, typically sex-related.
I hear Elon Musk does this with old articles about his history. The skeptic community actively tries to archive the old stuff. Furthermore he also seems to employ SEO techniques to stay on top of any negative stories. For example, there was a Tesla Whistleblower story about some FSD controversy (the millionth one). Next thing you know he releases a literal Tesla Whistle on the company store and all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.
> all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.
If that was a genuine effort to bury news articles it seems to have backfired. Search results are full of information on actual whistleblowers and news articles returned that were written about the whistle seem to have no issue bringing up the actual whistleblowering
