Google's Gatekeepers

theodp writes "With control of 63% of the world's Internet searches, as well as ownership of YouTube, the NY Times reports that Google is the most powerful and protean of the Internet gatekeepers, exerting enormous influence over who can find an audience on the Web around the world. Deciding what controversial material does and doesn't appear on the local search engines Google maintains in many countries — as well as on Google.com, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut — falls on the shoulders of Nicole Wong and her colleagues, who have arguably been given more influence over online expression than anyone else on the planet. Some find Google's gatekeeper role worrisome: 'If your whole game is to increase market share,' says Lawrence Lessig, 'it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.'"

Comments

crossing lines

[Baldur_of_Asgard]

How would 90% of the people know whether this site crosses any lines, if their searches - which they believe are exhaustive - simply skip over relevant matter?

Why doesn't google censor white supremacy - or even black supremacy - sites? 90% of Americans would probably think that those sites cross a line, too, but fortunately most would oppose de-listing these sites, because they want people to see these people as the slime they are.

There's no need to censor unattractive ideologies. The best response to white supremacy speech or Neo-Nazi speech is to tell the truth about these ideologies and let everyone see it and its consequences. I think there are a lot of people who want to censor sites like annabelleigh.net because they know that if the public ever learned the truth, they would realize that they have been lied to by government and the media and a good deal of "charitable" organizations - all out to make a buck. The child abuse industry makes its money off the misery of children by selling unnecessary psychological counseling, by getting government funding for more police and social workers to either return child refugees to harmful home environments or to kidnap children from loving homes, gets government or "charitable" funding to relocate children - who often don't want to be relocated - to group homes or "boot camps" or into any number of torture regimes, and of course gets government funding for more prisons and prison guards. There are a LOT of people with financial interests in making sure that the truth is not known, and in repressing child lovers who are actually interested in what children want, rather than in imposing their will on children.

The "guardians" don't have to censor bad ideas - better to let them disintegrate in the sunlight. They only need to censor good ideas that threaten their own grip on power. That's what is happening here.

So are you a peadophile, or do you bait them?

[Nick Ives]

Those are the only two groups posting at that site. From the content of your post I'd hazard you're a paedophile.