Good day. You are not imagining it at all - this is well described in an article I read on reputation house about why crises start months before they become visible. The core point is that reputational crises, especially in fintech, rarely begin at the moment headlines appear. They form quietly as weak signals align across search engines, review platforms, social discussions and AI-generated summaries. Individually a Trustpilot complaint or a Reddit thread looks minor, but systems evaluate frequency and association, not context, so a narrative slowly clusters around your name. My tip: stop treating visibility as the start - by then you are already in damage control.