Slashdot Mirror
New Campaign Tactic - Google Bombing
jeian writes "My Direct Democracy, a liberal group blog, is trying out a new campaign tactic — Google bombing. From the New York Times article: 'Searching Google for Peter King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.' Google's policy has typically been to not intervene and let the algorithms work by themselves, but could this change if Google-bombing becomes a common tactic?"
The classic example is a Google Search for miserable failure that returns the WhiteHouse.gov biography for George Bush. Not surpisingly, Michael Moore's page also comes up in the first page of results in the tit-for-tat. Read more about how "ugly" Democrats and Republicans are using Political Google Bombs at Wikipedia.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
People have been google-bombing phrases like litigious bastards, miserable failure, french military victories, and so on for years. But these are all going about it backwards. If someone isn't looking for "litigious bastards," they're not going to find out you think it applies to SCO .
I'm amazed it's taken people (outside of black-hat SEO and comment spammers) this long to start with the keywords end-users are likely to start with -- in this case, the names of the candidates -- and aim them at a site expressing the desired POV, rather than the other way around.
I thought that when the idea first became popular Google worked on making it harder to google bomb something. Isn't this infact one of their key aspects on developing google itself? Return RELEVANT sites? not things with lots and lots of links and the same 2 words every time.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
If Google adjusts their code to "rectify" a politically-oriented gaming of the system, then Google would appear to many people as politically biased. "You fixed it for Johnny Blue, but you didn't fix it for Sally Red, so you must be one of them blue-state LIBeral activist fanatic type companies!" "You tweaked Sally Red's ranking but left alone Johnny Blue's sort results, so you must be one of them red-state NEOnazi NEOcon corporate welfare hack jobs!"
[
So it's ok what they are doing. Good thing they weren't neocon fundies. Even though they are too stupid to figure out something like this, it would not be ok for them to do it.
my gut feeling is let it be, and let the republicans do the same to democrats. welcome to politics. its nasty. always was, always will be
however, google in a very short time has come to inhabit a very important space in the media
it is largely unregulated in the usa now (not so in other countries), but it won't stay that way for long. too many powerful interests will have too many concerns about google and its power,and google will not survive unscathed
so i say: no regulation
but my brain tells me regulation of google is coming regardless
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As an independant, I keep asking myself: Why is it that liberals use Google and other online technology to influence elections?
Do the Red boys not have computers? Geeky types?
Is this a response to AM radio?
Google's policy has typically been to not intervene and let the algorithms work by themselves, but could this change if Google-bombing becomes a common tactic?
Google has always maintained a policy of 'Do no evil'. Does this mean that they won't do any evil but will allow others to use their systems to their own benefit?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
The article first gives the "miserable failure" example and then says that it will be hard to bomb someone well known. Well, it is politics.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
"Negative attack ads" are considered poisonous to democracy, but using spammer SEO tactics which are sleezy and destructive to Google's usefulness are not considered even worse. This is nothing less than an attempt to create a propagandistic effect with Google, whereas "negative attack ads" have to operate in the clear and open and are already covered by libel and slander laws. There are no laws against using a Google bomb to create a potentially false impression by the order in which things come up. You could have a guy who's say... obsessed with ending the War on Drugs, but a Google bomb could make him out to be some racist ass by bombing up all of the links that point to the one time he said "blacks are the most common drug dealer suspects, so profiling them before anyone else is the most effective strategy for DEA to use." Even if it's out of context, who will know now?
This is why I'm against all of the restrictions on campaigning. Instead I support 100% transparency on money. If you want to publish an ad, all you should have to do is say "I'm __INSERT__NAME__ and have the following (non-)affiliation with Candidate X." Just transparency so the public can decide.
Ironically, all the "campaign reform" advocates in the public have done is to support the things that incumbents enthusiastically support, like negative, privately-funded campaign ads that highligh what Group X doesn't like about a candidate, thus informing the public. And... if it's false, the candidate can always sue for libel.
There's even a wiki (in spanish) on the subject: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb I think is Google's responsibility to refine it's algorithms, 'cause the must typical "bomb" used today is not about politics, but pocker / texas hold'em :(
Carlos Niebla
I wonder if the article would have been as carefully neutral if it had been a Republican group using this technique against a Democrat.
Actually, I don't wonder. I'm fairly sure people would be frothing at the mouth and labeling the Republican a fascist, demanding his immediate resignation and calling for a law making this sort of thing illegal.
This space intentionally left blank.
The poster missed past articles on Google Bombing. Certain tactics to affect pageranks are against Google's pagerank policy and Google has already been known to remove these pages.
Albeit, I've only seen them do it with advertisers and corporations.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
...Google-bombing has been a campaign tactic attempted by activists on blogs in the past, including the notorious Bush "Miserable Failure" google bombing. It might be novel if it was coordinated by the formal campaign, other than that, nothing new at all.
This is why I don't listen to radio or watch television during election season.
One might assume for the same reasons I might now stop surfing the net, but I won't for the simple reason I don't know anything about anybody or any proposition. I'll figure it all out the hours before I vote.
For those who trust the internet for information, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious.
this is not the candidate candidate you should be voting for...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Gotta love it though . . . an equal opportunity dirty trick. Doesn't take Republican wealth or Democratic hyperbole to make it work . . . just a few web-savvy operators with an agenda. No more duct tape on the door latches at the Watergate Hotel! No more pictures of Michael "already supersized" Moore touting his latest mocumentary! No need to have "my brother, the Governer" or the Supremes hand over the election! No more . . . but you get the idea.
Ah, yes. Google-bombing for politics! This must be the "My candidate's opponent is a poopy-faced dumb-head" of the 21st century. What's next? "My candidate can beat up your candidate?"; "I'm my ball, so I make the rules?"; "Your candidate has cooties?"
It would be nice if Google searches automatically weeded out result pages that did not contain the phrase you were searching for. I always find such results to be irrelevant and they clutter the actual desired result lists. I know that the inanchor specification is there, but that is a clunky way to ensure 100% search result accuracy/relevance.
Where were you when the voynix came?
If someone is purposely exploiting this to get on the top if search results then I don't see any reason to filter then out. I see enough from sites that put words at the bottom over and over just to get up top of search results already. You end up search for something and going to a site that has nothing to do with what you want. Most common with warez, cracks and *cough* porn sites but I have seen it with other sites as well.
When I searched Google with Peter King's name the #1 hit was his home page, it was not until the 2nd page that anything like the article mentioned appeared, and as we all know most people do not go beyond the first page. So either google did something, or there has been some reverse-google-bombing. I think this is the link they were referring to Peter King and here is his home page Peter King to balance things out.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned one of my personal favorite google-bombs...
Google for Santorum (as in Rick Santorum) and you will see the funniest ever.
If I were to google bomb King, I'd get him for being the American front man for a particular nasty overseas terrorist group.
Where were you when the voynix came?
It is fundamentally time to employ third (and fourth) party as viable options. The whole us vs. them false dichodomy is destroying this country.
.... pressure on the republicrats and demicans. In fact, if all the third parties got together, and produced a single ad to that effect ....
And while I am a Libertarian, and would love to see the Libertarian Party actually start making some ads, I would also support the developement of a couple of other parties (Green, Conservative Christian Party, etc) just so there would be more
Scene, Similar to the Mac/Pc commercials
"Hi, I am Libertarian. And I'm a Green. While we disagree on many things, we both agree that the two incumbant parties are screwing up our country. It is time to take the country back from the Special Interests and start working for ALL Americans. Send a message this election that it is time for the politicians to start representing ALL of their constituents, not just those that contribute money to campaigns. Take the time, and find the third party that fits with your views, and vote for them. The new mandate: No more politics as usual"
It is getting so that no matter who is in power, the special interests are the only winners. If enough elections are thrown askew by third parties, then perhaps those elected will start listening to the other voices and come to some sort of consensus, rather than sit around throwing Google Bombs and empty rhetoric around.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Subject is my take on it. Whether it is done to pro- or demote one's merchandize or a political leader, it is still abuse and should be frowned upon and condemned.
The intended beneficiaries of the practice should speak out against it, and the victims should weight their legal options.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Ah, yes. Google-bombing for politics! This must be the "My candidate's opponent is a poopy-faced dumb-head" of the 21st century. What's next?"
How about blanket domain-squatting? Thus, you go to www.hekickspuppies.com and find a page about a candidate.
Where were you when the voynix came?
News stuff should really get de-listed from the main results pages, because my site now got bumped almost out of the top 10, thanks to tons of articles about an unfortunate homicide by someone with my same name... argh.
stuff |
If you do a search on "PS3" in the news, you'll get biased sources that are anti-PS3, like Kotaku and Gizmodo, who make outrageous headlines like, "Sony hates Europe" and so on and so forth. You rarely get the original articles and always get opinion-laded pieces.
How do you go about gaming Google's search engine to insure that searches for a specific politician are more likely to find negative stories?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Why is it that liberals use Google and other online technology to influence elections?
Because they believe more firmly that it will work. The other side is, well, conservative. They remain skeptical that the net has as much influence as its most starry-eyed dreamers say it has. They figure their time, money and effort is better put into old-fashioned politicking, e.g. local get-out-the-vote organizations, having people call their neighbors, or walk over and knock on doors come election day, or having the candidate over to the church after Sunday pancakes to talk, et cetera and so forth.
Soon enough we'll know who was right.
FTFA:
Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: "When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican's name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens."
That's a pretty coordinated effort, but I guess that's politics.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
...is what the right would say. But, seriously, it's free speech, it may be tacky, but since when did we ever make a law against something being tacky? I mean, we have tabloids, for god's sake! No reason for Google to get involved unless any laws are being broken, or people put in danger.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
From one of the main bloggers at MyDD:
Search engine optimization has been a part of political campaigns for several years now. Smart campaigns have been using it for some time. While it is a new topic for discussion in the media as a result of my campaign, it was even rampant during the 2004 election, when conservative bloggers Google bombed John Kerry as a "flip flopper," and progressive bloggers Google Bombed George Bush as a "miserable failure." If you don't believe me, feel free to try out those keywords in a Google search. The bombs are still active.
There are three main differences between the campaign I started and other, similar campaigns. First, I did it out in the open with full transparency on my blog, using my name, and with my email in full view. Second, it is much more wide ranging, since it has multiple, simultaneous targets. Third, and most importantly, instead of targeting campaign talking points such as "flip flopper" or "miserable failure," this campaign worked to only use non-partisan media reports. No talking points. No opinion columns. A bare minimum use of alternative media. In other words, this campaign works solely to push news reports made by trusted, mainstream news outlets into the foreground during the final two weeks of the campaign season.
At a time when what conservative pundits think about Michael J. Fox has somehow become campaign "news," quite frankly I believe that what I am doing is more substantive and fact-based than much of the reporting we have recently seen on the campaign trail. I am also highly suspicious that I am receiving so many media requests because many might want to use my very small campaign as a way to paint progressives and Democrats as a whole in a negative light. Simply put, I do not trust your motives for wanting to write on this campaign.
Finally, I am running multiple campaigns at the end of this cycle, with absolutely no help outside of volunteers from the progressive netroots. Not only does this mean that my actions are my own, it also means that I do not have a lot of extra time to field interviews every hour. It is more important for me to see these campaigns succeed, and for Democrats to retake Congress, than it is for me to receive press on my efforts. We will see soon enough whether or not these campaigns had their desired effect. Right now, I don't know if they have. At the very least, I would like to see how well these campaigns work before I engage in further discussions concerning them to the press. I will be more than happy to talk with you about this the day after the election, or even to discuss Use It Or Lose right now. Currently, however, discussions of Google Bombs are off the table.
Best,
Chris Bowers
Frankly, I think that this is a very positive way to use the idea of Google bombing. The whole point of PageRank is that people vote with their links and other expressions of interest in certain pages. So when people pull a prank like linking 'miserable failure' to Bush or Moore, this is just sort of silly and unimportant. But when people really want others to know about an article that exposes an important aspect of a political figure, and they all link to that article, that seems to be perfectly in line with the spirit of Google. What's wrong - that they all chose to use the same link text? That they decided to coordinate their efforts and focus public opinion on one particular article? How is that different from a campaign choosing specific words and talking points to drive home in stump speeches, press materials, etc.?
I think the fact that the person who started this went out of his way to focus on substantive articles from real newspapers does a lot to distance this from the sort of 'prank' it could have been. If this were all focused on a parody site, or they were doing something deceptive like linking "John Kyl" to the site of a child molester with the same or similar name, I think that would be irresponsible. But especially when the first few entries are still his senate biography, campaign site, and wikipedia entry, I don't see the problem with this.
Interestingly, since a few hours ago when I read the article in the Times and first Googled "Jon Kyl," the article in question has disappeared from the first couple pages. Is Google actually taking a hand here? It sure looks like something has happened.
I'd have to agree. It also shows how little they have to offer in terms of ideas. If they had something good to offer then maybe they would be busy promoting their good ideas instead of attempting to flood a search engine with negative crap.
Love sees no species.
You can see the links here.
google in a very short time has come to inhabit a very important space in the media
I don't know about everyone else but I go to Google when I need information. I don't get a clear view of what's going on in the world from the infotainment media. Googleboming interferes with that. Anyone abusing Google's algorhythms as a political tool cares more about pushing their propaganda than my right to self education. I try to keep that, disrespect for me the end user, in mind as I look through my bombed search results.
We are all just people.
Slashdot is just helping us use that bomb.
"Google's US politics are left wing extreme. They enjoy the slander and insults that go on"
Errmmmmm yeah. That must be why they link to hundreds of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity fan sites.
Where were you when the voynix came?
They're links to such sites as wikipedia biographies. These are not alternative media hit pieces; they are documented facts.
"Google has always maintained a policy of 'Do no evil'"
Only sometimes. This is also the same company that has maintained vast logs of search information which can be identified by user. Pretty evil.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Google bombing is not really a problem that requires modifying the Google algorithms. The algorithms work fine.
The right way to fix Google bombing is counter-bombing by the victim. Here, counter-bombing can mean many things: (1) lawsuit filed by the victim against the Google bombers, (2) Google bombing to spread accurate information, etc.
The bottom line is that Google management should not modify the Google algorithms. They work fine. The "fix" is outside of management's responsibility.
Google bombing of Kerry occurred during the last US Prersidential election cycle. Those swift boat dudes, I think.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I think Google in its current iteration is on decline as a useful search tool. Bombing, link farms, ebay links and overabundance of throw-away index sites makes it harder to find about anything with a simple search. For example searching for any specific service or business, like car dealerships, produces endless layers of indexes that live off add revenue. I think Google is rapidly approaching GIGO.
primitive economy = hand-to-hand warfare
manufacturing economy = mechanized warfare
information economy = information warfare
This google-bombing competition is only the beginning.
Where are the Friends of Privacy when you need them? (I say 'where', but maybe I should say 'when'?)
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Why do you people continually characterize contempt as the shrill whining of an activist? Most educated people have turned against you, yet you still trod out those talk radio stereotypes of the loony nut and the media bias conspiracy. Oh what have those innocent Republicans ever done to deserve such persecution!
And if the rubber band were on the other claw, do you honestly think the response would by anything less than a more effective googlebombing of the opponent?
"but I'll be damned if I will pay for your party power-jockeying shenanigans"
Assuming you are a tax-paying American, then yes: we are paying for it, and (in the eyes of much of the world) we are damned.
We are all just people.
.. this is used against Democrats. AS long as you can find GWB when you search for 'miserable failure', it's A-OK. But once you begin finding Barack Obama when you search for 'style over substance', for example, THEN and only then will Google do something.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Awww, shucks. On reading the article, apparently Google hasn't turned M$ into a smoldering crater like the headline lead me to believe. Maybe someday...
By this I mean posting an article stating free pr0n at your oppositions website therefore bringing that server to its knees for weeks.
/. nerds Distrubuted all around the world will unite for one cause FREE PR0N.
/.ed
I think I might have a name for this:
Slashdotters flock to website to download all the free pr0n they can handle and therefore Deny the server for what it does best, provide Services, and by posting on
I know we should call it
Don't you hate glorious self-promotion? Visit my Blog
Me Right wing extreme? Ha! Have fun anal splunking.
It's interesting how often conservatives approach "truth" and "false" not as things in and of themselves, but as functions of whether something is "for me" or "against me".
The whole question of "bias" is seen in this light by what today passes as conservatives. It's not about right or wrong; it's about whether something is "helpful to my team" or "hurtful to my team." If the latter, then the source or material is automatically "liberally biased" and subsequently denigrated and ignored (see the other comment above about Fox and the New York Times; liberals constantly complain about inaccuracies in NYT reporting while conservatives complain about vague "liberal bias").
This attitude, come to think of it, goes a long ways toward explaining how alleged "conservatives" have been so easily able to abandon all of what they once held as sacrosanct in the name of supporting George Bush at all costs. Truth, principles and the good of the country are far less important than party and power.
I invite you to google "Germain Greer", and look closely at the second page. When we officially ended the "Get Dick's Article To the Top Ten," the entry pointing to the Dick Masterson article in question was number 3.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
What does that have to do with this topic? The topic is about "liberal Google bombing"
Your post reminds me of the Jon Stewart sketch regarding news programs (esp. Fox) and the question mark. You can claim anything you want as long as you frame it in the form of a question.
Of course, then you go beyond that and make a baseless claim without any evidence, with the claim being obvious hyperbole. (Well, obvious to anyone with a brain. I'm assuming that includes you, but maybe you'll prove me wrong.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Unlike linking an uncommon word like "miserable failure" to the main page for a famous person, this is the reverse, an attempt to link the person's name to the uncommon word.
I don't think this is really going to work. There are too many "correct" links for that famous person.
I went and tried "George Bush" and "GW Bush" and lots of other variations. All came up with news articles and the whitehouse web page and right-wing blogs. Only after I started getting very negative and adding words like "George Monkey Bush" did I get anything that would not be Republican material.
I tried "John Kerry". He isn't even in the news anymore, and his site was at the top. Again you had to type in things like "John Swift Boat Kerry" to get stuff not written by Democrats.
I tried a local politician, Bill Rosendahl (city councilman where I am, and he is liberal and gay, which should lead to some attacks) and the top thing was a city council report where he introduced a motion, followed by his web site. In this case the 5th item sounded like an attack ("the miseducation of Bill Rosendahl"), but turned out to be something from the LA Weekly praising him for some affordable housing stuff.
You missed the post I was responding too, in which someone said "Google's US politics are left wing extreme". That other post ended up modded as troll, which sort of broke the connection.
Where were you when the voynix came?
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
No part of either the writeup or the article the writeup summarizes passes any judgement on the ethics of the activity, each merely reports the activity being taken and quotes a few people's reactions to it.
People like you fascinate me, because when you open your mouth to point out what you perceive to be the failings of people and institutions around you, you tend instead to condemn yourself much more effectively. And, yet, you do it over and over, never learning, never changing.
That seems a very odd debate tactic to me as I was always under the impression that one would want to create a favorable image of oneself in the eyes of the people he's speaking to, but that's just my perception.
I think that if you're using quotes, your argument is valid. However, sometimes when I search for a word, I get a web-site that doesn't contain that word, but does contain the concept I was searching for.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
While I personally find this kind of "public information vandalism" to be quite sad (and a candidate will instantaneously lose my vote if it is prooven they employ such tactics), it just shows how important it is that we, as individuals, must rely on PRIMARY SOURCES for our information. If you want to learn about company x, go to company x's website, *THEN* compare what they said with what others say about them. The problem happens when people go to secondary or tertiary sources with out ever cross checking those with the primary source. I thought this is something we should have learned in High School. If you want to find out if Sally has 14 toes, horns, and eats toads for lunch, ask Sally, NOT every one else.
On another note:
Search engines derive part of their success from being (or appearing) unbiased. If Google is smart, it wont have to introduce biases in order to fix this problem. They just need to make sure they differentiate between the *processes* or *strategies* used to "GoogleBomb" and the *instances* of "GoogleBombing". Don't write exceptions specifically for "miserable failure", instead identify *HOW* "miserable failure" exploited their algorithm and fix the algorithm.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Well, if you RTFA carefully (I know), you'll see that it starts with the phrase "If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks," when referring to "Jon Kyl", and "would bring up a link to" for Peter King. The article states what Direct Democracy hopes to happen and not what has already happened. To be fair, I misread it the first time, as well.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Somebody set up us the bomb.
where can we find this free pron you speak of?
Actually, I rather suspect that Google's policy is to not intervene as long as Republicans are being pilloried. Were things going substantially the other direction, this would have been fixed long before now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I doubt he missed that post, since he wrote it. More likely, he has a very short attention span, which helps explain his unusual beliefs.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Yeah because we all know how much better the neo-socialists are on the other end of the spectrum :)
Liberals today aren't liberal at all (they are socialists nicely wrapped to be presented to the
american public so as not to demonstrate their distant, yet still existing, ties to communism).
True liberals aren't for gun control boys and girls... true liberals emphasize the right to freedom
to do what you want with your life without the government getting all up in your koolaid.
Modern "liberals" LOVE big government and taxes that redistribute the wealth to the poorer parts of
the public WITHOUT regards to WHY most of the poor public is in their situation. I'm not a Libertarian
either. Their platform is not realistic to modern society; in many ways they are just as crazy
as the ditch-diggers from the left AND the right.
Google has recently registered a Political Action Committee.
. html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1930008,00
So we will see how they react to it. The claim is that it is for advocating the free distribution of information so it will be interesting to see if they intervene and if they do, how they intervene.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
how conservatives believe the Internet can be used?
Conservatives aren't motivated to rig Google. Guilty as charged. That's not the same as using the Internet.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
As fun as they are they are spam. Google needs to put controls in place to determine abuse before it takes over and makes the search engine useless.
With all the articles today concerning "Bush" and "bomb", NSA servers are pegging.
Where would slashdot be without google? Let alone any other website? Google has made a huge, neutral impact on the world. It has successfully indexed the internet itself, making unimaginable quantities of information available to billions of people worldwide. Google is amazing! I doubt that any company who stands up for information the way that google does would ever include their own political bias in their program. I just don't buy it.
Google set up us the bomb?
campaign was beginning.
Peter King: What happen ?
IT guy: Somebody set us up the Googlebomb.
Secretary: We get Newsday.
Peter King: What !
. . . So, have you had enough, or must I continue?
...Trix are for kids.
It is fundamentally time for people to stop whining about third parties and start realizing that the us vs. them mentality is a product of our system, not the other way around. In a "winner take all" voting system, third parties can only be spoilers. Given this fact, only narcissism can justify voting for a spolier that will hurt the cause overall but provide some form of philosophical vindication for individuals.
Yes, a new voting system would be nice. But guess who is least likely to vote to change the way we vote? Republicans. Guess who is most likely to keep winning as long as the left votes its "conscience" and not its head? Republicans. The Democrats are US, we are the Dems, and if you're not standing up to change them then stop whining and vote for our team. It's as simple as that. Anyone who votes third-party in Federal elections against a Democratic candidate is as bad as any Republican.
It's new? Oh my god, please don't tell me we're still in 2004!?
You just got troll'd!
You just got trolled HARD.
I'm surprised I don't see a link to the original story yet, so here it is:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/10/24/122153/98
From the story:
Start Running Better Polls
Dem: "You can't say bomb on the internet!"
Rep: "I can say bomb whenever I want!"
Rep: "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb babomb!"
Don't correct my punctuation, grammar, or spelling. If you're paying attention to that, you're missing the point
For great justice, move every page rank!
Start Running Better Polls
Not only that, but if you go to http://www.santorum.com/ you'll find... something that doesn't look like his campaign website :)
http://www.google-watch.org/newsday.html
Now, THAT's damn interesting... and the article was written back in March 2003...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"There's absolutely no reason to pick on one side or the other, when the entire lot of politicians are completely corrupt, stupid, and need to be tossed out altogether in favor of honest people (if there are any left)."
I don't know... I just don't trust honest people.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=waffles
Everyone is pretending like this is something new... but back in 2004, Kerry got 'bombed by bloggers associating him with the term "Waffles".
But slashdot needs to praise some liberal group for innovating this in 2006, of course, the facts shouldn't get in their way.
They are changing the web. We are the web - you, me and everyone producing content. And if you've got a popular blog and want to link to something you agree with, that's your right. What that project is doing is getting like-minded people to link to the same story that they all agree with, instead of everyone writing about and linking to different but similar stories.
In this case, I haven't seen reports of mass-producing sites that all link to each other to simulate popular sites and then using that position to optimize search results. That's a bit like astroturfing (creating fake grassroots organizations) and is crossing the line. Also note that in this case the links go to mainstream, factual articles, not hit pieces without evidence that they wrote themselves.
So, my points:
1. Using your popular site to promote a story is ok, even if you get your friends to do the same; attempting to trick Google's algorithms into giving your site more respect than it is due is not.
2. Publicizing an article full of facts, and opinions based on those facts is ok; making stuff up to influence an election is not.
If I see evidence of either of those tricks, I'll condemn it. Having concern about this sort of thing is good, but so far I've seen nothing wrong with it.
If most pages saying "peter king" do in fact link to a page about his "ethnic profiling", why shouldn't Google reflect that reality?
The reality is that Googling for ("peter king") does not return a link to an "ethnic profiling" article, at least not in the first set of results. Those results all point to King's own sites, Wikipedia articles about him, etc - all available to King (and his army of Congressional henchmen^Wstaff) to revise.
In fact, Tom Zeller Jr's NYTimes article first mentions Googling for ("John Kyl") (R-AZ). Whose highest-ranking results do not include the "alternative weekly" article the NYTimes seems to complain about.
Maybe Google "fixed" the results for these two powerful Republican Congressmembers, after news of the NYTimes article's "expose" of googlebombing reached them. That is a much more serious abuse of the Web by politically powerful censors. Call it "voluntary" by Google in this case, but of course Kyl and King are incumbents, who will be able to take revenge on Google, especially in telco and Network Neutrality votes, if Google "ignores" them, and they stay in a Congressional majority. Or even if they don't - all politics is like highschool homeroom politics, and revenge is the name of the game, especially if it actually costs someone an election.
And of course there's the entire dimension of the NYTimes' manipulation of the Web. Especially if they either influenced Google to censor its results, or if they just made up (or got wrong) the entire story, because King and Kyl's "Googlebomb" results aren't what the Times says they are. Or, most especially, if the Times both got Google to censor, and its story isn't even true.
What we are seeing in this story is not so much an expose of googlebombing as it is the backlash by the mass media (like the Times) and the creatures who inhabit it (like Congressmembers) which are now threatened by Web competitors like Google. And Google's model of "reality" which is much more interactive with the actions of the public than is either the mass media, or the Congress. Even if they're all manipulations, at least Google's are manipulated by the public, a level playing field (except for those conference calls with Google, Congressmembers and NYTimes writers).
--
make install -not war
Well, maybe they wont actually go and manually alter the results, But they may tweak the algo as to make google bombing far far harder. And in fact, Any attempt at google bombing may see the site in question drop right down the SERPS.
God Be Gone
Limbaugh is a republican fanboy, not a conservative; same with Bush.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It just has to work well enough to get into the first page of results. No one's expecting people to type Mike McGavick and have something other than his campaign home page turn up as the top result. They're expecting people to type Mike McGavick and see "McGavick misstated details of DUI arrest" in the first page of results, maybe one or two links below his campaign website.
That sounds suspiciously like a thesaurus.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
There's absolutely no reason to pick on one side or the other
I take your point about the Democrats being far from clean. But the basic reality right now is that the Republicans are in power, and have been, solidly so, for the last four years. It's therefore to be expected that their actions would receive closer scrutiny and criticism.
Tweet, tweet.
Uh, sorry to rain on your parade guys, but I work in Internet marketing and "google bombing" already is a widely used tactic. You just don't hear much about it because the less people that know, the better it works.
*I'm at work, trying to be brief and its been awhile since I've read MacIntyre, so if it is a bit jumbled, lacks depth and perhaps gets somethings wrong, it is certainly unintentional*
While reading the comments, I am reminded of some of Alaisdair MacIntyre's thoughts, primarily in After Virtue but also in some of his later works.
Insofar as the 'bias', 'neutrality' and 'objectivity' arguments go, as MacIntyre understands it, what there are are methods of understanding: rationalities. What modernity lacks is any shared rationality along whose lines we can argue and hope to come to a conclusion. While we still have the notion of reason as such, what we currently have, for the most part, are battling remenants of rationalities.
One time a group will use a utilitarian argument, another time a Kantian one and so on. The opposing group will throw out a Thomistic counter-argument, a utilitarian counter to the Kantian and so on; there is no method to discover the answer, just ways to arrive at conclusions already reached. As there is no way to come to a conclusion, mostly people just scream at each other, otherwise it is attempting manipulation, as is the case here with Google bombing. The hypocrisy comes in when one group cares about something an opponent did, but dismisses it when one of their own does the same.
There is no such thing as a neutral point of view; everyone sees things through their particular point of view. But that does not render all points of view equally valid, but you do have to have someplace from which to begin. What a rationality, in MacIntyre's view, aims at is to become fully adequate to its object, thus to represent the world in thought as it is in actuality. As new problems appear, the particular form of rationality shows itself by its adequacy in handling the problem.
As we have accepted that there is such a thing as being neutral, that which are perceived as deviating are labled bias. But the differing understandings are each rival claims to being the true and neutral point of view, thus anything which deviates is bias.
Perhaps it is simply time to admit that there is no such thing as the neutral point of view which is to say that the Enlightenment erred in that regard. Each rival perspective would then be able to pursue its own premises in the way that is most internally coherent with each having its own institutions and whatnot. Maybe someone could actually make some progress rationally rather than the dominant current method, manipulatively.
"Limbaugh is a republican fanboy, not a conservative; same with Bush."
Are things really made so much easier when you make up political definitions all by yourself, on the fly?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Yeah, and modern conservatives thankfully only engage in massive deficet spending for really important purposes, like getting American soldiers killed for obscure reasons in bizarre military adventures.
(Can you guys like check the calendar or something? It's not 1980 any more. Time for some new rhetoric.)
Why Democrats do something unconvential, why is it called a "new campaign tactic", but if Republicans do it, it's called a "dirty trick"?
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
This will backfire in a classical way, I assure you. For instance, take the example provided: most reasonable people (including many an ethnic and racial minority) support racial profiling. I know of quite a few black, Indian, Arabic and yes, even Muslim people who support racial (or probably more accurately, "threat vector") profiling.
Does it make any sense to pull over Grandma Smith - or even Grandma Hadjij - when 100% of the known terrorists have been Muslim males, and predominantly black or arabic? No, it does not. I'm not saying don't look at the 6'2" caucasian guy with a skowl, I'm saying don't intentionally avoid the 6'2" Indian with a skowl (and I've seen this happen more than once - to a friend) in preference of the 65-year-old grandpa with a WWII battleship ballcap on. Britian puts us to shame in this regard.
This is just one of the many ways in which those on the Democrat side of things are detatched from most people. Not that the Republicans are terribly in touch with what people want, either, mind you.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
... they are linking the candidate's OWN NAME to a news article about the candidate. Therefore people who are searching for information about the candidate are more likely to read the targeted article. It's simple and not at all misleading.
Actually, it's simple and VERY misleading: It's a classic propaganda technique.
While "The Big Lie" gets all the press these days, more effecitve techniques involve manipulation of perceived ratios. Omission or deemphasis of stories about events contrary to the message, repeated, emphasized, trumpeting of every event, no matter how rare, that supports the message.
(Childhood deaths from X in the home may be orders of magnitude less likely than deaths from tricycle tipovers, falling into swimming pools, or drowning in buckets of water. But splash stories of "child killed by X" on the front page every time it happens while reporting nothing about deaths by the others (or of kids' lives saved by use of an X), and pretty soon the man in the street thinks X is the major cause of childhood death.)
It's the same effect as a researcher "cherry-picking" his data - except the media do the cherry-picking for the readers/viewers.
This is a conscious effort to do exactly that to the Google search results for the candidates they oppose: Bring every bad story to the front search pages, push the good ones down to lower rank, to deliberately create a false impression.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"My Direct Democracy, a liberal group blog, is trying out a new campaign tactic [...]"
(my bolding)
This isn't new. It was done by right-wing bloggers to John Kerry in 2004. And more power to them - they saw the possibilities in new technology and they used it. The folks at MyDD even give the right credit for the idea.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
So why did the Clinton government shrink the beauracracy, and the Bush government enlarge it? Is the DH not part of the government, and therefore not contribute to bigness? Why do Republicans favour military spending to create jobs for the lower class? Is that not a way of redistributing wealth from the affluent to people that would be otherwise unemployed? I suppose the GOP are actually the "modern liberals" of which you speak?
If you use the search term "failure," then our current president's biography will be the first result you see. I know this isn't the same as searching for "George W. Bush" (which brings up whitehouse.gov up as the first result), but it still shows that this sort of tactic has probably been performed in the past many times. It's just finally coming to light now.
You know I'd say the same thing about current politicians checking the calendar.... its not the 1950s :) Democrats because they enjoy spreading a minor form of communism (let's help the working class!). And Republicans for those outstanding "conservative" values (with the woman in the home taking care of the kids).
I agree on the bizarre military adventures though; the high command seems to be butting heads with the government... much like the Vietnam war. But you failed to mention that the lefties also voted for it all too; with the same intelligence information presented to the other side (however flawed it might have been); you can't blame that on one side of Congress.
I don't think its time for new rhetoric (at least what I said anyway). This country isn't bad and I really love it; its just got some flaws in it. Flaws that can be fixed, however. But, nicely demonstrated by yourself, we like to shift blame for our problems onto someone without taking at least some responsibility for ourselves.
This came out of a contest Dan Savage held in his column Savage Love, to find a gay-sex-related definition for "santorum." This was in response to Sen. Rick Santorum's comments several times that homosexuallity is a deviant behavior on par with pedophaelia.
The one they came up with truly nasty, but, apparently, a concept just oozing with a dark need for its own word.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Republicans, favouring small business?! That's appallingly ludicrous. They favour BIG business. Notice how they've supported corporate consolidation at every turn? Notice how they've opposed free trade at every turn? Notice how taxes for small businesses and the lower classes (who spend money at local small businesses) haven't changed?
Conservatives support small business. Conservatives favour trade. Conservatives cut taxes. Republicans do exactly the opposite. Face it -- Republicans are fascists, Democrats are ... something (I'm not quite sure what, but it sure ain't liberal OR conservative). Any conservative who votes for the republicans is too stupid to qualify as an adult as is any liberal who votes democrat. They may talk the talk, but they certainly don't walk the walk. Neither party does anything even remotely liberal OR conservative. Neither party is increasing freedom and human dignity (the traditional liberal values), and neither party is trying to reduce government meddling in peoples' lives (the traditional conservative values). Both meddle, interfere, and hinder. Both treat people like scum.
Let's summarize:
If you vote Republican, you are a drooling retard. If you vote Democrat, you are a drooling retard. In fact, if you vote for anyone that doesn't actually live up to the values they endorse, you need to be sent to live in the schizo ward of a psych hospital for a while to teach you value of rational thought.
Quick Sir! This way before they eat your brain! *points at exit*
To me conservatives are people like Tom Jefferson, John Kenedy, Ron Reagan; liberals are guys like Ted Kenedy, Billy Carter, Hillery Clinton and both Bushes. Real conservatives want organizations whether governmental, religious, business or socal to be as small and powerless as possible so they'll have as little influence as possible on the individuals. Liberals on the other hand want powerfull centralized organisations and to have all privelages and rights assigned by that organisation. Liberals want to control society and want all individuals to feel obligated to the organisation. Liberals are collectivists and conservatives are individualists.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"Real conservatives [Tom Jefferson, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan] want organizations whether governmental, religious, business or social to be as small and powerless as possible so they'll have as little influence as possible on the individuals"
I'll leave out "Tom" due to the strong "apples and oranges" of comparing his situation to modern or recent times. Kennedy? He was unabashed about government having (in his general wording) an increasing role is improving the lives of Americans. He certainly did not want it to be "small and powerless". Reagan? Regardless of his words, the federal government grew steadily on his watch and with his encouragement. Ronald Reagan also openly welcomed both the allliance and the growth of the Christian Coalition/Falwell types, which directly contradicts "making religious organizations as small and powerless as possible". That makes those two not very close to your own definition of "conservative"."
Where were you when the voynix came?