Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.