The New Censorship: 'How Did Google Become The Internet's Censor and Master Manipulator?' (usnews.com) 246
An anonymous reader writes: Robert Epstein from U.S. News and World Report writes an article describing how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. He writes about the company's nine different blacklists that impact our lives: autocomplete blacklist, Google Maps blacklist, YouTube blacklist, Google account blacklist, Google News blacklist, Google AdWords blacklist, Google AdSense blacklist, search engine blacklist, and quarantine list. The autocomplete blacklist filters out select phrases like profanities and other controversial terms like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." It can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. For example, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked." While Google Maps photographs your home for everyone to see, Google maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images depending on the property, e.g. military installations or wealthy residences. Epstein makes the case that while YouTube allows users to flag videos, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. As for the Google account blacklist, you may lose access to a number of Google's products, which are all bundled into one account as of a couple of years ago, if you violate Google's terms of service agreement because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you ... at any time." Google is the largest news aggregator in the world via Google News. Epstein writes, "Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser." Google can easily put a business out of business if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards and revokes a business' access to Google AdWords, which makes up 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue. Recently, Google blacklisted an entire industry -- companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. If your website has been approved by AdWords, Google's search engine is what ultimately determines the success of your business as its algorithms can be tweaked and search rankings can be manipulated, which may ruin businesses. Epstein makes an interesting case for how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. Given Google's online dominance, do you think Google should be regulated like a public utility?
He really hates Google (Score:4, Informative)
He seems to have it out for Google ever since they detected malware on his website. All of his articles since then have been Google bashing.
Re:He really hates Google (Score:4, Interesting)
There's never any historical context to these bitch sessions against Google. Prior to services like Yahoo and Google, searching the Internet could be a very difficult and frustrating experience. The idea that somehow Google is some sort of blacklist is absurd, because prior to Google, there were a lot more sites that were not easy to find. I remember the early days with services like Altavista and Webcrawler, which, while better than nothing, were not very good at all. Hell, I remember in the pre-web days when Archie and Veronica were the best you had for searching.
The Internet does not need Google. Anyways is free to set up their own search engines.
Autocomplete blacklist? Oh, your aching fingers. (Score:2, Insightful)
Autocomplete blacklist?
So, he's complaining that if you want to search for "Crooked Hillary," you have to type the whole phrase, it won't complete it for you?
Oh, your aching fingers, evil google making you have to type another seven whole characters. I am so sorry you have to do all that extra work.
By the way, it's not really news. Here's Boing-boing in 2010: http://boingboing.net/2010/09/... [boingboing.net] (pointing to a list at 2600.com: http://www.2600.com/googleblac... [2600.com] )
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Autocomplete blacklist? Oh, your aching fingers (Score:4, Informative)
Hillary Indictment
Hillary Indictment Odds
Hillary Instagram
Hillary Interview
Is it possible you've previously searched for Hillary India and it is replaying your search?
Re: (Score:2)
I got this: Hillary cr|ook
Hillary in-- [re: ...Oh, your aching fingers] (Score:4, Insightful)
First, if you want to search "Hillary indictment" but you're so lazy that you complain if Google doesn't finish typing after you have typed the first nine letters of the search, you're seriously lazy.
Second, when I type "Hillary in" to the google search box, its first suggested autocompletion is "Hillary indictment" and the second is "Hillary indictment news". So, your google seems to be different than mine.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Conspiracy theory much? Google filters a lot of words from auto-correct. Various crimes, the names of porn stars, all sorts of stuff. It's just removed from auto-complete, so that Google doesn't suggest things that would be inappropriate or slanderous.
In comparison when I search for Aonal wallets on Amazon it suggests "anal" and offers me some Just Glide Anal Lubricant 50ml. I'm not upset or anything, but I might be embarrassed if I asked my Amazon Echo for an Aonal wallet and it tried to sell me anal lube,
Re:Autocomplete blacklist? Oh, your aching fingers (Score:4, Informative)
Google is very happy to suggest "Hillary indictment" [imgur.com] to me, with generally right-wing sites among the top results.
Way off-topic; probably feeding a troll... but... (Score:3)
This is my problem with people who use "SJW" incorrectly. If you use it to disparage anybody you disagree with, it loses all meaning. What's the point of using letters as a slur if a) it refers to something that isn't actually offensive, and b) you use it for things that have nothing to do with women or gays or racial minorities? What does pointing out facts regarding a google search have to do with fighting for social justice?
It reminds me of the good old days when Rush coined the term feminazi. What does
Re:Autocomplete blacklist? Oh, your aching fingers (Score:4, Interesting)
> If you think a guy whose political views are well known and who is actually working for one side isn't gonna tilt things in his favor? I have a bridge you might be interested in.
And if a private citizen wants to use his private business to push his personal political views then that is entirely his right. You didn't think citizens united would only work for republicans did you ? Did you think really think only the Koch brothers would try to buy elections for candidates that suit their personal business and political desires ?
Republicans turned the USA into a complete plutocracy, they don't get to now complain because occasionally a rich guy likes a democrat too - they made this bed now they gotta lie in it.
Ironically - this is far less insidious than what republicans do. Republican supporting rich guys use dark money and bribes. If the worst thing the democrat-supporters do is to slant their own businesses public operations in favor of the candidate and work for the campaigns - then it's still FAR less corrupt.
Democrat voters have been demanding that money be removed from politics, that campaign contributions be severely curtailed (or better yet - outright banned) for decades. They've been clamoring against things like superpacs. Warning that the USA would turned into an oligarchy where the rich chose the powerful if these trends were not stopped.
They were ignored. Their own party politicians stopped fighting and went to feed at the same trough and the republican voters called them horrible people who want to censor political speech (because one dollar one vote is soooo democratic right ?).
Now you complain ? Because of what, arguably, is the only ACCEPTABLE way a rich person can influence politics ? Seriously I have only three words to say to that: fuck you all.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Because mine pops up with indictment right away. Don't be such a conspiracy theorist. I would like to point out that there are several disparaging things about Trump that don't show up either. If you type "does trump have tiny" it does NOT autocomplete "hands." Clearly this is a conspiracy against Marco Rubio. I mean really, anybody who says crap like that needs to realize how stupid and whiny they sound. If you type "trump frau" it does not add the "d" at the end. If you type "trump is hitle" it do
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh bullshit. This is what DNS was for. People use Google as DNS now. People type domain names into the google search box all the time. Then there is the facebookernet. Google and facebook, that's it now, no need for DNS really.
Because you were all sucked in by the name. There were plenty of perfectly good search engines befo
Re: (Score:2)
You are an illiterate shit face.
I was able to navigate the web just fine from 1990...
If you are one of the idiots who think the web is the internet, you deserve a slow and painful death from termites.
Re: (Score:2)
The web is not the same thing as the internet... zip up dude your stupid is showing.
Re: (Score:2)
In an abstract way, this is true. Practically though, no one can effectively compete with Google.
There is not much difference in the effective power Google has compared to AT&T prior to being broken up. Both AT&T (then) and Google (now) use intense vertical integration, bundling of various services at below a-la-carte market prices, and large R&D efforts to maintain dominance. While people (such as Sprint) were free to compete with AT&T prior to 1982, the (legal) fact is that there was no
Re: He really hates Google (Score:4, Insightful)
You meant to write *legally* gotten gun, right?
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the part where the doctor didn't actually do his mental health assessment and he rode on the coat tails of his G4S(which appears to have falsified his MH review) contract for it?
Nothing legal about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Well if you won't let the government close the loopholes, you can't blame the cops when people slip through the loopholes.
Re: He really hates Google (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This whole fucking thing started with name calling, so the idea that you can take the highroad after you've been swimming in the sewage lagoon is laughable.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> especially after all the predictions of dire consequences that haven't come true.
None of the predictions that haven't come true were predicted to have happened yet. The things predicted for now - not only HAVE they come true, they are worse than predicted. If there's a scam with AGW - it's that scientists are so afraid of being called alarmist that they constantly under-predict the effects.
The rate of glacial melt-off is more than 30 times higher RIGHT NOW than was predicted in the 1990s. Entire glacie
Re:He really hates Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I think the more honest answer would be: We asked them.
"We" is collective, of course. It doesn't necessarily mean you or me, but someone asked them. Google is constantly under pressure from various groups/individuals to remove/filter/hide things, and it actually costs Google far more to go out of their way to filter them than it does for it to simply show you what its crawlers found.
Some of these are completely harmless, like the auto-complete filtering. If you want to type "penis", you'll still g
Re: (Score:2)
This is perhaps the most spammy link slashdot has ever put out. Just random drivle from a tabloid. What does Bat Boy think about Google? What do the Martian Overlords think? Just turn the page, it will be there.
They didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is simply buckling under the social, political and commercial pressures - it's completely external. I'm sure Google doesn't *want* to spend dollars having to dig through text to find things that someone finds offensive but we demanded it and they delivered it. Don't shoot the messenger.
This reads as "You did what I asked? YOU IDIOT!!"
Re:They didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
We hate us for Our freedoms.
Re:They didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
This could NOT be more wrong! It is well known companies and company heads all have social agendas!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Is that really a surprise to anyone? I mean, they have a constant lobbyist presence and have kept one for years now. They've even been taking a position on the 'free trade' bills lately. How can anyone say they're simply neutral, apolitical observers?
BS (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets really tiresome seeing people attempt to claim that all these massive corporations and immensely wealthy people are just powerless to do anything and can't be held responsible for their own actions. Google does what they do for the same reason other powerful companies do, which is nefarious and immoral at best. It should take you all of about 10 seconds of studying the CISPA web campaign to realize that these companies have immense power on politics because masses of people can tune into the message. "Hillary want's us to censor" would have probably ended up in a Sanders candidacy, but Google knows where the power and money should be for them (read Sergey and Larry) to get the best bang for their buck.
Reality is that people don't get rich and powerful by being stupid. We can however say that the opposite is true, so the poor and ignorant will remain so. It's really really easy to get the ignorant to remain that way too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. For politically charged subjects there are powerful influences behind them and lots of closed-door conversations. It's rarely easy to find the interested parties in any particular action. Heck, the funding of presidential campaigns is shrouded in mystery. Who are the donors and what do they expect to gain from any particular candidate?
On the other end of the spectrum and "babies are tasty" type web searches it's less clear how Google gains anything by preventing these searches. It's more likely this i
Re: (Score:3)
Google also gains nothing from hiding satellite imagery for military sites, although this is a very sensible thing to do and I'm sure most people would agree.
I really don't think you thought that through, because they do get things. Money is a form of power, but there are many other kinds of power. If you really can't think of why Google would not do something for cash, you really are not trying.
The best played fallacy to the ignorant is the ole appeal to emotion, namely intellect and ego. "All the smart people think" is a great gag, and works extremely well. Spend 10 minutes reading comments here, or Reddit, or Twitter, or any other message site, and it's p
Re: (Score:2)
Google don't need an apologist, what they don't like they can hide, like the death by autoerotic asphyxiation of one of their top execs in a Red Roof Inn in 2014.
How? Easy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone decided that censorship was OK when it wasn't the government doing it, so nobody tried to stop Google.
Re: (Score:2)
Every has a choice. Now I use bing, I fucking hate Bing but I am stuck because I can no longer trust Google, fuck you Google and attempting to corrupt politics in your favour whilst pretending to be neutral (don't know why, just can't get into Yahoo, perhaps it's the whole M&M thing, gives off that whole same google privacy invasive thing). Oh no, I forgot duckduckgo, bad me.
I have always supported the idea of governments creating their own neutral search engines using public open algorithms, open to
Re: (Score:2)
wait did yahoo stop using bing?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Self-censorship is still censorship. It's just not wrong in any reasonable sense of the term.
just stop using it already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop enriching Google already. Stop sending them the contents of all your emails, stop giving them info about everything you search for, block their tracking shit that's all over the web, use alternate map services, don't send them your real time location throughout the day, etc.
If enough people don't want Google knowing every fucking shred of personal info about them, and having increasing control over their view of the world, then stop using them and Google withers and dies.
If you're going to keep using Google services? Fine, but then do please STFU when down the road you don't like the world you created.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, it's true (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed the "google censor" effect just the other day when I went searching for some info on a piece of software that is probably considered to be "evil" because it helps aid the circumvention of copyright.
This is a *very* popular bit of software but oddly enough, Google's search returned almost no results.
Censorship?
I think it's pretty obvious.
Re: Sadly, it's true (Score:2)
Re: Sadly, it's true (Score:5, Funny)
He didn't censor himself!
Google intercepted his post and censored it for him! That's what the article is all about, and the proof is RIGHT THERE! Right THERE!
Or a randumb guy on the internet is trying to make himself look cool and edgy by looking for things Google doesn't want people to know about.
Re: (Score:2)
If only they could actually find something missing from the search results, then the complaints would be so much more troubling. ;)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Censorship?
I think it's pretty obvious.
If you are looking for a white knight to fight your copyright battles, don't look to the corporations.
Of course they manipulate their results because if they don't get GET SUED for facilitating copyright infringement. The courts tend not to make a distinction when it comes to a tool that's primarily or mainly used to facilitate copyright infringement and one that is only used for it. That's not Google's fault. They are just doing what a corporation does: maximizing profits. In this case that means not distu
Re: (Score:3)
Yet, strangely enough, Google allows its YouTube service to only tacitly deal with copyright infringements through that service.
This is why Swift, McCartney and a bunch of other recording artists are pushing for a change to the DMCA that would prevent YouTube from effectively leveraging their music for profit without adequate compensation:
http://fortune.com/2016/06/20/taylor-swift-youtube/
Google only censors that which does not stand to make it a profit.
What I find interesting is that when you file a copyri
Rightsholder responsibilities (Score:2)
It is not up to YouTube to police your copyrights. The ad-revenue goes to the content owner — the uploader, until proven otherwise. Feel free to sue them for it.
It was a neat trick whenever the recording industry got the FBI to investigate copyright claims. I understand it's a lot of work to try to insist that a certain set of bits are yours. I even understand that there are valid economic reasons why we try to pretend non-scarce goods are scarce. Trying to alter the law to force private third parties
Re: (Score:2)
Do no evil?
Let me repeat myself:
Google isn't an idea, a person, a set of rules, a way of living, a philosophy, or anything else. Get over it. "Do no evil" is nothing more than a marketing slogan.
AGAIN, Google maximizes profits. If that means failing to police YouTube copyright infringements to the absolute max, of course they'll do it. You seem outraged over YouTube's hypocrisy. Well, yeah? There's no Mr. Google making moral decisions. There are just divisions maximizing profits. Moral consistency isn't an attribute o
Meanwhile in real life, more secret blacklists (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever thought the no-fly list that you cannot see and cannot change is a bunch of bullshit?
Well right now a number of house members in the U.S. are having a sit-in to try and base gun control around that same list.
May as well integrate the YouTube block-list while you're at it I guess.
Civilized societies (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. We need less guns, not more.
Nobody should be able to walk into a Walmart and walk out with a cart full of machine guns and ammo.
No other "civilized" society accepts this nonsense and neither should the US.
Then you should get the constitution amended.
That's another aspect of "civilized" societies - you can't just pick-and-choose which rules to break.
Re: (Score:3)
That's another aspect of "civilized" societies - you can't just pick-and-choose which rules to break.
We do that all the time. The Second Amendment is just about the only part of the Constitution that is rigorously defended.
Re: (Score:3)
So why can't I just go out and buy a modern military rifle? It seems to me the Second was pretty well violated in 1986.
Re: (Score:2)
Good. We need less guns, not more.
Nobody should be able to walk into a Walmart and walk out with a cart full of machine guns and ammo.
No other "civilized" society accepts this nonsense and neither should the US.
Then you should get the constitution amended.
Not necessary. The Supreme Court made it clear in their last previous major gun ruling that just because the second amendment exists, it doesn't mean that there can't be any restrictions on guns. Supposedly it was Scalia himself who said that. Rights in the constitution are not absolute. Keeping people from buying machine guns is a far cry from saying nobody can buy any gun for any reason, but hey, don't let logic stand in your way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody should be able to walk into a Walmart and walk out with a cart full of machine guns and ammo.
You do know you can't do that in the US either, right? Machine guns (automatic weapons) are heavily regulated in the US (Walmart doesn't sell them). Buddy there's plenty of facts to base an anti-gun arguments on you don't need to distort the truth.
Reality Check time (Score:2)
Not counting semi-autos that have actual conversion kits it would be a heck of a lot easier to spend the shop time to design a weapon to be motor driven from the get go than to rig up a weapon that
1 most likely does not have the tolerances to fire all that rapidly
2 can't just mount a drum mag of any size
3 would most likely explode in the first 10 seconds
please at least talk to an actual gun smith before you propose something from a cartoon next time.
(btw you can google the instructions on how to make an AK-
Re: (Score:3)
How can this happen! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bisexual? (Score:2)
I just tested some of those "controversial" words and while "peni" doesn't even get me "penis", "torren" does get me several torrent-related things (but not "torrent" itself), and "bise" gives "bisexual" and a bunch of phrases containing that word right away.
10 Blacklists (Score:5, Funny)
Google Play censors your video games (Score:5, Informative)
Google Play bans Bomb Gaza
http://www.israelnationalnews.... [israelnationalnews.com]
http://www.channel4.com/news/b... [channel4.com]
Google bans Whack The Hamas
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/... [jewishbusinessnews.com]
Google Play bans Milo Tosser
https://twitter.com/riffraffga... [twitter.com]
Google Play permanently bans developer of "Hilliar Clinton" game
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/... [breitbart.com]
way too much credit (Score:2)
I think Robert Epstein is giving Alphabet (Google) way too much credit in it's ability to "manipulate" people. It is a mega corporation that is only getting bigger. Economies of scale still apply and they're probably trying a lot harder to keep cutting edge rather then manipulating things.
My experience has been that Google news provides the least biased news source. But as everyone here will know, you get your sources from several places to avoid any bias they might have.
As for search sources whenever I tr
Re: (Score:3)
I think Robert Epstein is giving Alphabet (Google) way too much credit in it's ability to "manipulate" people.
You're misunderstanding his point:
Honest spammers like him were really proud of their SEO schemes, for it to backfire on them makes them really sad. They feel like their false happiness was stolen from them. They thought they could buy popularity at a discount, that instead of buying ads they could trick an ad company's computers into listing them at the top for free. But the ad company had more programmers than them. Waaaaa, waaaaa, waaaaa.
Google is NOT the INTERNET (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Google may as well be "the Internet" as far as most people are concerned. If your Web site isn't found by Google searches, you might as well not have a Web site. It all depends on whether you want to be found. 90% of people haven't even HEARD of DuckDuckGo.
Re: (Score:2)
90% of people haven't even HEARD of DuckDuckGo.
I'm sure they can google it
Re: (Score:2)
Before 2000 most of the other search engines sucked. They were full of spam and other crap as everyone tried to game the system until Google's pagerank came out and blew them out of the water. The other search engines also tended to have very cluttered pages full of blinking ads and they were slow. It was a HUGE improvement going from the likes of Altavista or the others to Google.
The article screams "citation please" (Score:2, Informative)
Re: The article screams "citation please" (Score:3)
Lying ted cruz was said in speeches and tweets by trump about 300 times, and each instance generated a dozen news stories at all the major publications including the same phrase 3 or 4 times along with thousands of disscussions. The result is the page rank for that phrase is massive, all because of Trump. There has been no such use of "crooked clinton" to generate such a comparable page rank.
His complaint about this is a complaint about phrases being used in society and he's blaming google for what Trump po
Partial Froogle Blacklist (Score:2, Interesting)
Try to buy ammo through Froogle. The first results won't be actual ammunition. Even becoming more specific (such as ".223 ammunition"), mostly only gives ammo boxes and belts. Live rounds have somehow been filtered (mostly, a few results seem to slip through). In the past, the results gave actual ammunition and not inert rounds and such.
Democratization (Score:2)
Instead of funding a censorship oversight committee, lets fund an open (and/or state-approved) search (think NOAA for weather).
Most weather forecasts are decoration atop NOAA forecasts.
I think Google is cool (Score:2)
Just now I was typing "How many elephants..." and the moment I hit the "d", it came up with exactly what I wanted, "...does it take to change a lightbulb", first response. You can't beat that.
Unfortunately the joke sucked, so I won't bother...
Why everything has to be decentralized (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been attempting to control information and the social discourse since always. This is not new.
And whether you like it or not for whatever your political reason... consider that corruption that serves your political interests TODAY can be turned against you tomorrow.
Don't be that dumb. You either believe in democracy which requires an open exchange of information or you don't and we trend towards kings, aristos, and various other elites that will just control your life for you. And again... while you might like that idea now because you assume said aristos will hold your values... consider that they might not in the future. And at that point your opinion will be literally worthless.
Stop it now while your vote counts. Or your hypocritical complaint later will be a joke.
Who cares about autocomplete (Score:3)
When I search for something, I type in what I'm searching for. As for the rubbish in the article, here you go. [google.ie]
Dipshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to see how far this goes, I typed in "dipshit" and Google didn't autosuggest "Robert Epstein"! That's an omission that must be corrected!
Re: (Score:2)
Donald Trump went through a bit of effort associating "Lying" with "Ted." No one else has gone through quite the same amount of effort making "crooked Hillary" a thing. It doesn't matter whether you actually believe she's crooked or not, the exact phrase (that's important) hasn't gotten nearly the exposure as "Lying Ted" did.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, try an image search for Santorum.
It doesn't work to have a small number of famous people on television repeat a thing. That doesn't make the internet care. You have to have lots of different people saying the thing on the internet for the internet to notice. Most of the talk on the internet about Trump is saying different things than Trump himself is saying.
Though I am surprised about Robert Epstein, I guess there is just too broad an array of pejoratives to choose from for any of them to get a high r
could be worse . . . (Score:2)
Imagine if Google tech originated with Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook or the CIA.
Google has been pressured by many powerful forces to modify their offerings, often to reduce Free Speech. They have resisted in many justified cases where some companies would cave. There is the worrisome relationship between Google and the State Department to consider, but overall they've been 'less evil' than almost any imaginable alternative.
Epstein just hates Google (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You can turn off safe search (Score:2)
You know, you can turn off safe search and get maps of all the bisexual penises you want. If it's not right there on Google, there are sites that cater to that sort of thing. Call me when Google is actually installed on all the routers and dropping offensive packets.
Re: (Score:2)
I checked a regular search and got "About 8,190,000 results" for "bisexual penises"
Maps doesn't give any results for bisexual penis, but "bisexual" gives me the LGBT student services at the local University, and "penis" gives me a Japanese fertility temple. I'm very slightly disappointed that google didn't figure out "penis" and list the local adult shops. But "adult shop," which is what the sign outside will actually say, does list them all on maps. "adult arcade" lists the adult shops, and also an over-21
that's easy (Score:2)
Mostly through copyright claims, trademark claims, government pressure, lawsuits, and threats by activists.
Standard Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Google got where they are by doing a good job--not through anti-competitive practices or corporate skullduggery. If Google somehow irrevocably deletes a significant portion of the internet and then calls it "a natural network correction" while taking home millions of page views, then maybe we can talk about regulating them. Until then what they have isn't a "stranglehold" it's a winning ap
is "safe search" on? (Score:2)
I think the guy forgot to switch off "safe search". Clitoris works for me.
Sorry (Score:2)
So wha
Funny (Score:2)
Bing (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Burying sites (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a way of taking advantage of the way the page-rank algorithm works, in that it counts "incoming links" (they're doing a weighted, iteratively calculated count, but lets keep things simple).
Left to its own, there would be little the page-rank algorithm can do against such obvious abuse of the algorithm to self-promote certain sites. Thus, in the best traditions of the unenlightened self-interest that so pervades our society, the wellspring of the Commons is poisoned. The best of it is that it's all "legal" (there is no law against). As a consequence the value of Google's search results is at risk, and with it the public service they provide.
Rather than seeking redress from the law (which simply doesn't offer any), Google decided to mete out its own kind of justice: it corrected the search rank of sites that do this downward (manually or otherwise) so that they were starved of traffic. The message Google sends with this is: pull this one on us and we'll bury you.
In cases of genuine abuse (websites inflating their rank through this kind of "Search Engine Optimization" I agree with this measure. Unfortunately downgrading a site's search rank is a powerful weapon which, even when used without malice, can lead to injustice against which there is no appeal. Simply because either people or algorithms that do the downranking will make mistakes.
Alas, our world is not perfect. On the whole however I prefer Google to protect its search algorithm from abuse by SEO con artists at the expense of killing the odd innocent website. Sorry but my interests are better served by having high-quality search results than by preventing injustice.
Re: (Score:2)
No need to wring your hands and worry about that a private party's decision about the rankings that they give out might be according to them, and their interests. That isn't something that "can lead to injustice against which their is no appeal," it is actually just freedom. My opinion of your website, or google's, is my own and not yours to covet; there is no injustice in me exercising my own prerogatives according to my interests. And so there is no need to wring your hands worrying about it.
The funny par
Oversimplified thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion you've missed the point of Epstein's article.
Epstein contends (and I agree) that Google's services are so pervasive that it really has taken on the role of a public utility, while still being an ordinary commercial enterprise without any responsibility whatsoever to anyone except their shareholders.
By its very nature, Google *cannot* be transparent about its page-rank algorithm because the instant it is, every SEO con artist in existence will proceed to abuse that knowledge and undermine the quality and usefulness of Google's search results.
The bottom line is: Google is a company that provides a service that's as essential as power, water, roads, trash collection and sanitation that's beyond oversight and cannot (ever) be transparent about its service. How would you like that same level of transparency and total un-accountability with other utilities?
What you call "freedom", I call risky concentration of power without checks, balances, or oversight. An appeal to "freedom" is, I think, an oversimplification. Why not allow utility companies to switch off the power, the water supply, or block the sewers if they it would be in their corporate interests to do so? When water authorities ration water usage because supplies are running out, everyone is up in arms, but you'd like to lie down and take it if it's in the corporate rather than the public interest? After all, nothing stops you from buying bottled water, does it? Or installing a swimming pool as a backup water cistern, right? How about allowing the wastewater treatment plant to shut down the sewers in the city centre if somebody (perhaps a restaurant) dumps a load of fat down the sink that plays hob with their sewage treatment?
What Google does (and must do) to keep its services humming really does lead to injustice in individual cases.
To that extent I agree with Epstein. Where I disagree with Epstein is whether it's worth the price in this particular case. However, with Google, whilst transparency is impossible oversight isn't. We may well need regulations and oversight for search engines somewhere down the line.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The most hilarious part (and that outs you as a teenager) is that you associate buzz cuts... with cops. Uhm, yeah. When you're older, you'll have more regular examples.
Also, when you get older you're learn that there are lots of workplace rules that are designed to protect the employees and have nothing to do with wearing a suit. No, a casual dress code doesn't mean you can say **** or ***** at work, and therefore you should also not be the one flashing it on the screen during a presentation.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember poor Joe Cox [google.co.uk] before you vote tomorrow. Don't give away our children's future to the narrow minded, hateful, economically unproductive brexit supporters. Don't let hatred win over growth!
For posterity's sake: Google has changed [archive.is] their UK homepage to include a link, "In remembrance of Jo Cox MP" [archive.is], at the bottom. The link is to a GoFundMe page to raise money to "establish a foundation to continue advancing the causes closest to Jo's heart and to help give her a lasting legacy".
Of course one of those causes is "refugee support", an issue tied to the upcoming Brexit vote. Google UK put this on their homepage one day before the vote.
All your attention are belong to us google (Score:2)
Natural result of pandering to the users in search of more money. The original idea (back in the ancient days of "Don't be evil") was that the google would help solve the problems of the world.
Mission creep. The new problem became how to make more money, and the answer is "NEVER enough money." Not a solvable problem, but censorship for profit is just one part of the result. Along with the support for spammers and scammers and various other business partners of the new google.
The part that bothers me is the