Slashdot Mirror
Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of the country's most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of censorship-seeking celebrities includes judges, public officials, models and actors, as well as the world-cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona. Try it yourself — compare the results for a Yahoo! Argentina search for Diego Maradona (0 results) to a search at Yahoo! Mexico and Google Argentina (both with millions of results)."
Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet
Tomorrow:
Slashdot Viewership Disappears Editors From Headlines
when did the translators for zero wing start editing for slashdot?
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
It's not that easy. Google has thousands of operatives whose only job is to make sure people only use the Google authorized for their location. The consequences of straying from your designated Google are swift and severe.
I was talking to a friend on the phone when we started talking about why Google would have all of these different pages for different countries, and we couldn't think of why. So, my friend decides to try a search result on Google US and then on Google Australia just to see if anything was different. He had barely hit enter on the Google Australia search when suddenly I heard glass breaking and what sounded like helicopters over the phone. My friend screamed, and the line went dead. No one has heard from him since.
I tried to do some investigating of my own, and hit Google Mexico from an Internet cafe. Luckily, when the Google operatives burst through the front windows and started shooting the place up, I was able to escape through the back door. They were able to follow me with Google Earth, but I managed to give them the slip when I accidentally fell through an open manhole.
I've been living in the sewers under the city ever since that day. I haven't dared try to contact anyone, for fear Google would find me. This is the first time I've even dared to try to connect to the 'net, and I can't stay long.
Wait, I hear footsteps...
Oh shit, they're here! WARN THE OTHE^&^4wg4$^
NO CARRIER
Can't click on the " Yahoo! Mexico" or "Google Argentina" links on the front page for some reason.
Me thinks it's the stupid CSS or layout of the (useless) tags that messes things up.
Perhaps they've solved our problem of over-populated web-hits on our idiotic, media-seeking celebrities up here.
If I recall correctly, Jon Swift purported that Irish babies would go a long way to feeding the impoverished English public.
If anyone from Google or Yahoo! in general is reading, could we add Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears and the other paparazzi-fodder to that list for the search sites world-wide? I'm not suggesting that eating their babies would be a good idea, but I'm positive eating up their web-hits and searches would go a long way to feeding the positive intelligence of not only the English public, but the world.
Think of it as doing your part to solve the (intellectual) hunger problems of the world. Onemillionactsofgreen.com would then meet their quota in... oh, about 30 minutes or so?!
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
Oh, Argentina! Don't you search for me.
Try searching for 'marad0na' - I'm guessing that people will start to use alternate spellings to bypass the filters... :-)
coding is life
Consider that Argentina has a very severe problem with high-profile Argentinians and their families being kidnapped and held for ransom.
Perhaps reading the comments above yours where the usage of the word "disappear" is explained in this context (with links to boot) would help you grasp why it was done. Reading prior to commenting is always nice. Additionally Slashdot is not simply geared for one nation or another's sensitivities to individual words (and connotations in this case) so while it might be upsetting beyond all measure to you to compare the disappearance of Google results to a local usage of the word with different conotations it is also irrelevant to Slashdot as a whole. If they were to ensure that every noun or verb in a Slashdot article couldn't possibly offend anyone anywhere they would never publish a thing. Feel free to submit your own articles with better words if you think that you have them. Otherwise perhaps you should avoid Slashdot's "Sensationalist, hatchet journalism" altogether and simple go elsewhere? It is still a free internet (at least outside of Argentina, China, and Iran). "Next" indeed sir.
Laborare Est Orare
Hello Mr. AC, how is following an immoral law not evil?
everything in moderation
You can run, but you cannot escape :-)
We may all live on the same planet, but we're not all allowed to receive the same information :D Yay for not all humans being equal according to where we were born and raised!
You should have posted as AC
AC=Anonymous Corpse?
Of course "moral" and "evil" aren't the same. If anything, they're close to opposites. I never claimed otherwise -- what an odd thing for you to say. Did you reply to the correct post?
As overused as "nuance" is thanks to this election season, perhaps you could cultivate enough nuance yourself to understand that what is "evil" or "moral" is subjective, and not really something that one could say is "stupid and wrong" as you so pompously did?
everything in moderation
You can run, but you cannot escape :-)
Dammit! Magic quotes!
He is now.
Actually, this isn't true... Search "mardona" in ar.search.yahoo.com, and it says, "Hemos incluido los resultados para maradona" or, "We have included the results for Maradona." Oops. They left a back door.
It's a dark joke on the thousands of people who "disappeared" during the late great dictatorship.
Infuriate left and right
I decided to see if I could check the same filtering mechanism with Canada and the US. The only obvious thing that struck me to search for is 'lolicon', since I'm pretty sure it's illegal in Canada but not the states.
The US results (1,350,000 results)
The Canadian results (1,230,000)
Or am I missing some incredibly obvious other reason that these results are different?
"In the case of forced disappearance the word disappear, which is properly an intransitive verb, becomes transitive."
Or you know you could just laugh at the joke, because it sounds like the engrish mistranslations.
Even if it is the correct usage.
Don't forget
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We donâ(TM)t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
oops
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Search for mardona
Not content with simply not RTFA, slashdotters have given up on commenting on the article, prefering instead to comment on the grammar and wording of the headline.
I'm sure that someone will point out the irony of me commenting about people not commenting on TFA any second now.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
Well, considering they could easily avoid doing so by just not having any operations in that jurisdiction, and in fact they probably don't, and seem to have cooperated with this just for the sheer glee of censorship, yeah, I'd say that's pretty fucking evil.
Just search on Cocaine. Maradona's bound to turn up.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I just looked on Google maps, and I absolutely can't find it...
You should see someone about that anger issue. I said that "moral" is not "evil" which is obvious. But that doesn't mean than "immoral" isn't similar to "evil." Which was my point. That you missed. Because the froth from your mouth and the pounding of your fists and the steam from your nose generated by yout impotent rage blinded you.
Better luck next time!
everything in moderation
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
--Dylan Thomas
>>> OED 3. trans. To cause to disappear.
OED gives one single example of such usage,
a grammar-impaired chemist A.D. 1897.
'disappear' is transitiv in all English dictionaries for everyday usage.
An example of Google's filtering in Argentina can be seen by searching for "susana gimenez sexshop" which will result in three links at the bottom of the page to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse -- a project that tracks these incidents and seeks to inform users of their rights.
On Google.com.ar:
Resultados 1 - 10 de aproximadamente 2.700 de susana gimenez sexshop. (0,06 segundos)
On Google.com (through US Proxy):
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,670 for susana gimenez sexshop. (0.11 seconds)
And about the same sites/news on both..
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett