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Blogger Launches 'Google Bomb' At McCain
hhavensteincw writes "A liberal blogger has launched a 'Google bomb' project aimed at boosting Google search results for nine news articles showing Sen. John McCain in a negative light. The Computerworld article notes: 'Chris Bowers, managing editor of the progressive blog OpenLeft, is launching the Google bombs by encouraging bloggers to embed Web links to the nine news stories about McCain in their blogs, which helps raise their ranking in Google search results. Bowers is reprising a similar Google bombing effort he undertook in 2006 against 52 different congressional candidates. "Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there," Bowers said.'"
I'm from Finland and on that chart at coordinates -8, -8... As a foreigner following the presidential campaigns I must agree with your analysis: neither of the major candidates are where I stand.
However, in U.S., the president has too much influence over the political discussion; in Finland she's just a figurehead with some powers in foreign affairs.
As it is now, if I were U.S. citizen, I'd gladly vote for the lesser evil, or Obama. I don't think he could change much, or would want to, but it is a step in the right direction anyway.
Huh? It's hardly "poison" to tell the truth.
They're Google-bombing. That means they've chosen several informative articles and are working to make them the top search results when one searches for "McCain". It does not change anything about what is accessible. The pro-McCain sites will still be there, on the interbutts, waiting for you to sign on.
I thought Google had put in place controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing from tainting search results. Even if he does get a lot of people linking, it seems like Google's own corrective algorithms would prevent it from really making an impact on search results.
It might be interesting to see what degree other search engines end up being affected as well, as a study in how manipulatable the various engines are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The unfortunate side of all this, all of these talk machines, including Boortz, Rush, Hannity, etc will be repeating, over and over, about how this is a fine example of leftist propoganda, the liberal conspiracy, etc.
Don't get me wrong. I think Bill Maher and the rest of the leftist paid-to-talk types are complete twits as well. Nothing like seeing someone from either side ignorantly pressing points only for the sake of them being right, left, or endlessly playing devil's advocate.
Too bad there isn't a fiscal conservative, socially liberal person to vote for. Too bad there isn't a news network without slant anymore. I recognize slant was always there, but CNN learned a little from Fox's ratings and starts coming across as ridiculously liberal when elections near.
Not all of us care about democracy - I'd rather have a meritocracy than a democracy.
The fact that the vote of someone who dropped out of highschool and became a bum is equal to someone who has a PhD in Biology is laughable. Even worse is the fact that the votes of the former have equal say in government policies in biology.
Just how much does a plumber really know about biology, or economics, to be part of the decision making process? Just how much does religion matter in making environmental policies that are for the good of the planet's ecosystems?
Democracy as it exists today is a sham - it does nothing more than push forth mediocrity. Not everyone should be part of the decision making process, and even then, not everyone should be a part of *every* decision making process.
You don't solicit the opinions of plumbers and druggies when your child is sick, do you? Then why do you let the votes of these people matter when it comes to legislating medical policies?
How is this 'typical of the obama campaign'... or insightful for that matter?
Look at this;
This is a list of crap email received on Obama. Note the themes and quantity of emails... Really a bit telling to the mentallity of the people sending them out, as well as the people who forward them on and on.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp
Now; Here's the same for McCain.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/mccain.asp
That said, I'm more then a little pissed at this idiot for the google bomb. These were funny once, but trying to manipulate politcs with them isn't. I view the 'good guys' as being above this.
That said however, I'm at the point where I'd sacrifice some of my personal views on that to prevent what happened in 2000, and then 2004. If that's the only way to get the idiot vote, go for it... because at this point the idiot vote has to be 50%
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Whitewater was nothing. The GOP attack machine tried and tried but found nothing there, finally having to turn to Clinton's sex life to secure the impeachment they wanted.
(Of course, Clinton had committed all sort of impeachable offenses against the Constitution. But since they were the same sort that GOP presidents had committed - not surprising, given Clinton's conservative heart - there was fat chance of those being used against him.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Republicans aren't able to run on facts and policy so they run on identity and process.
And that differs from the Democrats how?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Big picture, on a global scale, that's true: politics have been getting steadily more liberal ever since the Middle Ages, and so those who hold to political views acquired in their youth always seem more conservative as they age. The interesting thing is that in American politics over the last couple of generations or so, the opposite is true. Eisenhower would be considered a mainstream Democrat these days, while Nixon, seen at the time as representing the hard right, would today be a "Blue Dog" Democrat or maybe a "RINO" Republican. Conversely, both Clintons, and Obama, support policies largely in accord with the Republican party of Eisenhower's day. Carter is remembered today as an extreme leftist, but by the standards of the day, he was actually seen as a solidly conservative Democrat. Even Saint Reagan, no matter how much today's Republicans venerate him, would be considered suspiciously leftish by modern Republicans if he were a new candidate running for office today.
It's a blip, of course, kind of like in the stock market. In the very long term, stocks always go up. But they do so on a jagged line, and those downward dips sure can make a lot of people's lives miserable.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is just another example of the socialistic ideologies that have taken over the democratic party. This sounds similar to information control, like that which is seen in North Korea and China.
I also like the part where Bowers says there's no bias, but yet only focuses on the negatives of McCain. If he's unbiased, then an anti-Obama Google bomb will be announced in the coming week. Yeah right.
CAPTCHA: unified
I have to say that this joke is NOT funny. Finally we have an election where candidates from both parties do not generate a lot of negative feelings from the general populace. This hasn't been happening for a very long while.
I'll even go as far as to say that the United States of America will be better off in any of the two possible outcomes.
It's typical of the obama campaign in that they consistently tout the negatives of their opponents (either directly, or through surrogates) while simultaneously denigrating their opponents for being negative whether they are or not. obama is not about "change", he is about perception. That is what is "typical" about this.
If you would sacrifice your beliefs to make something happen that isn't quite what you believe in, then again you get the leader you deserve. Hold them all accountable or hold none. Otherwise, you are a tool for folks like obama and bush.
Politics aside, I agree with everything you just said.
I can see this backfiring on him though. What happens when a search for John McCain starts turning up a story about how one side is attempting a political smear as the number one result. I mean it would sort of make McCain the underdog and create some sympathy towards him along with making some potential Obama voters question why they had to resort to that type of tactic.
Of course some 527 group could just buy an advertising spot and put the story there on any McCain search from a common search engine. All the search engines list the advertisements at the top so it would be the first result. The good thing about it is that they could link to all the sites promoting the google bomb efforts to wow any undecided voter into thinking Obama has something to hid if they had to resort to something like this.
It's true that this could backfire, but it could also cause a massive arms race. If politics weren't messy and dirty enough already, imagine if both campaigns were spending massive amounts of time and energy to control the other side's Google results. McCain supporters would link to dirty articles about Obama, Obama supporters would link to dirty articles about McCain, and the whole Internet would be filled with even more political links than it already is.
Heck, a really smart campaigner would just outsource the whole thing to India and have thousands of staffers constantly building links to positive and negative results.
Politics might be the one thing strong enough to overcome all of Google's attempts to stop Googlebombs.
In 2000, yes, but not in 2004.
In 2004, despite those of us who supported him earlier urging him not to, McCain abandoned his previous policies and swung in line solidly behind Bush.
He has been there ever since.
At the time, I suggested that he'd probably made some kind of deal with the Republican central committee that he'll support Bush then and they'll make sure he's the nominee in 2008.
Nothing I've seen since has convinced me otherwise.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
The right wing conservatives manipulate the public view using Fox news and their method of twisting and distorting facts, and informing the viewers with their personal 'paid for' opinions.
[sarcasm]What!?!? You mean conservatives have a whole *one* network that doesn't act like they're incapable of being non-evil in anything they say or do!?!? How can the liberal left ever expect to convince anyone of their views with such uneven, unfair odds?
After all, all the poor under-represented-by-media Democrats/liberals/leftists have are ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, NYT, along with most other print, broadcast, and electronic media on their side.
With such uneven odds, I can understand why there's been talk of reviving the Fairness Doctrine.[/sarcasm]
As to the Google-bombing, I see posts here talking about how the Republicans/conservatives have played some political media "dirty tricks" in the past and how that is justification for "preemptive/retaliatory strikes" like this one. So, I guess dirty tricks are OK as long as they're done by the side with the "correct" views?
The ends justifying the means, and stooping as low as your opponents has never been the way to achieving anything good, as shown repeatedly through history. If your tactics are no better than the other sides' are, what exactly is the difference in the end?
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Too bad there isn't a fiscal conservative, socially liberal person to vote for.
Give up the dream of a socially liberal and fiscally conservative policy. Such a policy can't exist because it requires contradictory axioms.
Socially liberal means a lot of things that each take real money to accomplish: decent public primary and secondary schools, decent public universities, money for research even into things with no immediate commercial benefit, workplace safety, unemployment insurance, social security insurance, food stamps, environmental regulations enforcement, and enforcement of civil rights at the federal level, to name just a few liberal programs that distinguish today's America from America circa 1890. This is the stuff that a fiscal conservative is willing to eliminate first in order to keep funding military spending. But without full support of all of this you don't get a social liberal in office, you get someone who is sad that life isn't fair for the bottom 95% of the population but has no money with which to improve things. In other words, you get a "compassionate conservative".
I also have to wonder how many of those Obama-bashing emails were sent out by Hillary supporters.
I'm a little fed up with the whole thing - here we are are again with no choices - only the lesser of 2 evils - to vote for in the presidential race. I think the idiot vote will be well over 50% this year, because only an idiot would vote for either one of these globalist elite career politicians.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You already posted in this article with three different accounts. Would it bee too much to ask to only use one? Is it really that difficult to make your point without pretending you're multiple people? Why do you insist on gaming Slashdot this way?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
That being said, he scares me as a presidential candidate. The same drive and determination that has brought him through horrific times that most of us can't even imagine is the same drive that often gets him in trouble. He'll get an idea in his head, then he will bullishly run it through to conclusion. The problem is, his facts may be incomplete, making for some rather... undesirable outcomes.
That's my 2 cents, anyway. Take it for what it's worth.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Apparently he's miffed that we didn't all jump up and thank him for his stunt. I have zero respect for zealots like this guy, regardless of whether they are left or right. It's not because I disagree with his views (I do, but I can live with that), it's because there's just no reasoning with people like this. He's smarter than everyone else, so he's going to tell us all how to think by skewing the information we receive. Our country's politics have been poisoned by weasels like this. I hereby find him guilty of being a jerk, and sentence him to eternity handcuffed to Karl Rove. Oh yeah , and his internet access has been revoked, or at least restricted to something to help him with his manners.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
The other things you mentioned about Conservatives - smaller government, originalist intent to the constitution, reduced spending - check.
But you CANNOT be a conservative, look at the big picture in the middle east, and be against the chance to have a stabilizing influence there (stable Iraq government with perhaps some US presence as in Germany or Japan). You might say we are spending a ton of money now, but if the middle east devolves into chaos we will all pay a far higher price - in capital and human suffering - than we are today.
To shorten that, I cannot imagine you could be a conservative and take only short-sighted views that may in the end result in greater impacts on your economy than if you had not acted.
As a Libertarian as much as a conservative, I also take the view that a proper role of government is rather like that of the individual, with the world being a small neighborhood. A libertarian would rather neighbors help each other - well on the world stage, nations are neighbors and we are all too connected to sit idly by while governments treat whole groups of citizens unjustly.
Governments should stay out of the affairs of the populace where possible. But they should also try to ensure that OTHER governments can be held away from the affairs of individuals as well.
You may not believe that costs now are lower than what we would face later, and that is a fine point to argue. But you cannot simply dismiss someone who disagrees with you as not being conservative because they disagree with a singular premise of your own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They stuff the ballots, now they're stuffing the search results. And the difference?