TV Tropes Self-Censoring Under Google Pressure

mvdwege writes "The popular wiki TV Tropes, a site dedicated to the discussion of various tropes, clichés and other common devices in fiction has suddenly decided to put various of its pages behind a 'possibly family-unsafe' content warning, apparently due to pressure by Google withdrawing its ads. What puzzles me most is the content that is put behind this warning. TV Tropes features no explicit sexual content, and no explicit violence. It does of course discuss these things, as is its remit, but without actual explicit depictions. In fact, something as relatively innocuous as children being raised by two females, whatever the reason are put behind the content warning, even if the page itself doesn't take a stand on the issue, merely satisfying itself by describing the occurence of this in fiction."

Comments

Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

Doing evil that doesn't look evil.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the knee-jerk response here is to complain about something, but what, seriously, is so bad about warning people that something "may be less family friendly"? Just click "yes" and get on with your life.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

The problem being that Google, using it's ad-dollars, is forcing a site that is completely devoid of anything remotely family un-safe to make a change in the way it shows its content.

Re:Google

[houstonbofh]

What is the problem? Just open the site with a disclaimer, "This site is not filtered for children or idiots. Enter at your own risk." Now everyone is happy.

Re:Google

[Xaositecte]

But the content itself hasn't actually changed!

Re:Google

[hedwards]

This is precisely why the DoJ is supposed to screen mergers and say no when it would result in insufficient competition. Had the DoJ said no to Google buying Doubleclick, it's much less likely that this would've happened as Google wouldn't be controlling most of the entire market.

Re:Google

[hpoul]

the whole web is unfiltered (or should be), so why would anyone need a disclaimer for every site anyway..

(if parents want to "protect" their children - it probably makes sense up till a certain age, simply white-list the pages you want them to see.. that's the only way it can possibly work..)

Re:Google

[IgnitusBoyone]

While Censorship and restraint are very different issues. One I wish Wikipedia would learn when clicking on various biology articles. Oh I wonder what that illness is (MY EYES!!). I do find it odd that a site like TV tropes which has no offensive images (that I know of) could run in to trouble on review based off a few counter culture tropes.

Hell even the articles that talk about adult issues are all extremely tame when you think about it compared to the stuff you find on forums. I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewer stumbled on to a mischievous edit or they just got red flag in general for having completely anom edits.

I don't think they should have trouble with the appeal process.

Re:Google

[Daniel_Staal]

Except the idiots who don't realize they are idiots.

Unfortunately, they have way to much say.

Re:Google

[cheekyjohnson]

"if parents want to "protect" their children"

Protect in this sense of course means "indoctrinate." I don't see the problem with sexual/violent content at all. There's nothing to protect them from. A person who is normal to begin with doesn't magically become a murderer/rapist when they view content.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? It's a contract agreement with Google, to receive advertising revenue, for free. Google has no moral imperative to not do anything here. And in return they ask that you don't tarnish Google's name... which is by no means an unreasonable request.

You haven't read much of TVTropes if you think it is "family safe" (whatever the fuck that means). The referenced TVTropes page is mild by comparison to the other pages, but even it is borderline once you include the examples' comments. And for some reason, parents in the U.S. usually see anime (even clothed anime as in the article's picture) as provocative or disturbing.

Re:Google

[thehostiles]

some of the discussion threads of such articles function exactly like forums.
This troper doesn't believe a word of most of what is said in such discussion pages, but it thinks that TVTropes does have its unsavory bits. However, this troper also believes that Google's actions are an unjust and should be punished.

Re:Google

[tverbeek]

It's a de facto near-monopoly all over again, just like Microsoft with IE and Office. I don't think it's necessarily the result of Google being Evil, but when a site's choice of sponsorship is Google or Ohfuckwhatdowedonow, there's a serious problem with the online advertising market.

Re:Google

[ikkonoishi]

Google does not run ads on NSFW pages. It violates their TOS. People were editing in NSFW content on some pages, and one of the auditors at Google caught it. Now TVTropes has to make sure that any pages that may have NSFW content do not run Google ads.

Re:Google

[hardboiled.tequila]

"Doing evil without being evil."

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

But the content itself hasn't actually changed!

The technical term for this kind of thing is "Chilling Effect". It's actually a term of art.

It's one reason why there's such a danger in any single company getting as big, and as ubiquitous as Google has become. And unfortunately, there is no mechanism of the "free market" which deals with this. It's one reason (among many) that the free market will always end up being "un-free". A further problem is that there will seldom be a point at which you can say, "There! Now it has become a danger."

There probably was a point somewhere between Google being a search engine and Google being an advertising agency and Google being an ISP, and Google having trucks with cameras and wi-fi sniffers driving down every street in the world, where it crossed the line.

Since the Justice Department has been asleep at the wheel for the past several decades, Google will not be broken up as it should be. It will become both "too big to fail" and "big enough to fuck everything up".

Re:Google

[bonch]

And yet people will continue to defend this company. Google has been guilty of way more stupid bullshit in the last few years than Microsoft, which has been a harmless, slow-moving relic since the antitrust trial a decade ago. I'd love to see how people would react if Steve Ballmer said that only criminals care about privacy.

Re:Google

[Your.Master]

It's not for free -- they have to include Google content and follow rules about how it displays, and now the terms seem to be changing out from under them to also have to hide their own content behind an annoying, user-unfriendly click-through.

Basically the problem is that Google is wielding an advertising monopoly to dictate the business terms of its suppliers (supplying eyeballs and data). That tends to be controversial -- sure, we're mostly okay if they refuse to do business with explicitly pro-slavery organizations, but as you back off into grey areas more and more people's hackles start to rise. This particular case smells like a light form of censorship, which is particularly unpopular on slashdot.

I don't think this incident is a huge deal, though I do find it frustrating that TV Tropes will be a little harder to use the next time I decide to lose myself in its pages for a while. And to be clear, I don't think Sergei Brin is sitting atop a dark tower laughing maniacally and screaming "by the power of this monopoly SOON ALL WILL BE UNDER MY CONTROL". It's merely that relatively innocent actions, when backed up by an effective monopoly, have profound effects.

That suggests a question -- does Google have an advertising monopoly? It's a tough question. French courts have ruled that they are (I'd paste a link but Chrome has had problems pasting into slashdot these days -- use Google :) to find a court ruling from France on July 2). But they do have one competitor, though it's about a quarter the size of Google: Microsoft. That doesn't sit well with a large portion of slashdotters either so there's really no remaining alternative.

Re:Google

[gutnor]

It is not a disclaimer to warn idiot, it is a disclaimer to please their main source of revenue: Google.

Had google asked them to put a banner like "reading this website gives you Cancer", they would have had no other choice.

Re:Google

[dfenstrate]

On the flip side, there are plenty of mediocre people who are enamored with their supposed intellect. They have way too much say as well.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

And until Google's ad platform takes an anticompetitive turn, they are free to abuse their 'monopoly' all they wish. People have no inherent right to use Google's web services. I absolutely hate people who look at a successful product, grow to depend on it, and think its success should be a valid reason to impose regulations, or that it should enter public ownership. People express the same sentiment about Google Search, that Google has overstepped their bounds, and that its technologies should be disseminated to public domain. This "I have a birth-given right to utilize AdSense without being dictated terms" argument is a tired old retread of the same exact selfish tendencies.

Re:Google

[Herrieman]

It is even worse: description of companies in Google Places cannot use certain words anymore (I perform penetration tests and 'penetration' is now in that list of forbidden words). Crazy enough 'penetration' is allowed as Adword!

See http://blog.astyran.sg/2010/11/google-term-penetration-is-not-allowed.html.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the problem with sexual/violent content at all. There's nothing to protect them from.

Bullshit. Children learn by imitating. Sure most children imitate _mainly_ their parents, but they still do imitate others. You think children grow up fully domesticated? Yes that's what it's all about - human domestication. Just like dogs aren't born knowing where to poop or whether it's ok to bite the couch or the neighbour's kids, they all have to be domesticated, so that they can live reasonably OK lives in modern society.

Speaking as someone who has been at the wrong end from OTHER PEOPLE'S kids who have clearly watched too much Power Rangers. IMO kids watching Superman is better than kids watching Power Rangers, because Superman doesn't tend to do as much kicking and punching as a Power Ranger. Sure shoot those eye-beams at me kid, I'll pretend to get zapped.

Similarly if the kids are going to end up in a society where humping people on impulse is frowned on "in real life", then yes, it would help if they didn't see that much of it and so are less likely to try it on random adults (who might also get in big trouble as a result).

Re:Google

[phantomfive]

Honestly, is there any other kind of idiot? Be careful how much you insult them; are you so sure you aren't one? Like Socrates said, "be more aware of the man who thinks he is wise than the man who thinks he is a fool." OK he didn't say that exactly, but close.

Re:Google

[pugugly]

Umm. A 'market', of any type, depends on a high degree of transparency and the ability to exchange one provider of a good or service for another; It may not be *fair* that a sufficient level of success creates the very domination of a market that distorts these, but I am only aware of Rand acolytes willing to staunchly deny this as a matter of course - even most libertarians I know will grant that.

When a single entity dominates the market, that transparency and capacity to contract as equals disappears - of *course* success is a valid reason to regulate. In this case, yes, Google's domination of the market allows them to deliver ad rates well above that of any competitor and still gain a profit, and that in turn means that Google's definition of family friendly can have a chilling effect regardless of whether that definition is reflective of society.

Is such regulation needed here? I don't know - but although TV Tropes is hardly a paragon of virtue, looking at it comparatively to the Internet at large, even dismissing the explicitly erotic, they are hardly anyone's definition of obscene, and yet a complaint to Google could result in a unilateral suspension of services on which they had come to depend, without warning or an attempt to correct the issue from both sides.

And let us be clear here - this was an exchange of goods and services - Google provided the ads, TV Tropes provided the space - and yet the suspension *was* initiated unilaterally and without warning or even complaint to the offending partner. This does not describe a 'typical' relationship of equals under contact law.

Pug

Re:Google

[victorhooi]

heya,

You're either very, very sheltered from the Internet, or you've never actually had any contact with kids...

There's a lot of weird stuff on the internet. No, I mean, seriously wacko stuff. In the public limelight, there's already goatse, and that 2girls and a cup thingy. Even movies like The Human Centipede are pretty wacked. Or stuff like Saw. Nothing I've mentioned here is particularly hard to find, and in fact is commonly mentioned on forums like Slashdot (would you regard Slashdot as not family friendly?), 4chan, or heck, a Google search will bring it back.

Is that the sort of thing you want your kids seeing?

Look hard enough, and there is much worse. Either very graphic violence, that would make even adults like us cringe/throw up, or weird kinky deviant s*xual stuff.

It's got nothing to do with indoctrination, it's got to do with not coming home and seeing your kids crying, or vomiting up their dinner because they saw something graphic.

Or maybe it's just text, and they read something that creeps them out, and will make them wake up crying every night for the next 6 months *shrugs*.

I'm speaking here generally, of course, as apparently other commentators say this site isn't even that bad.

But the point remains, your silly knee-jerk reactions about how any parent who wants to know what their kid views is "indoctrinating" their kid shows your ignorance.

The internet is awesome - it's brilliant, the amount of data that it can put at your fingertips. But if you're young, and prone to typing in random stuff or clicking on random links...sometimes it's not really the greatest thing. I'm sure generations before us had access to dirty stories, pornography, and smut films - but they had to look hard for it. Now, any kid who can type and use a mouse can find it from home.

It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Google

[Dutchmaan]

I think breaking up the financial institutions would be a higher priority than breaking up Google, but that's just my opinion. Google is in no way too big to fail, technology companies always seem to have a more than ample supply of other companies willing to take the market share. People are just paranoid because they fear that Google "knows" too much, which may be justified but may also be just plain old paranoia.

Re:Google

[cheekyjohnson]

"There's a lot of weird stuff on the internet."

Oh, believe me, I've seen it. It doesn't have any effect on me at all.

"Is that the sort of thing you want your kids seeing?"

Is that the sort of thing you want anyone seeing? Might as well ban everyone from the internet, since even you said it affects adults.

"Or maybe it's just text, and they read something that creeps them out, and will make them wake up crying every night for the next 6 months *shrugs*."

Maybe it's the same with you. Perhaps the government should cut off your access to the internet because you might instantly turn into a murderer/rapist from viewing the content.

"But the point remains, your silly knee-jerk reactions about how any parent who wants to know what their kid views is "indoctrinating" their kid shows your ignorance."

No, I just heavily dislike pointless censorship.

"It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea."

Why? It's annoying. If they don't like it, they can just get out.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't forcing a thing. It is simply saying "We cannot continue paying you while you are displaying this content without warnings. You are welcome to either put up warnings or seek out alternative advertising." that's all.... Nothing being forced.

Re:Google

[copponex]

I absolutely hate people who look at a successful product, grow to depend on it, and think its success should be a valid reason to impose regulations, or that it should enter public ownership.

When your civilization depends on a technology, are you saying you trust a private, for profit corporation more than you trust a democratically controlled government? To ask the question in another way, since Google can now afford to arm themselves with fighter jets and tanks and a few hundred thousand secret police to help them achieve better profits, should they be allowed to?

There's a reason utilities are so heavily regulated. When a private company has the ability to screw their customers over, they will. That's their soul reason for existence: screwing customers to their benefit. Overcharging is having a "profit margin." Bullshit fees are "profit centers." This is all well and good when you're talking apples and cars and computers, but becomes very problematic when you're talking about media control and health care and defense.

To give you an idea about some unintended consequences concerning market share, fast food companies are unsurprisingly the nations number one consumer of hamburger patties. Since our factory farms are so putrid, people started dying from e.coli from eating those hamburgers. So what was the industry solution? Inject those hamburgers with ammonia (yes, the kind in Windex) to kill the bacteria instead of cleaning up the factory farms. You may think that doesn't matter to you because you don't eat fast food, but now that method is so popular that pretty much any hamburger patty you buy will be tainted with ammonia. And thanks to deregulation, they don't have to list that as an ingredient, since it's a "processing agent."

There are thousands of examples like this, and it's the rule, not the exception. Even the unintended consequences of monopolies are bad enough to understand why we need to return corporations to what they are: temporary organizational units that serve at the pleasure of the people, which should be dismantled when they stop performing their function. If there was simply an arbitrary limit of 15% on the market share of internet advertising, we would have a standardized way of allowing competition as we have for broadband resellers, and the market would be more competitive and better for it.

Re:Google

[Rennt]

I'd just like to point out that wanting to know what your kid watches is one thing. Wanting the internet to be "safe" so you don't have to worry about it is entirely another.

But this measure doesn't do either. Accidental clickage? Give me a break. Even if it wasn't intentional, kids are hardwired to click 'yes' and will do so unless they have reason to believe they are being monitored.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

This troper doesn't believe a word of most of what is said

One hates people who speak of themselves in the third person. One thinks they should be reprimanded sharply.

One surely does. And it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM was too big to fail.
Atari was too big to fail.
Microsoft is too big to fail.
Webcrawler was too big to fail.
Yahoo! was too big to fail.
Disney is too big to fail.
Sony is too big to fail.
Japan was too big to fail.
The USA were too big to fail.
China is too big to fail.
India is too big to fail.

Just because a company or country seems so big that they couldn't possibly fail doesn't mean it won't happen in the future.

Re:Google

[cheekyjohnson]

"Bullshit. Children learn by imitating."

Right, and that must mean that since I played violent video games as a child (and my parents owned guns), I am a murderer.

Speaking of which, if they aren't able to differentiate between fact and fiction, it sounds like a combination of bad parenting and a lack of mental prowess (in the case of video games and unrealistic looking media, since even five year olds know that that is fiction).

Re:Google

[skuzzlebutt]

"Once-community-friendly tech company bows to regulatory pressure for financial gain and political favoritism" is now a trope.

Re:Google

[Thinboy00]

While Censorship and restraint are very different issues. One I wish Wikipedia would learn when clicking on various biology articles. Oh I wonder what that illness is (MY EYES!!).

$ lynx http://enwp.org/Insert_illness_here

Re:Google

[Thinboy00]

Since the Justice Department has been asleep at the wheel for the past several decades, Google will not be broken up as it should be. It will become both "too big to fail" and "big enough to fuck everything up".

I thought that was the SEC. Or was it the FTC? It certainly isn't the Justice Dpt.

ObTopic: If they can "see" it from the street, how is it "private" in any sane sense of the word?

Re:Google

[samoanbiscuit]

If you've ever read anything on tvtropes, you'll realize that that's the standard way of starting an anecdote or personal example, such as "in this troper's experience", "this toper saw/believes/felt" and "this troper read in a fanfic somewhere...".

Re:Google

[ultranova]

On the flip side, there are plenty of mediocre people who are enamored with their supposed intellect.

They're not the flip side, they are the "idiots who don't realize they are idiots".

Re:Google

[Jeremy Erwin]

It's amazing how common sense can be trampled by a couple of meaningless acronyms.

Re:Google

[Xphile101361]

Honestly, I don't see what the problem is. Google didn't take their money away or freeze their account. Google said that they believe that this site is currently breaking their TOS and Google will not do business with them until this is remedied. These two companies did not sign a contract stating that from this date to this date, Google will be giving them X dollars per month in exchange for advertising this or that on their site. I'm sure the "contract", if it is that, is worded that Google can end it at any time, most likely for any reason, though legally speaking it would likely be for breaking the TOS. In other parts of the advertising industry I've heard of this happening. A radio or TV show will do something and in response a company that was airing advertisements during that segment canceled doing so in the future. It doesn't need to be justified, it is business. If anything, business is usually very irrational.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bit extreme don't you think? If Google dares to enforce ANY rules whatsoever, that means they're "abusing a monopoly"?

Nevermind that they don't have a monopoly in the first place. But even if they did, it takes something thats actually unreasonable or anti-competitive to be "abusing a monopoly". A yellow-journalism styled slashdot summary does not count when the truth behind it is so bland and reasonable.

Re:Google

[oji-sama]

goatse

s*xual stuff.

While I wouldn't 'censor' either, if I had to choose, I would put the star in the goatse.

Re:Google

[vlueboy]

ASCII goatse can still get around lynx's empowering text restrictions

Re:Google

[sempir]

In this /.'rs opinion this behaviour is perfectly acceptable.

Re:Google

[wvmarle]

MS having a monopoly with Windows is perfectly legal; no problem there.

MS using their Windows monopoly to enter the browser market with IE by using that monopoly to get IE on everyone's desktop instead of Netscape, that's not fine.

Google having a search monopoly, that's also no problem, as long as they do not leverage their search monopoly to one way or another put competing advertising companies in a disadvantage. Afaik they do not do so.

Whether it was a good idea to allow Google to buy up Doubleclick - I don't know, that depends on how much of a monopoly Google resp. Doubleclick had at the time in the search market.

Now Google has gained a monopoly in small-scale advertising (not sure about the big guys, at least all small-scale web sites seem to use Google's advertising), which again is fine, as long as they do not leverage that monopoly to do other things.

Doesn't Yahoo offer similar ads as well? Or any other providers? Google can hardly be the only one, and for the web site in question here it shouldn't really matter who provides ads for them.

Re:Google

[91degrees]

Yes it has. It's had a message added saying that single sex relationships are potentially unsafe reading for minors. It's a minor change but it's still a change.

Re:Google

[Tangent128]

It's also a form of Natter we'd prefer was avoided.

Re:Google

[ppanon]

Sorry, but what "may be less family friendly" about "children being raised by two females, whatever the reason"? While "less family friendly" may be accurate for discussion about Sex and the City or most daytime soap operas for example, what the heck is "less family friendly" about two women raising kids? Unless there's a running theme that one of the women's background was as a battered housewife or co-dependent on an emotionally abusive lout, wouldn't the raising of kids be the definition of "family friendly"? Unless you have some serious religious hangups about even the possibility of homosexuality, in which case it's about catering to religious hangups, not protecting kids from psychologically inappropriate content like sex or violence.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

And unfortunately, there is no mechanism of the "free market" which deals with this.

Sure there is, without huge government tax breaks and other loopholes companies the size of Google would struggle under the weight their own bureaucracy.

We currently have an unfair playing field which heavily favors large companies - and not a "free market".

Re:Google

[zwei2stein]

He is a fucking great idea: If want your kids to be properly sheltered, emotionally stable and unscarred, spend some time with them. You know, parenting. Your job as parent to be there and prevent damage/do damage control.

Re:Google

[Pentium100]

I don't think anyone would drop dead or become insane after seeing goatse or 2girls1cup. The worst that would happen is vomiting.

Anyway, you can monitor your kids, you can also install filters and have a whitelist/blacklist so your kids don't see what you think is bad for them. I don't care about that.

However, you cannot make the whole internet "safe" for your kids so you can stop worrying about installing filters. There is a simple reason for that - there are people other than your kids using the internet. Another reason is that if we allowed every parent to censor the whole internet, there would be nothing left, since hardcore religious people would object to evolution and atheist sites, hardcore atheists would object to religious sites, a lot of people would object to porn and others to violence and so on.

Streets are also unsafe for your kids - a drunk or careless driver can run them over, they can be mugged etc. However, you probably would not like if there was a law that required everyone (except parents) to keep at least 200m distance from a kid or even better - go inside until the kid passes.

Oh and also - the warnings don't work. I don't know about you, but I had no trouble clicking "I'm 18" when I was younger than 18, so I don't see why this warning would protect your kids, unless you monitor then and/or have filters which makes the warning pointless.

Oh and TV Tropes included NSFW warning on links to other sites that were... well... NSFW. I have not seen any NSFW content on the site itself (not that the fact that you have been browsing TV tropes instead of working is SFW).

Re:Google

[GabriellaKat]

No one ever said you HAVE to use anything GOOGLE. There are more then enough alternatives out there, including ad click sites. Probably be labeled flamebait and lose karma, but Google IS the evil empire who knows everything, and plays innocent. (oops, our mistake. Easier to pay fines and ask for forgiveness then permission) You have been warned.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

But the content itself hasn't actually changed!

Don't worry, it WILL change. TV Tropes will adjust its editing guidelines, authors will preemptively censor themselves (maybe unintentionally so, but there's always that nagging "don't write anything remotely NSFW or your article will be buried under disclaimers") and so on.

Once you do anything aimed at influencing certain things (mark it "dubious", increase surveillance, etc.), people will use those pesky littles scissors in their heads.

Re:Google

[Jedi Alec]

You've got to admit that the idea of a google tank rolling through the streets of Baghdad taking pictures and sniffing wifi is as funny as it is disconcerting...especially if it has the logo in big friendly letters plastered all over it ;-)

As for fighter jets...not really Google's style. I reckon they'd go for unmanned attack drones. Which would kill everything in sight but would follow the instructions in robots.txt to the letter.

Re:Google

[Sir_Lewk]

You self-censor the word sexual and expect people to take you seriously in a conversation about censorship?

Really?

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

And schools inject the same stuff into their hamburger patties (aren't those government ran?)

Besides, the levels used are considered safe and moot. Conspiracy theory much? Or just like reading anti meat-eating blogs?

Re:Google

[the_womble]

The problem is not that the content might offend the readers.

The problem is that the advertisers may not like having their product advertised next to the content.

Google has sweeping restriction because they place ads, so they cannot check what content any given ad will appear next to, so the simplest solution is to have fairly strict rules so that they come close to every advertiser being happy with every site.

Most of the ad networks have similar restrictions.

The solution is to not use Google and similar ads on user generated content unless you have effective systems for moderating the content, or your site is big enough for Google to tell your your systems are OK, or you are prepared for them pulling out.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I think breaking up the financial institutions would be a higher priority than breaking up Google, but that's just my opinion.

No, you don't get it. The priority is breaking the poor. Interest is the mechanism for transferring any wealth the poor might obtain to the rich. The way they do it is simple: Here, you can have a TV now. Just $19.95 a month. Forever. The banks and credit card companies pretty much own this mechanism. And as for Google... be quiet or they will pull their ads from your sites. Shhh!

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

ObTopic: If they can "see" it from the street, how is it "private" in any sane sense of the word?

You mean like how you shouldn't look up a woman's dress in the street? That kind of private?

Privacy isn't set by firewalls you can't pass. Privacy is set by respect and social restraint. Which Google hasn't demonstrated. A key problem here is that you, like a lot of people, don't understand privacy, because our educational system is FUBARed.

On Privacy

(Anon due to mod points.)

Re:Google

[Chrisq]

"less family friendly" about two women raising kids?

Its non biblical. They should do the decent thing, like when God and the Holy Spirit had Jesus, both being male they had him addopted by a decent Hetro couple.

Re:Google

[Darfeld]

Is it sarcasm or is it naiveness? Damn you! And you're AC, the most schizophrenic /.er! They're is no way to tell! I'm so confuse... Damn You AC!

Re:Google

[icebraining]

Of course they would have. They could have switched to a different ad provider.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure "too big to fail" means what you think it means. The actual meaning, expanded fully, is that the company is so big that to allow it to fail would be too detrimental to the economy, so government has to wade in with public funds to prevent it failing (i.e. the banks that were bailed out, or in some cases where a company provides tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs, directly or indirectly). Most of the big IT companies bring in a lot of money, but they don't particularly create a lot of employment and it's an easy market for someone else to fill the void if they fail, so I doubt most of the companies in your list would be considered "too big to fail". I doubt even Disney would, because they have a ton of valuable IP so that, even if they were somehow to fail, they'd still be able to sell off valuable assets. Countries are a different matter, of course, because often when they go bankrupt they start getting ideas about taking assets from their neighbours, which is why we tend to cut each other some slack.

Re:Google

[icebraining]

I insult myself all the time, you insensitive clod!

Re:Google

[delinear]

It's pretty sad when we get to the point where we honestly believe the only way we could possibly "protect" our children from content we don't want them to see is with a white-list. Yet again the technological solution that means we don't have to spend time, oh, I don't know, sitting with them and supervising them in person and even explaining why some things are right or wrong. I suspect that all the negative content in the world wouldn't have as much impact as the fact that they're being dumped in front of a machine in lieu of real social interaction with other people.

Re:Google

[tonique]

Incidentally, I would think that a webpage about media where someone has two mums is SFW, for example, at GLAAD or IGRA...

http://www.glaad.org/

http://www.igra.com/

Re:Google

[TheRaven64]

I don't use any Google things anymore. I prefer DuckDuckGo for searching and I prefer OpenStreetMap for maps. They were the only two Google things that I ever used. That doesn't mean that Google is unaware of what I'm doing. If I visit any site with Google ads or analytics, they track me. If I send an email or write an IM to anyone using GMail, Google scans it (not always obvious, because a lot of people point their own domains at Google's SMTP / XMPP servers these days). They have driven their van past my house and put pictures of it online.

Just because you don't use any Google stuff doesn't mean that you opt out of Google tracking.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"You mean like how you shouldn't look up a woman's dress in the street?"

Who did that? Google noted where the wifi was an logged unencrypted data only. Looking up the skirt would be going somewhat further; the same as decrypting the wifi signal..

Re:Google

[delinear]

It's not exactly THE SKY IS FALLING scenario, but it does mean that the idea of putting a "Do you want to continue" here to prevent accidental clickage isn't a bad idea.

I don't know if you remember being a kid, but most kids seeing a "This content is not for kids, click here if you're definitely not a kid" link will click it purely out of curiosity. It's the same reason we have to have child proof containers for household chemicals or medication. Do you honestly think this page is any kind of barrier to a kid seeing the content, and if not then what purpose does it serve?

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer DuckDuckGo for searching

Well done! You are using a thin wrapper over Microsoft Bing.

Personally I prefer to take the lesser of two evils, but hey, it's up to you.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

He'd wind up with something quite sensitive in a vise, I'm quite sure.

I have long since abandoned defending Google.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

wow. I'm not sure I want to know what you do, but NSFW is getting really strict.

Re:Google

[Tim C]

Today you can click yes. Tomorrow, perhaps the content is just gone.

Re:Google

[Jurily]

Google is in no way too big to fail, technology companies always seem to have a more than ample supply of other companies willing to take the market share.

Google is big enough to kill other companies just by taking them out of their search results. What exactly do you mean by "in no way too big to fail"?

Re:Google

[drinkypoo]

That suggests a question -- does Google have an advertising monopoly?

Actually, it begs the question, because you went on to make an argument predicated upon the statement.

I'd like to say yes but I think I mean no. Nothing is stopping a new search engine except money and talent.

Re:Google

[Schadrach]

Wife Husbandry?

Re:Google

[Daniel_Staal]

I'm sure I am one sometimes. And I'm sure sometimes I'm not.

I'm never sure which time is which though.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, they have the option of not doing business with Google. Of course, the m-word raises its ugly head.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

But wait, they found Microsoft guilty of anti-trust practices and really... um, yeah, you're right. Asleep at the wheel.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

The fact that you are upset about the trucks with cameras shows how utterly paranoid and alarmist you are

I'm not upset about the trucks with cameras.

I'm upset that the same company that has the trucks and cameras has place that sells the maps, has the advertising agency, sells eyeballs, places that advertising on websites, collects all the information, is an ISP, content provider, AND search engine, and I know I'm leaving some things out.

And now, is a self-appointed censor. I thought that they just put targeted ads in places people can see them. I can't imagine that there are no advertisers trying to reach the people over at TVTropes. I've seen Google place ads in some pretty obnoxious places, including right-wing racist hate sites. But now fictional descriptions are beyond the pale?

TVTropes has no right in any sense of the word to operate the way it does, now...

Please tell me what is so terrible about TVTropes and the ways it "operates" now. Did you get banned from there too, MindlessAutomata? What did you do?

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

If Balmer said "Be careful what you do on the internet because the government can subpoena any server you visit, including Microsoft's" I would applaud him for his honesty.

Oh wait, you did read the article and realize that's what Schmidt actually said, right? Not your bullshit "only criminals want privacy" astroturf. Go back to sucking Microsoft's dick and stay off Slashdot with your lies.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

"Too big to fail" really referred to financial institutions whose failure would not just affect the company (which is bad enough, but the risk of doing business), but all of their investors, bank customers, clients, etc. (as appropriate) and thus adversely affect the whole U.S. economy far beyond what another business of the same size would affect.

It was bad enough when Enron bellied up and took down the pensions, etc, of employees or retirees, but if a bank failed and took _your_ or _my_ life savings/pension/whatever when you or I aren't even employees (and perhaps not even direct customers), that's a whole 'nother matter.

Of course, the solution was just as bad as the problem, in its own way, but that's another topic.

If Google went out of business, it really wouldn't be so bad because its employees would be able to find other employment, its customers would be able find other advertisers and we could all go back to using Yahoo, AltaVista or Lycos (and you thought I was going to mention Bing... we're talking hypotheticals here, not fantasy).

The real issue here is whether Google, by virtue of its size, power and/or market share is able to exert and undue influence on the market.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

+1 informative to Anonymous.

If Google failed, there would be plenty of other companies to quickly fill in the holes. It's not like we could no longer search or find advertisers or have trucks driving around sniffing our wireless networks. It would just be someone other than Google doing it.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

The government has been the biggest barrier to the "free market" in decades.

I mean, look at the huge price Microsoft paid when they were convicted of anti-trust violations. Why, they had to... wait, they really didn't get anything noticeable, did they?

Meanwhile, the amount of paperwork, regulations, fees, and the general miasma of bureaucracy and namny-ism that pervades this country is killing small businesses, which are the engine of our economic future. Or is the highest unemployment rate in decades just because people are mean?

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

I thought that was the SEC. Or was it the FTC? It certainly isn't the Justice Dpt.

Yes, Thinboy00, it certainly IS the Justice Department that brings anti-trust suits against monopolies.

They are the legal enforcement arm of the executive branch. Eric Holder is currently the Attorney General. I bet if you use Google, you can find all sorts of information about previous anti-trust cases the Justice Department has brought.

Then, you can use your gmail account to send email to yourself with the information so you don't forget it (Google is a mail service, too!) or call yourself on Google Voice to leave a message (Google is a phone company?)or maybe you can write a blog post on blogger about what you've learned today(Google is a blogging service!). Failing that, I'll make a video explaining it all to you and post it on YouTube (Goggle is a video distribution company!).

The phrase you're looking for is "vertical integration".

Barring all those things, Thinboy00, you can use Google Maps to see if you can find a clue.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

You can avoid at least some or most of it with the various privacy plug-ins for Firefox like NoScript, Ghostery and others. But completely avoiding Google's eyes and ears takes more effort than I'm willing to exert.

Of course, you always have the choice to use the other fine online services like Prodigy, CompuServe, GEnie, or in France, Minitel...

Re:Google

[geminidomino]

Linking to Tvtropes from anywhere should be a ban-worthy act...

If you think getting lost in Wikipedia is bad, you've never experienced the TVTropes vortex...

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

If you've ever read anything on tvtropes, you'll realize that that's the standard way...

One hates in-jokes even more than people who speak of themselves in the second or third person.

It is really starting to annoy me now, so it better start putting that lotion on its skin.

Re:Google

[victorhooi]

heya,

Oh, don't worry, I wasn't a kid that long ago. I know a lot of the time it's like holding a red flag to a bull...haha.

But look, at the end of the day, it's teaching kids a bit of responsibility.

So say, there was something like goatse or the 2girls1cup behind a "click warning". And it said, do you really want to proceed? Well, sure the kid clicks, and he says "oh s*it...that is sick...". He or she has nobody but themselves to blame now. And they're going to feel a bit stupid for clicking through. It's like a reverse-rick-roll or something...I think....haha.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

The government has been the biggest barrier to the "free market" in decades.

See that, ConceptJunkie, you just bought into the notion that there really is such a thing as the "free market", and further that having such a thing would actually be a good thing?

Or is the highest unemployment rate in decades just because people are mean?

No, we have the highest unemployment rate in decades because it's good for business.

But that's a different discussion for another day.

Re:Google

[victorhooi]

heya,

Well, my point is that in this new age, stuff isn't that hard to stumble upon.

In the olden days, sure, you could get smut films, snuff films, hardcore pornography, whatever. But it was difficult, and you could bet people would remember you using them to get your hands on it.

Nowadays, the stuff's just so accessible, it's not funny. You can get it from the comfort of your lounge without even having to go outside and meet some older kid in a shady alley...lol.

It's not about bubble-wrapping your kid, so I don't know where you got your argument about sheltering and all that. It's about a simple NSFW warning - a little "are you sure you want to view this, yes/no" warning. My gosh, you're acting liking this is Burma all over again.

If I really want to view the content, sure I'll just click "Yes, show it to me". If I"m curious, I probably would as well. But if I just got rick-rolled by somebody, or I accidentally Google-stumbled onto it, I might think twice - particularly if I was say, at work, or my girlfriend was behind me...lol.

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Google

[Hal_Porter]

Quick someone with a wiki account start a new article here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_illness_here

And cut and paste an ASCII goatse from here

http://www.nerdgranny.com/ascii-goatse/

Re:Google

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe if we start using expressions like CHRIST'S FAT COCK he'll stop talking to us and we'll win by default.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Google is the only way anyone can find a website? Only a keyword-spammer with no content would fail due soley to Google's search results.

It's not Google's responsibility to support poor business models by slinging search users at bad websites. If anything, it's their responsibility as a search engine to do the opposite.

Re:Google

[ikkonoishi]

The moment someone hit the report this page button a page would be put up for a mod to evaluate it. It was a TVTropes mod who decided that was NSFW. Not Google. You think differently? Go report the page as SFW on TVTropes.

Re:Google

[TheRaven64]

Yup, you can get away from a lot of it by blocking Google's servers, using end-to-end encryption for all mail and IMs and filing take-down notices against Google for pictures of your house. Or you can go and live in the opt out village. My point is that you need to do a lot more than 'just not use their services,' as the grandparent suggested.

I don't regard Google as especially evil, but they have accumulated so much power that it's very easy for them to misuse it even without malicious intent.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is obviously big enough to exert influence on the market, but how is that different than any other large company? Wal-mart is a great example - they're big, and they influence their suppliers, but Wal-mart has nothing remotely resembling a monopoly. Influencing a market is not illegal nor immoral. If the influence is really "undue" then competitors can step up and fill that gap.

In this case it's pretty clear that enforcing a NSFW rule in their TOS is totally reasonable, and not going to have any major influence on the market besides making some Microsoft-shills whinge on Slashdot.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let me get this straight...

Google, a site where my boss once searched using the term "American Girls", and got... well... NOT the favorite book series, is now saying that there should be a warning statement about looking up "Kate & Allie"? On a site without images?

Hey, Google! Search for the terms "hypocracy", "stupidity", and "sanctimonious".

(This ALMOST makes me want to switch over to Bing.)

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the facts that a) Google still indexes those pages, so they still show up in google searches b) It's one single click per browser session, and c) internal site search works just like it always has. How does this make the site in any way harder to use?

Re:Google

[Boronx]

Companies shouldn't be allowed to buy other companies.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

It will become both "too big to fail" and "big enough to fuck everything up".

To be the former, a company must first be the later.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed that parents hiding things from their kids is indoctrination.

Also, fuck gender stereotype indoctrination through toys.

Re:Google

[rufty_tufty]

What is family friendly for you is family unfriendly for me.
I like the idea of children being educated about life before they experience it. Who are they to say what is family friendly? Who is anyone? Can i specify that I'd rather they hid violence from children than sex?

Re:Google

[godefroi]

Google didn't force anyone to do anything. The site is free to continue without ads, or source ads from another provider.

Re:Google

[Jiro]

Copyright is what keeps Microsoft in business, and that's a government-granted monopoly, so it's stupid to say that Microsoft isn't an example of government affecting the free market.

Re:Google

[Quiet_Desperation]

Like Socrates said, "be more aware of the man who thinks he is wise than the man who thinks he is a fool." OK he didn't say that exactly, but close.

The exact quote was "I pity the fool who trusts other fools who don't know they be fools". It's from his tell-all scroll "Socrates It To Me! - The Life And Times Of A Gonzo Philosopher" published in 402 BC by Spartan Press. It was rated 4 Zeus lightning bolts out of 5 by the most popular news runners of the day.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

What I'm referring to as "undue influence" is influence that could not be countered by competitors. Could TVTropes find an advertiser that would allow them to continue as they have? (Whether or not they choose to switch is another matter.)

In other words, if Google can shut out competitors, force terms of services that customers don't like, or otherwise do things that the market can _not_ counter, then their influence is "undue".

Of course, Google influences the market, in many ways that are positive even. However, if TVTropes has no other alternative to advertising with Google (that would avoid them shutting down or significantly changing how they operate), then Google's influence is undue. You always have to weigh what is being offered when doing business with someone, but if there is no real choice, then the market isn't free.

Re:Google

[Monkeedude1212]

Google is in no way too big to fail, technology companies always seem to have a more than ample supply of other companies willing to take the market share.

The competing companies don't make a difference in that regard. You don't think any of the other car manufacturers might have wanted GM's shares when they were too big to fail?

Google IS too big to fail - are you saying that if they were in trouble the government wouldn't subsidize them like they have other tbtf companies? Google and Microsoft are both too big to fail, maybe even Apple. Everyone uses Google - the search engine, almost every day. Lots of people use their services, like email and docs. If they closed up shop overnight it would be sheer chaos, not a nice transition to Bing like I think you would be expecting, especially with the way Bing presents the data. Also, people forgot what it was like using multiple search engines to find what they want, and those that do don't want to go back to it.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, "free market" as is commonly accepted in the U.S., meaning open to competitors where no one competitors exerts a monopoly, with certain exceptions such as power companies, etc., where necessary for the functioning of basic infrastructure, as well as common sense legislation to prevent fraud and other forms of "cheating".

I'm not calling for complete anarchy which is the most pure idea of "free market" possible.

Rgarding your second comment, with a minimum wage, you're right. Defenders of minimum wage never want to acknowledge that they contribute to unemployment because by their logic 4 people making X wage and one person unemployed is better than 5 people making 0.8x wage.

Businesses aren't charities and I don't expect them to act that way, but the government likewise isn't a charity either, and too many people are under the illusion that its activities are somehow less morally tainted than those of business even though human nature is universal.

The best you can hope for is that government and business are each held in check by each other (as well as the states and individuals). Government has the unfair advantage of very often not being subject to the rules it enforces on everyone else.

Re:Google

[ScentCone]

If there was simply an arbitrary limit of 15% on the market share of internet advertising...

If there was, then you would be forcing 85% of the people to buy services they don't necessarily want. That would force 85% of the add sellers to artificually lower their prices in order to attract business they aren't otherwise earning, thus making your regulation kill business health. And of course your solution for that would be to have the government control not only how many ad sellers there are, but what they must charge to display someone's ad. No thanks, comrade.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFS:

something as relatively innocuous as children being raised by two females, whatever the reason are put behind the content warning

So why don't we have a warning label on the Bible?

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

I didn't say that. I meant to imply that that giving MS a slap on the wrist a failure of government that affected the free market by excusing everything MS did for the previous 20 years and allowing them to continue doing most of it.

Re:Google

[gknoy]

Did you mean: hypocrisy?

;)

Still, though, I think you make a good point. However, at the same time, there's some content that I'd like to be able to read on break, and not have to worry about Surprise NSFW. If TVTropes, being a Wiki, is going to have that, I'd prefer they be warning-walled. TVTropes tends to be one of the most innocuous (though time-consuming ;)) distractions, but its wiki nature makes it risky.

Now, if only Wikipedia would have a "Gruesome Pictures" section on diseases, with some sort of hiding until you really DO want to see them. =/ Looking up some disease that I've heard of but don't recognize, and then oh god my eyes, isn't very fun.

Re:Google

[speroni]

I'm an insensitive clod, you insensitive clod!

Re:Google

[Unequivocal]

Thanks - at least now I know where Mr. T trained in rhetoric.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doing good ain't got no end." Captain Terrill, Outlaw Josey Wales

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

Well, "free market" as is commonly accepted in the U.S., meaning...

Well, "free market" as is commonly accepted in the US means whatever the Republicans want it to mean.

It's a fiction, a fantasy, a "trope" if you will that's used to sell a system where wealth is siphoned from the labor class to the leisure class.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

I don't regard Google as especially evil, but they have accumulated so much power that it's very easy for them to misuse it even without malicious intent.

Correct.

It is possible to grow into something evil, even though you've never done anything evil or intended anything evil.

Just by existing, a single corporation with that much power is a problem for everyone.

Re:Google

[mhwombat]

I can see the T-shirt now:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

well okay. Open mouth insert foot. I don't consider a site that describes tv-tropes as unfriendly to anything. It's like someone calling me out for quoting George Carlin's 7 Words You Can't Say on TV even though I clearly have indicated I'm quoting (for whatever purpose). It's borderline insanity.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

Yeah, I know.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

When someone arbitrarily changes the terms of an agreement you have with them, and then tells you to comply or suffer, I'd call that threat of force (whether or not physical violence is involved). Like all crap, it still stinks.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

Aside from what I'm saying now, I have no idea how to reply.

Re:Google

[game kid]

And to be clear, I don't think Sergei Brin is sitting atop a dark tower laughing maniacally and screaming "by the power of this monopoly SOON ALL WILL BE UNDER MY CONTROL".

Me neither. That's probably Larry Page's job. :)

Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. "It was awkward," this person said. "It was like watching your parents fight."

Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

--WSJ, 2010-08-10

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem with google is that they're so damn good at what they do, and free as well ... who can beat that?

Re:Google

[badkarmadayaccount]

That is discrimination and slander - I never thought I'd say this, but - someone sue Google!

Re:Google

[anyGould]

And now, is a self-appointed censor.

Well, hang on - Google isn't censoring anything. They're simply choosing not to advertise on a site. Google isn't obliged to provide anyone with money.

Google may be and do a lot of things (and I take solace in the fact that when they do screw up, they tend to announce their screwup up front - the only reason we know about the wifi issue is that *they* said "crap, we didn't want that." - that's miles better than most companies), but I don't believe we can scream "censorship" at them for this one.

(My money is that it's some idiot who clicked an automated complaint button, and once a Real Person looks at the site everything will turn back on - tvtropes is a pretty darn safe site.)

Re:Google

[godefroi]

Did the terms of the agreement allow for arbitrary changes? If so, the parties entering into the agreement should have known that up front, and been prepared for it. If not, it's a matter for the courts.

What this smells of is someone bitching about something that they agreed to.

Re:Google

[ACPosterChild]

Since when is Google the morality police? Maybe they've been talking to China too much.

What does family friendly have to do with anything? I don't want them judging sites based on subversive technical content, or anti-establishment political views, or anything.

In any case, it sounds to me like they are opening themselves up to be liable for the content of pages they advertise on. What if my delicate eyes see something they don't like, and Google didn't protect me from it? Think of the children! Time to sue!

Re:Google

[ACPosterChild]

If you have interest in what a disease is, why would you get offended by the pictures of it? Maybe you need to learn that you don't actually want to know what different diseases are and should stop looking for that type of information. Don't get mad at someone that gives you what you asked for.

Also, I personally don't see why it matters if the site content is tame or not. Why is Google deciding what content is appropriate for what age groups, or what disclaimers any site should give? If people go there and are offended, they have the freedom to not visit that site again. For example, from now on you can avoid Wikipedia when you want to research diseases. Find a site that does not include pictures and go there instead. Problem solved. You don't need Google filtering your life for you so that you never fall down and get a booboo.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

Well, hang on - Google isn't censoring anything. They're simply choosing not to advertise on a site.

Ah, but when the same company is the advertiser, and the advertising agency, and the directory to the entire internet, you start to have a problem.

Censorship isn't the problem, it's monopoly that's the problem.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

That's definitely one of the more chilling aspects of it for Google, I think.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

What this smells like is that Google is suddenly becoming the morality police.

As another poster suggested, this could open them up for lawsuits.

Re:Google

[ConceptJunkie]

Well, lacking a good education system, that is the effect, but in order to improve the education system you need to talk to the Democrats.

If you have a good education and are willing to work, there's no reason you can't be at least modestly successful.

A bad education is the best way to keep the working class down. Tell me again why the Democrats resist every notion that could make the situation better, assuming they truly care about the "little guy"?

If you are uneducated and/or unmotivated you are going to be taken advantage of. Nothing can change that.

Re:Google

[godefroi]

Google has investors to please, and other deals to protect. They're not worried about angering one minor customer when much more might be at stake.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

and that is the whole problem with the stock market.

Re:Google

[godefroi]

That companies act in the best interest of those that invested in them? That's a problem?

Lemme guess; you're a socialist? We should all be looking out for you, and making sure you're not inconvenienced in any way?

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

Actually no, I'm not a socialist but I wouldn't mind doing away with laws that in essence force companies to look away from true customer service if it doesn't serve the bottom line. There is nothing wrong with taking care of your investors, but if that becomes you're driving force at the company (which is the case in 99.9999% of companies that trade stock on the market) then quality and customer service take a nose dive. I have no problems with companies making money. I have a problem with sticking it to the consumer as those same companies do make money.

Re:Google

[Thinboy00]

I disagree with the author of that page. He (she?) says that (unencrypted) email is like real mail. This is not true. Email is like post cards: there is not the slightest barrier to prevent people from reading it (no envelope). If you want privacy, the very least you can do is ROT-13 it.

Re:Google

[Thinboy00]

Your ADD isn't my problem.

Don't whine about how I'm being "biased" or "not thoughtful" or something, I have ADD (either that or they let me have a Schedule 2 substance for no good reason whatsoever (don't start)).

Re:Google

[godefroi]

Theoretically, any company that "stuck it to the consumer" wouldn't last long, because noone would do business with them.

In reality, however, we gotta haz our ipodz. With the gbs and the wifis.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

pretty much

Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing like a family with two daddies and no mommies to really get a Republican arous... err... angry.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[IgnitusBoyone]

Actually, a surprising amount of family friendly sit-coms are of the nature. Normally however the guys are very actively trying to find girl-friends to help in specific situations and the children tend to be girls. Both Full-House and My Two Dads are mentioned as examples for the Has Two Mommies Trope which I found odd. Sunny from MGS4 as well

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad occasionally brought us presents after my parents separated. Once he brought my sister a book called The Daddy machine.

After he left my mom opened the book out of curiosity and discovered that the kids in the story had 2 mothers. She read the back cover which indicated that the publisher catered to kids with gay parents. My mom had thought that my dad was trying to subtly say that she was a lesbian and ripped him a new ass over the phone while my sisters and I laughed our asses off at the whole "two mommies" thing, which is funny when you're a kid.

It was an honest mistake, because he picked it up from a big store chain in haste and couldn't tell just from a glance of the cover.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an honest mistake, because he picked it up from a big store chain in haste and couldn't be arsed to take a look inside of the cover.

FTFY

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[sg_oneill]

Republican family values!

Hey, lets inflict forced proposition-8 divorces on 1000s of californian families because an imaginary diety says so, even if the constitution says govt and religion are forbidden from combining.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Zironic]

Actually two males and two females can reproduce just fine, you just need a lab for it ;)

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

So if a couple doesn't have children yet, maybe can never have children, they're not a family?

Why don't you pack that smug attitude up tight and shove it up your ass sideways?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[euphemistic]

They're gay, not infertile. Use your imagination.

PS. Churches don't give the licenses, the government does. The government may not have created marriage, but if they can regulate it (which you don't seem to have a problem with), they can do so as they see fit - including by issuing licenses and deciding who they will issue their licenses to.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[zeroshade]

Just wanted to point out that only under a very specific definition of family are children implied. Otherwise under no way are children implied when someone says "family" I would consider a married couple to be a family as would many other people.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

"When was the last time you had to get a license for free speech or any other fundamental right?"

Concealed Carry.

Now get the hell out of my country, you anal-cranial invert. No, I don't want to hear your false history as to the origin of marriage. No, I don't want to hear about your imaginary Sky Wizard. No, I don't want to hear your excuses as to why you're purportedly not a bigot for deeming it proper to reduce a large number of my fellow Americans to the status of second class citizen.

Just get the fuck out. Go to Iran.

I'd say, please excuse the language - but fuck it. You allies of tyranny, stalwart enemies of Liberty, simply do not deserve civil discourse.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Republican family values!

Hey, lets inflict forced proposition-8 divorces on 1000s of californian families because an imaginary diety says so, even if the constitution says govt and religion are forbidden from combining.

Uh, couple != families. Families implies children.

Errm, did you miss the part where married couples without kids got preferential treatment over unmarried couples with kids because of the aforementioned "Republican family values"?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

...constitution says govt and religion are forbidden from combining

Technically, The Constitution says no such thing. Only that Congress won't start a new religion... and as long as "government worship" is not a religion, they haven't.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Mr. Slippery]

Uh, couple != families. Families implies children.

Uh, no, it does not.

Were you sick from school when they explained reproduction?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of adoption? Of step-children? Do you think that infertile people should be unable to marry?

Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage

That would be the equal protection clause of Amendment XIV. When Alice and Bob are allowed to get married, but Alice and Bobbi are not, merely because of the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, that is not equal protection under the law.

and that the government has a right to redefine marriage?

Civil marriage is a government creation. Law doesn't "redefine" it any more than it "redefines" patents or copyrights; without government action, civil marriage does not exist.

Marriage was not instituted by the government because it preceded any form of government.

Nonsense. There is no civil marriage without a government; and anyway, when was this mythical time when humans had no form of government? Hominid dominance hierarchies have always been with us.

Governments passed laws to recognize and regulate marriage based on societies values which is not the same thing as creating marriage.

No. Civil marriage is a legal institution, a contractual obligation. The social aspect of marriage is between the couple (or triad or whatever) and their friends; the religious aspect is between them and their priests, ministers, or shamans. But the legal aspect is entirely a creation of the state.

It's entirely possible for these to be separate; there are many people who are legally married whose marriage is not recognized by the Catholic church, for example. If you don't want to invite Alice and Bobbi to the cotillion, or want to disinclude them in your prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that's your own business; if you want to deny them equal protection under the law, then you're guilty of a high crime against humanity.

Marriage requires a license and so it is not a right.

So what? Do you think, "Driving requires a license so it is not a right; so it's ok for the government to forbid (blacks/Christians/Democrats/whatever) from driving"? Equal treatment under the law is a right.

Your homophobia shames you. Get over it.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[wizardforce]

no where in the constitution does it give idiots like you the power to decide whom other people may marry. screw you and all those who are like you.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, couple != families. Families implies children.

So if a male and female married couple can't or won't have children, you don't consider them a family?

Were you sick from school when they explained reproduction?

So only reproduction makes a family? Do adopted children not count either?

I dont know about your constitution, as I'm from a different country and even then IANAL. Our constitution doesn't say anything about two men or two women being able to marry... so we passed laws to that effect. Full adoption rights and all.

And then SOCIETY COLLAPSED! Wait no it didn't. Gays and lesbians are a lot happier, they state-recognized families are a lot happier, most open-minded people are at least a bit happier, and only closed-minded assholes have anything bad to say about it and even then not a whole lot because, as it turns out, everything is just peachy.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[bonch]

Isn't Google well-known for being a liberal company? They even hosted an Obama fundraiser at Marissa Mayer's house (mere days before the FTC dropped their privacy probe...).

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Mongoose Disciple]

Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that ... the government has a right to redefine marriage?

Oh, it's been implied since 1896 when we forced Utah to change their definition of marriage to match our current one if they wanted to be a state. That's probably why some folk from Utah get so bent out of shape (in the form of heavy financial support) about anyone else wanting the definition to be something else -- they've got one-man one-woman Stockholm Syndrome.

In case you weren't just trolling, the definition of marriage has changed constantly throughout history, and each time, a generation later everyone pretends it's never changed.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Dragonslicer]

Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage

Perhaps the Fourteenth Amendment?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know about your constitution, as I'm from a different country and even then IANAL. Our constitution doesn't say anything about two men or two women being able to marry... so we passed laws to that effect. Full adoption rights and all.

And then SOCIETY COLLAPSED! Wait no it didn't. Gays and lesbians are a lot happier, they state-recognized families are a lot happier, most open-minded people are at least a bit happier, and only closed-minded assholes have anything bad to say about it and even then not a whole lot because, as it turns out, everything is just peachy.

Interesting... Yet there's a issue no one is even bothering to consider:

In certain places gay marriage is allowed while named "civil union", "marriage" being a specific kind of civil union (between a man and a woman).
Yet, gay people are not satisfied only with the practical effects of civil union (which is, for all it matters, marriage). They also want it called "marriage" because... ...? Well, because they want so, and you're a frothing stinking religious bigot if your don't agree with them.

At the other side, there are heteros who understand that calling a homossexual civil union "marriage" is hijacking the meaning of the word, and for no good practical reason.
Call that an emotional reaction, an irrelevant issue, whatever. The fact is that they're not happy with that.

So we have two groups which have their sensitivities affected by the scope of the "marriage" term.
It's only semantics but, to be fair, the heteros have the historical meaning of the term on their side.

And, for some reason, there are people who believe that the gay people sensitivities should prevail because... Because ...? They're nicer than heteros I guess?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually one male and two females can reproduce just fine, you don't even need a lab for it ;-)

captcha: puberty.

no joke.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[phantomfive]

Hey, lets inflict forced proposition-8 divorces on 1000s of californian families because an imaginary diety says so, even if the constitution says govt and religion are forbidden from combining.

No no, it's the Democrats who get all diety with their socialist "don't eat at McDonald's" programs. Republicans and Democrats both care about you a lot: the Rs don't want you to get any STDs (being gay gives you AIDS, of course), and Democrats don't want you to die unless you're really old and then they hand you to the death panel for the greater good of society. Both sides are just competing to see who can be the nicest.

I really hope now that I clarified this for you, that you go tell all your coworkers the truth tomorrow.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Nursie]

What a wonderfully biased picture you paint!

Separate but equal is what you're after then?

It's only some heterosexual folks that get their panties in a wad about the use of the term marriage to define anything other than a man and a woman. Most of us 'understand' that a loving lifetime commitment between two people is a marriage.

Not that lifetime is any requirement any more.

And, for some reason, there are people who believe that the gay people sensitivities should prevail because... Because ...?

Because it's discrimination you fucking retard.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

aristotle-dude's post is in part a prime example of the confusion that comes form the civil and religious definitions of marriage unfortunately having gotten intertwined

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

Yeah, homosexual civil unions seem like they'd be such an effective practical solution if both sides could calm down with their respective idealistic ideological sticking points

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Nursie]

Except that restricting it to use of the word 'union' keeps it seen as inferior to marriage and perpetuates separation of 'those homosexual types' from 'us normal folk' and perpetuates discrimination.

It's that simple.

You could have said exactly the same about black folk in the US a few decades ago - they got what they want, equality, it separate, sure, but it's equal!

I'm not buying it. I'm not gay either, I just hate this irrational discrimination.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Count Fenring]

Yet, gay people are not satisfied only with the practical effects of civil union (which is, for all it matters, marriage). They also want it called "marriage" because... ...? Well, because they want so, and you're a frothing stinking religious bigot if your don't agree with them.

Because separate but equal has already been found unconstitutional in other cases. Because the only reason to create a new wording is to say "You gays can't be part of this social institution!" Because, well, the only actual motivation for this is, in fact, bigotry - not necessarily frothing, or religious, but certainly bigotry.

Also, your claim of a "historical meaning" shows that you're not very good at history. Note the number of states that have had to amend their laws specifically to ADD gendered language, to keep gay people from marrying. And even if you weren't full of it, it wouldn't actually work as a justification. I mean, keeping the vote for particular classes of people has all kinds of historical justification; so should we take the vote away from women? I mean, now that all the black people more or less own themselves, do they cast their 3/5 of a vote, or does some white dude have to take charge of them? Oh, wait - that's right, progress happens, so these aren't reasonable arguments. And neither is yours. Albeit yours was stupid to start with, because words get redefined all the time, as the things they talk about change. I mean, when you get married, are you going to post your banns? Is the consummation going to be witnessed by the whole village?

It's not some issue of definition that you're angry about; it's the idea that gay people are real people, and that their relationships are valid. Admit it, hopefully deal with and repudiate it someday, or don't, but drop this BS where you try to pretend you have some sort of linguistic principle behind you. Because it's both pathetic and insulting.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[gehrehmee]

Except that restricting it to use of the word 'union' keeps it seen as inferior to marriage and perpetuates separation of 'those homosexual types' from 'us normal folk' and perpetuates discrimination.

Not if you make it equal equal.

Let gay couples have civil unions. Let straight couples have civil unions too.

Let people figure out for themselves what a "marriage" is or isn't, without any government meddling whatsoever.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

Yet I can see how some straights would see that as watering down straight marriages in the name of equality. I don't really buy that, but I cna see how such an attitude would be out there.
(read: 'you/we aren't quite as special anymore')

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[shutdown -p now]

Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage and that the government has a right to redefine marriage?

Frankly, it doesn't matter in the slightest what the US (or any other) constitution says. The sole reason to support same-sex marriage that any sane and non-bigoted person needs is that it is the only arrangement which is fair and non-discriminating.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

Maybe my idea isn't perfect, but I see it as a reasonable compromise except amongst those unwilling to compromise. At least an intermediate step.

I like compromise as a practical reality; I don't like terminological nitpicking.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[shutdown -p now]

Pretty much all gays I know would be perfectly happy to have "totally-not-a-marriage" civil unions, so long as the state also offers that option alone to heterosexual couples. Leave the term "marriage" to the churches - fine.

But if the government gets to define and regulate what marriage is, then any discrimination (including "separate but equal") is unacceptable.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Nursie]

Why should there be intermediate steps or compromise on equality? I really see it that simply.

It's pretty transparent that those unwilling to concede the word 'marriage' are just trying to grasp at discriminatory straws.

The other solution, that the government gets out of the 'marriage' game completely and simply becomes a civil contract broker, suits me fine too. So long as churches and other venues that wish to can marry gay couples. I don't see that happening either though.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

>Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage and that the government has a right to redefine marriage?

This question was answered by the Supreme Court, forty-three years ago, in Loving v. Virginia. Marriage is a fundamental human right which is fully protected under the Constitution. This has been an acknowledged bedrock of American jurisprudence since before men walked on the Moon.

In addition, the enumeration of rights in the Bill of Rights (or anywhere else, for that matter) does not mean that those are the only protected rights. In fact, one has an infinite number of rights which are not enumerated. The Founding Fathers were quite clear about this. This is stated explicitly in the Ninth Amendment, which has been in operation since 1789.

Are there any other questions you want to ask that were answered long before you were born? I'm having a two-for-one special today on "what makes apples fall" and "what causes rainbows."

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[icebraining]

No, they can't choose an existing religion as preferred either. And since plenty of religions are incompatible with each other, combining them all in the Govt. is impossible.

It's called "logic".

(also, read the dozens of texts from the founders specifically stating the intent of that article).

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[nosferatu1001]

No, it really wasnt.

Irrational fear of people who dont stick their dicks where you like to, and atempting to enforce and justify this irrational fear, deserves being knocked back very forcefully.

Sadly belief in an imaginary being is only deemed "insanity" when it isnt a recognised imaginary sky friend.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[TheRaven64]

Make a civil union a state issue, covering things like joint ownership of property, joint tax, inheritance, and so on. Make marriage a religious issue, completely distinct from civil union and carrying no legal weight. Sell it to the left as a way of getting religion out of government and sell it to the right as a way of getting government out of religion.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't tell from the cover? It's got a girl and a gender-ambiguous kid, hippy flowers, a bird wearing makeup, a rainbow, and a double-rainbow...

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Jainith]

I dont see a word about marriage in there.

Perhaps we should just get rid of the whole problematic institution.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Rockoon]

Because it's discrimination you fucking retard.

Married people get special treatment. Gay people say "me too!" .. and you are all like.. "yeah.. gay people deserve special treatment too!"

..and then you say that its discrimination if gay people dont also get that special treatment? .. and have the balls to do so rudely?

Go fuck yourself. I'm single and don't want yet another fucking group of people getting special treatment. THAT is fucking discrimination against me, you hypocrite douche-bag.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Hal_Porter]

Don't tell him that. You'll put some poor therapist out of a job.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Rockoon]

Its fairly obvious to me that people that want to dictate the terms of special treatment, be they calling it 'marriage' or 'civil unions', are the real discriminators.

Remember that in at least one state in our Union of States, it is legal to be married to more than one person at a time. Shouldn't that go for everyone in every state? Isnt that fucking discrimination?

..and why cant I assign those same rights that gays are fighting for to my sister, brother, parent, or child? Isnt that fucking discrimination?

And why do these special rights have to be reciprocal? Can't I assign the rights to (A) while that person assigns them to (B) and (B) assigns them to (C)?

The whole fucking thing that we call marriage is discrimination, and calling it something else while letting homosexuals into it DOESNT FUCKING CHANGE A THING.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Dragonslicer]

I dont see a word about marriage in there.

Perhaps we should just get rid of the whole problematic institution.

If you want to argue that government should have nothing to do with marriage, that's fine. It's a reasonable argument to make, and I wouldn't object to it happening. However, as long as the government is involved in marriage, the fourteenth amendment requires that "any person within its jurisdiction [is not denied] the equal protection of the laws."

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

Not to mention appealing to the state's rights types as well...in your system, would the Feds simply recognize any civil union/marriage recognized by the couple's home state or something like that?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[KingAlanI]

I don't like issues being magically painted "moral issue - not up for discussion !1!1" because of the stubbornness it entails, even if I lean *towards* (perhaps heavily towards) one side or another. All political issues should be up for discussion.

Granted, The Right tends to do the same stuff in the other direction, and with the healthcare reform debacle as a prime example, they seem less willing to compromise, so it skews things against the left when they don't match that.

I find Douglas Adams' following anti-religion quote as surprisingly apt regarding political arguments as well:

"Religion...has certain ideas at the heart of it that we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything about...you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a [political] party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument, but no one feels aggreived by it. But on the other hand if somebody says, 'I musn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say 'I respect that'.

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion on how the Universe began, about who created the Universe ... no, that's holy? ... We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say those things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow that they shouldn't be."

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Quiet_Desperation]

Are Dr. Wilson and Dr. House still living together? I'm a season behind on DVD.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Monkeedude1212]

When Alice and Bob are allowed to get married, but Alice and Bobbi are not, merely because of the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, that is not equal protection under the law.

Am I the only one who mentally replaced "Bobbi" with "Eve" and had a fantasy crypto-erotic day-dream?

Oh yeah... you share that private key... don't worry baby... I got SSH! ...

No? Just me?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[misexistentialist]

True equal protection would mean that everyone would get the government benefits of marriage, or more practically that the discriminatory favoritism of married people be ended. But the government discriminates based on age for running for election, driving, or drinking; on gender for the draft and child custody; and on race for affirmative action and casino development, so restricting marriage to heterosexual non-related couples is hardly unusual.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[speroni]

They should remove "civil marriage" from the government entirely, make it impossible to be legally married. Replace that with "civil union" any two consenting adults can get married. Separation of church and state right?

Then you can get "married" in your church or mosque or macaroni shack.

Everyone has equal rights, and the religious people can still look down on everyone who's not in their particular little club.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

...that hostility was uncalled for.

Perhaps not, but it's perfectly understandable. Ever hear of a little sport called "fag-bashing"?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[badkarmadayaccount]

Redhead and brunette, anyone?

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[geminidomino]

Marriage was not instituted by the government because it preceded any form of government.

Protip: It didn't.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[geminidomino]

that hostility was uncalled for.

No. It was ENTIRELY called for. Simple-minded lying bigots deserve all the hostility, scorn, and contempt thrown at them, and then some.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can show it on tv... But not on the net?

Which is chock full of the most depraved things ever... And indexed by google... And searching for any of it will show you googles own ads.

Ow... the hypocrasy hurts!

Re:What?

[icebraining]

What hypocrisy? Since when does Google show ads on TV?

Different advertisement providers have different standards. News at 11.

On my forum...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google pulled their ads because some guy said "We should nuke China".
ive seen sites with google ad's that got pulled because they linked to torrent files and other stuff. its stupid really.

Re:On my forum...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is trollish, but it has some degree of truth.
Of course Google will pay way more attention is someone talks negatively about China than Georgia instead.

Re:On my forum...

[TheRaven64]

Hmm, doesn't Slashdot use Google ads?

Hey Google, we should nuke China!

protected speech?

[perlchild]

Am I the only one who thinks if they DID take a stance, and make it an opinion piece, they'd have a better case as protected speech? But merely quoting the programs isn't?

Re:protected speech?

[poptones]

Take a stance? They could easily take a stand - tell Google to fuck off with its ad dollars.

When are y'all going to get this isn't censorship, it's marketing? Advertisers don't want to piss off customers, many of whom may well be backward hicks. Money doesn't care if it comes from a hick or an educated genius, it's still money. Google cannot keep its advertisers if they allow their ad software to be plastering ads for Duncan Hines and Soft Soap all over porn sites, or even sites some of those hicks who buy soft soap and duncan hines might consider questionable in their editorial content.

This is completely protected speech - and they have made their decision: money is more important than "educating" (more likely alienating) a bunch of hicks who can't stand the notion of two people having sex. Whoopee.

Re:protected speech?

[hedwards]

Yes, but Google in doing so has abused it's market position for it's own benefit. Theoretically the DoJ ought to be investigating the abuse of power. But then again, the DoJ ought to have used the Clayton Antitrust Act to prevent them from gaining so much control of the online advertising space in the first place.

Re:protected speech?

[TubeSteak]

This is completely protected speech - and they have made their decision: money is more important than "educating" (more likely alienating) a bunch of hicks who can't stand the notion of two people having sex. Whoopee.

I'm not sure you or the GP understands how protected speech works.

If Google decided to drop advertising on all websites that discuss whether or not Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, claiming "parody" is going to get you no where.

A private company is well within its rights to set standards and not do business with another private company because of protected speech that falls outside those standards.

Re:protected speech?

[tepples]

They could easily take a stand - tell Google to fuck off with its ad dollars.

That'd need a lot more donors than TV Tropes currently has.

Re:protected speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very sorry your think that this isn't censorship. Perhaps you have a very narrow definition of what censorship is or perhaps you don't really understand the concept. I assure you that when any person or group of persons demand that any other person or group of persons stop saying, writing, filming, recording, or producing any form of communication IN PUBLIC it is censorship.
Now grow the f*ck up and read a book.

Re:protected speech?

[wvmarle]

Indeed. I can not believe Google is the one and only company that provide such an advertising service. Sure they are the biggest and best known, but there must be others too.

Re:protected speech?

[broken_chaos]

Honestly, I used to be around TV Tropes a lot. Then I wasn't, because of some of the things I'll mention...

In general, the administrative situation over there is terrible, and impossible for any outsiders to assist with. A lack of financing is one of the obvious results of that, likely for several reasons. To start with, there are a grand total of two administrators -- only one of two generally seems active at any given time.

The situation with the site code, design, and maintenance seems a total mess. The code, based on pmWiki, isn't publicly available (using the "application service provider" loophole of the GPL), but I'd hazard a guess at it being absurdly inefficient and poorly coded home-brew schlock. I personally uncovered several major security flaws (the 'learn anyone's password' sort), most of which were utterly ignored until they were publicly discussed by others, and I've also observed that the site is apparently running on a Windows server, which is not very encouraging of the server administration or resource usage. All of that leads me to the assumption that whatever server it's run on is likely vastly overpowered (and over-expensive) for what it would need, even with high traffic, if it were better managed. I mean, there's not even proper client caching headers sent. Setup a proper server-side cache (several sorts for different bits, probably), send proper client-side caching headers, and the traffic load would probably be cut in half right there.

As far as design goes, it's also terrible. JavaScript is used for functions that it is in no way required for, and there is zero graceful degradation in anything that wasn't inherited from pmWiki. Bring up these issues as accessibility problems, and you're brushed off every time. It's very, very poorly indexed by search engines, most of which could be fixed with some simple design changes (such as canonical URL tags, fixing the messy URL path setup in general, and changing some cases of very poor HTML, like not using h# tags for headers). They also allow Flash ads on pages -- and then bitch when people say they use an ad blocker for exactly that reason.

There's also quite a bit of an authoritarian, anti-'commons' sentiment. When inquiring about potential issues with the attribution part of the Attribution/Share Alike licence they use, the initial response was essentially "Okay, we'll just remove the CC licence from everything, we only used that so people wouldn't steal our content." (?!?) -- and this was in the context of removing edit logs because they were 'too long', some of which included notes of text imported from other sources. There's also a huge anti-Wikimedia sentiment -- in itself not necessarily a negative thing for such a website -- which leads to a bizarre sort of elitism about how their pmWiki-based home-brewed wiki software is so much better than Mediawiki (which is built to scale for large websites).

Basically what I'm saying is when you bring up any problems, you'll hit the same 'oh look, there's two people trying to run everything with no community input or help' wall, which was the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced. If things were better run, there's absolutely no reason they couldn't be much closer to self-sufficient without advertisements.

Re:protected speech?

[poptones]

How has Google "abused" its position? Is it controlling editorial content in an unfair way? No, it's allowing its editorial policy to be steered by conservative community standards. That's it. Whoopee. Unless you think dollars in Dallas are worth less than Dollars in Austin, you have no basis. Dollars are dollars, and Google has every right to protect their advertiser base by not alienating the eyeballs that bring it revenue.

Song of Songs

[AnonymousClown]

Please, someone create a TV show based on the Song of Songs of the Bible to fuck with those people.

What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!

Re:Song of Songs

[Doctorer]

It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel. But hey, EVERYONE knows that Slashdot is filled with self-taught genius experts in all fields, particularly philosophy and theology. Yup.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be porn to people who think that the concept of lust has no place in the Bible, and do complex mental acrobatics to convince themselves that Solomon was writing about anything but.

"7:1 How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. 7:2 Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. 7:3 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins."

Oh sure, entirely about his "love for God!"

Re:Song of Songs

[Marcika]

Please, someone create a TV show based on the Song of Songs of the Bible to fuck with those people.

What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!

They would mess it up, badly. Given that the English puritans intentionally mistranslated the reference to cunnilingus in 7:2, and the American puritans mistranslated it again in the NIV, you shouldn't get your hopes up. They might just make some sort of wishy-washy show saying it is an analogy for the love of God for Israel...

(Well maybe if the Germans did it... Luther at least dared to get that translation right.)

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

They made a start with Kings.

Promoted to hell, but died with nary a whimper.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, Song of Songs is erotica, not porn. Porn is a visual depiction of sexual acts, and the Song of Songs isn't visual media. ..Don't be so quick to assume that Christians are all prudes. Stereotypes and rapid judgement like that are dangerous, divisive, and potentially destructive; I mean, pssh, we're not *all* Catholics.

That was a joke.. mostly.

Re:Song of Songs

[cheekyjohnson]

"self-taught genius experts"

Sounds about right.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, Ezekiel 23:20, "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

Re:Song of Songs

[Shadow Wrought]

It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel

So what is "sufficient" for understanding the Bible? Why is simply reading it not good enough?

Re:Song of Songs

[Doctorer]

It would only be porn to people who assume that the ability to read is sufficient for understanding an ancient metaphysical love-song analogy for the love of God for Israel So what is "sufficient" for understanding the Bible? Why is simply reading it not good enough?

What is sufficient for understanding legislation? An anatomy textbook? Slashdot news items? Is the ability to read enough to ensure you understand the meaning (obtuse and profound) of the above examples, or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text?

Re:Song of Songs

[aristotle-dude]

"self-taught genius experts"

Sounds about right.

More like self-described "genius experts".

Re:Song of Songs

[Shadow Wrought]

or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text?

Let's assume learning and experience are requisite to understanding the Bible. That still doesn't answer the question of What learning you think is required. I just have a measly Liberal Arts bachelors. Does that disqualify me? How about Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church? Since he has specific learning and experience with the Bible, should I defer to his views?

Re:Song of Songs

[Doctorer]

or is one expected to have some learning and experience with the context of the text? Let's assume learning and experience are requisite to understanding the Bible. That still doesn't answer the question of What learning you think is required. I just have a measly Liberal Arts bachelors. Does that disqualify me? How about Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church? Since he has specific learning and experience with the Bible, should I defer to his views?

Let me go back to my original post, first of all, and enforce a distinction that I originally made - a particular level of understanding is necessary to understand the Song of Songs. Your question conflated the necessity of learning to understand the Song of Songs with the whole Bible, which is not what I claimed. If we are to talk about the whole Bible, then I would immediately say that different levels of learning are necessary for different books - and the Song of Songs would be at the high end of that range.

Your (and my) Bachelor of Liberal Arts would put you in a better position to critically interpret certain phrases and idiomatic expressions than, say, a Bachelor of Science or high school student. It would not do us much (or even any) better on matters of theological interpretation, since it involves no study of theology.

This leads into the question of the quality of learning - Mr Phelps may claim to be learned in matters theological, but what is the quality of his learning? Are his beliefs intrinsically and extrinsically consistent? Are his theses defensible?

Where they are, you should, and where they are not, you should not defer - but always do so thoughtfully.

Re:Song of Songs

[Your.Master]

Umm, no: porn very much includes the written word. I checked a couple dictionaries just now and it actually lists the written form of porn *first*.

The difference between erotica and pornography is that erotica is thought to have more artistic merit.

Re:Song of Songs

[Brian_Ellenberger]

Please, someone create a TV show based on the Song of Songs of the Bible to fuck with those people.

What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!

Why do you assume that all Christians would be offended? I am a member of one of the most "conservative" Southern Baptist mega churches around, and neither my wife nor I have ever attended a Sunday School or sermon which said that Song of Songs wasn't about sex and wasn't an awesome book. If all you know about Christianity are the stereotypes on TV, I feels sorry for your ignorance. For most Protestant denominations, within marriage sex is considered an extremely wonderful and important part of a couple's relationship.

Re:Song of Songs

[uglyMood]

While I agree with your view that the Song of Songs is erotica, your distinction between erotica and pornography is incorrect. The word pornography comes from the Greek porné (whore) and grapho (to write). It is usually translated as "the writing of whores," or "writing about whores." True, the original meaning of grapho was 'to draw,' as in 'graphics,' but most derivations where it follows a prefix indicate writing: biography, autograph, monograph. (For some reason Slashdot does not appear to allow Greek characters, so please forgive the transliterations.)

Re:Song of Songs

[Shadow Wrought]

I appreciate the more detailed response. I am curious though your thoughts on how the affects a particular book in the Bible might have on a reader's faith influences the interpretations. I am more Agnostic than anything else, so whether the Song of Songs is ancient erotica or a deep, metaphysical testament to God's Love doesn't affect my faith one way or another. To, say, a Puritan, it does. So a Puritan reading it has a vested interest in what the interpretation actually is. You could argue as well that the great unwashed masses of Slashdot want it to be erotica for similar, if opposite, reasons.

So it seems that for every learned scholar who supports it being a metaphysical testament, one for whom I would thoughtfully defer (I really like that thought BTW), there would be at least one other equally learned scholar who says that it simply is what it is: early erotica. So how do you think experts should be weighed?

I should also tell you that I already know my interpretations of the Bible and the other religious works I've read, Book of Mormon, Science and health, and the Koran being the most identifiable; my interpretations are not necessarily those of the masses. Part of that is because in addition to Liberal Arts degree, I've spent a decade as a litigation paralegal. So I've come to add not just the validiaty of a work's entries, but weight as well. Even if everything in the Bible is absolute Truth, I would still think that greater weight for a Christian must be given to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

So, based on the thoughtfulness of your response, I'm surious if you have any thoughts about the adding weight to the discussion? Could Song of Song really just be erotica, but as such given little to no weight as opposed to other portions of the Bible?

Re:Song of Songs

[Mongoose Disciple]

Out of curiousity, does it also come up that Solomon had a pile of wives and that means he had a different definition of marriage than our current/mainstream one?

I kind of assume most of the conservative Southern Baptist megachurches would take to the implications of that like snails take to salt.

Re:Song of Songs

[Doctorer]

I appreciate your interest to my contribution! You have made an excellent distinction between the interpretations of people with different ecclesiological (Puritans vs Catholics) and philosophical (neo-anthropologist) backgrounds.

There is no denying that at its most basic level the Song of Songs discloses a very intimate and detailed sexual relationship. This first point is of great importance because it is the lens by which all other potential insights from the text are examined - for a Puritan Christian, to whom all sexual matters (for argument's sake) must be a hidden, perhaps even shameful affair, the inclusion of this book is at best an embarrassment and at worst an account of Jewish depravity.

For a (catechised) Catholic on the other hand, this book is conclusive proof against the claim that the Catholic religion hates sex - indeed, an entire book of the Bible happily glorifies in sex, and speaks to the joy of what Catholics believe sex should really be (namely, the fullest body-and-soul expression of eternal love between husband and wife).

It's a lot harder for first-language Anglophones to speak about the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians (since their cultural milieu and theological heritage have developed so differently to ours in the Latin West), so please forgive me for leaving them aside.

In my experience most people (believers and non alike) have no exposure to the more obscure books of the old testament - if it doesn't feature Adam and Eve or Moses, people generally don't know about it. This means that when they do stumble upon it, they are generally unprepared - they don't know what to make of it, what it means, why it's even in the Bible. If one is not familiar with the characterisation of God as the victorious bridegroom delighting in his wife, or Israel as the "land that will be married" (both from the Psalms) how can they be expected to read the Song of Songs as God delighting in his eternal marriage to Israel?

This comes back to my point previously about intrinsic and extrinsic consistency - with a text as obscure and confusing as the Song of Songs, one must be suitably prepared to fit it into the greater framework of Sacred Scripture - familiar enough with the other books of the Bible to fit this one into its proper place, and interpret it in light of the others. If taken by itself, without that greater context, then the Song of Songs absolutely does become nothing more than ancient erotica.

But then, returning to context Christians (and Jews, and in a slightly different way Moslems) believe that each book of scripture is divinely inspired, and has a rightful place in man's religious duty to God. Since erotica for its own sake is a selfish act (one that aims at gratifying oneself alone, rather than ordering all things to the greatest good), to conclude that the Song of Songs is simply ancient, self-gratifying erotica places it at odds with the belief that the entirety of sacred scripture is right and good.

You could probably tell me more about what this means to an agnostic, if you have lasted through my ramble. Apologies for my lack of brevity, I sometimes value comprehensiveness at the expense of straightforwardness.

Re:Song of Songs

[mdmkolbe]

Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. (Song of Songs 7:2, NIV)

The point in question is the meaning of the word "sharerech" (transliterated, it seems ./ doesn't do Hebrew script). Most (all?) English translations translate this as "navel" as a derivative of the Hebrew word for umbilical cord. Good evidence for this translation is the use of the word in Ezekiel 16:4 where the meaning is clear from context.

Some claim that the word drives from the Arabic word for secret and thus is a woman's private parts, but the context is describing the looks of a woman dancing (see versus 6:13 "Come back, come back, O Shulammite; come back, come back, that we may gaze on you! Why would you gaze on the Shulammite as on the dance of Mahanaim?"). Thus a navel would be a more natural reference as depending on the style of dance it would be visible.

Some claim that since the sequence of body parts listed goes from feet to head (surrounding verses are of the form "Your [body part] is like [some object]") and the preceding and following body parts are the thighs and belly, then the navel is too high. However this ignores the later verse where eyes are mentioned before the nose which in turn is before the head. So despite what Wikipedia says, this argument is far from conclusive.

IANA Hebrew scholar, but you are incorrect to say it was "intentionally mistranslated". "Navel" is a perfectly reasonable translation. Or perhaps it is a pun in the original language. Of course unlike those "English puritans", modern American sensationalists would prefer the more sexually explicit version.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

> Out of curiousity, does it also come up that Solomon had a pile of wives and that means he had a different definition of marriage than our current/mainstream one?

Only 300 of them were wives, the other 700 were concubines. No, I did not have to look those numbers up. I'm surprised you didn't instead refer to the part when King David was old and infirm, so they found a pretty young lady to keep him warm at night. Or maybe the story about how crazy Lot's daughters were... But they're seen as a condemnation such things rather than an endorsement of it. I mean, who believes that one endorses everything they mention? Or maybe you think that Christians are required to be morally perfect? One of the other points, oft missed, is that a repentant heart leads to forgiveness, even if you've really screwed up.

But yes, that sort of thing did come up. You're talking about people who have read and even memorized passages about things like who begat whom or the numbers in Numbers, when most people's eyes glaze the second anyone starts talking about the number of people from the tribes of Zebulun or Ephraim, let alone the families within each tribe or their allotment of land.

Believe it or not, if it's in the Bible, we know.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

You bring a fascinating point, since polygamy was so widely practiced and was endorsed by some of the churches what happened when you ran out of women? After-all women make up 51% of the population, if everyone had multiple wives, then there must have been a large bachelor cast, unless they also embraced homosexual marriages. Therefor at best only 25% of the male population could practice polygamy, while the rest practiced self-love.

All I have to say is that the polygamist utopia sucked for a large percentage of the men.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiousity, does it also come up that Solomon had a pile of wives and that means he had a different definition of marriage than our current/mainstream one?

I kind of assume most of the conservative Southern Baptist megachurches would take to the implications of that like snails take to salt.

They really hate it when you mention that women were married when they attained adulthood, which was traditionally around the age of 14 (whenever they got their period). Yes, that's right, many of the Bible's most revered figures were in their 40's or 50's and marrying multiple girls in their early teens. Today we'd call them "pedophiles", and after a mental evaluation (since they're claiming to hear voices and talk to God) would be confined to a state or federal mental institution.

Re:Song of Songs

[coaxial]

7:3 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins."

Oh sure, entirely about his "love for God!"

Breasts? God must have really let himself go.

Re:Song of Songs

[SharpFang]

German porn based on the Bible?

Anyway, that very wishy-washy love of God for Israel could be taken right with a literal translation of the metaphor to screen. So that the porn actress is in fact a metaphor for Israel, and the male actor plays God, and all they do is a metaphor...

Re:Song of Songs

[nvll]

Thanks for that fascinating linguistic analysis! However from a functional perspective I think your argument weakens. Have you ever tried to fit a goblet's worth of wine in a naval? I've never managed more than a teaspoon, whereas ... And then there is the implied issue of self-generated liquor.

Re:Song of Songs

[TheRaven64]

After-all women make up 51% of the population, if everyone had multiple wives, then there must have been a large bachelor cast, unless they also embraced homosexual marriages

The do now. This was not always the case in primitive societies. The women would typically be kept at home where it was safe, while the men were sent out to hunt or fight. In the case of a conflict between tribes, the men in the losing tribe would be killed, but the women would be captured. This meant that there were often significantly more women than men.

Re:Song of Songs

[hey!]

It wouldn't be porn to people who think that the concept of lust has no place in the Bible,

Without taking a position one way or the other in that question, what is illustrated in Song of Songs is erotic love, not lust. These have many superficial characteristics in common, and have considerable connection to each other, but they differ in one essential respect: lust is easy to satisfy; erotic love is impossible to satisfy. As an illustration of this distinction, you might be very interested in having intercourse with some porn star without having any interest in spending every moment of the rest of your life with her.

Lust is just one of the ways in which erotic love manifests itself, along with exaggerated interest in everything the loved object says or thinks. All of these phenomena can be caused by erotic love, but can also exist independently of it.

From a certain standpoint, you could argue that lust is a simple, healthy physical drive whereas erotic love looks a lot like mental illness.

Re:Song of Songs

[moonbender]

Sadly, the reverse is often equally true.

Re:Song of Songs

[jeffasselin]

Erotica!

It's art!

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the Northern Mormons churches take to it like white on rice...

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of who begat whom, who was Joseph's father, again? You know, the virgin Mary's husband? I can never remember; was it Jacob, or Eli?

Re:Song of Songs

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'm surprised you didn't instead refer to the part when King David was old and infirm, so they found a pretty young lady to keep him warm at night. Or maybe the story about how crazy Lot's daughters were...

Well, the conversation upthread was Solomon, so it seemed more topical.

Good for you (I'm not being sarcastic, in case that's lost in text) for having actually read your holy book -- I run into too many people who haven't.

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

That will be 'pornography' which translates from the greek into roughly "the writings of prostitutes". Clearly nothing to do with writing then...

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the GP was obviously wrong, this is a book about the love of a man for his wife, and it is, many times, sexually explicit.

Which just goes to show that any christians that feel that marital sex is anything to be ashamed of is poorly informed, I mean The Book has an entire book on the subject, and it is, to put it lightly, highly erotic.

Re:Song of Songs

[steelfood]

Romance is the new porn.

Not sure what the new romance is.

Re:Song of Songs

[AK Marc]

You bring a fascinating point, since polygamy was so widely practiced and was endorsed by some of the churches what happened when you ran out of women?

You have a war.

Re:Song of Songs

[Shadow Wrought]

I greatly appreciate the response, actually. I'm just sorry it took so long to get back to you...

The Song of Songs I really just read as ancient erotica. I didn't think it was a bad thing though, I thought it helped to give the Bible more completeness. Love and intimacy are as much a part of life as any of the other larger social things discussed. In addition to my Liberal Arts background, I've also spent the last decade in the legal field. So I place as much emphasis on weight as I do on validity. (I might have written that already: yesterday was a long time ago:-) So Song of Songs, even if it is nothing more than early erotica, is still wholly valid, it just doesn't receive as much weight.

What bothers me is that I think many, many people weight the passages of the Bible that agree with their own perspective. Especially when it comes to homosexuality. It seems odd that they give so much greater weight to that commandment, but all the stuff about shrimp, and putting to death a women if she re-marries her husband are given a shrug and a, "meh."

The core of my philosophy, or belief, is that religions are akin to different languages. If a Catholic, Mormon, Islamic, or any other missionary goes to a foreign country to teach their "Word," they tend to do so in that country's native tongue. I see no reason why Religions cannot be thought of as different languages. God is, assume, fluent in them all. Just as 10 people witnessing the same event see it 10 different ways, each of which is true, even though they conflict; so to is it with religions. I don't think any one can ever claim "The Truth." But, they can see a part of it. And, if we look at them as an aggregate, I think there are a lot of amazing lessons to be learned.

Even an Atheist would have to admit to the value of philosophy being taught by Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Even if he's just a charlatan, his philosophy about kindness and decency are worth listening to.

Does that help? Or was it too much of a late night tangent? :-)

Re:Song of Songs

[badkarmadayaccount]

^W^Waddiction.
FTFY.

obligatory...

[mug funky]

Damn you, Slashdot! http://xkcd.com/609/

describing a family is family unfriendly?

[corbettw]

Seriously, how the fuck is describing a family unit that is headed by two females in any way, shape, or form "family unfriendly"? What the fuck is wrong with the world?

I hope the Human Rights Campaign (which my wife and I donate regularly to) takes note of this and lowers Google's ranking over it. It's just disgusting that they would act this way.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Fast Thick Pants]

In retaliation, Google can lower the Human Rights Campaign's pagerank.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[hedwards]

Because it's the "Christians" that are the sole arbiters of what is and is not family friendly, duh. But seriously, there's a lot of small minded bigots out there that like to use things like this to erase as many traces of things they might have to think about as possible.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Lanteran]

It'd probably be canceled out by google's ending their censorship in china. Not that I disagree with you.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[cduffy]

I hope the Human Rights Campaign (which my wife and I donate regularly to) takes note of this and lowers Google's ranking over it.

Nobody from Google made that judgement; rather, TV Tropes' own users did... though the summary is certainly edited in such a way as to imply otherwise.

That said, the users from TV Tropes are self-censoring conservatively on account of not knowing exactly what Google dinged them for... which is clearly Not Cool.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[dcollins]

Well, admittedly the article itself describes it as, "A family unit that cheerfully ignores the traditional view of a family... drew the ire of many conservative groups for its proposed use in the New York school system to portray a lesbian family as normal, wholesome, and happy."

Now, I don't think this a threat to anyone's family in any way. But apparently there's a strongly-felt other side to that argument, which is actually referenced by the article itself. So you can at least see how this got picked up by this (undesirable) screening process.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[NemoinSpace]

Well it starts and ends like this: Family is basically the principal institution for the socialization of children. When you start forming family units that are no longer capable of producing the primary mission, you are the one that has fucked up
Just because you accept it, means I should too? I think not. I am not sure what Google's motives are, I wouldn't have clicked the link to begin with. I suggest you take your superior moral outrage with you on your way to BING.

There is a difference between tolerance and acceptance.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Mongoose Disciple]

When you start forming family units that are no longer capable of producing the primary mission, you are the one that has fucked up

And when we persecute heterosexual couples who either choose to have no children or are sterile, your point of view will seem less comical.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[wvmarle]

And I wonder whether such bahaviour from Google's side would become an abuse of a monopoly. Or isn't their search market share big enough to be considered a monopolist?

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[mvdwege]

The summary is 100% unedited my own words. I am nowhere implying that Google made that judgment, I mean exactly what I wrote: Google's withdrawal of advertising has led TV Tropes to self-censor.

Mart

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, how the fuck is describing a family unit that is headed by two females in any way, shape, or form "family unfriendly"?

Family-friendly is not the same thing as family-related. The term 'family-friendly' is generally used to mean "appropriate for viewing and discussion by ALL ages, from infants to seniors". Most people would not consider a highly charged political and religious debate which involves frank discussion of sexual behavior to be 'family friendly' at all, no matter what your opinion on the subject itself happens to be.

I hope the Human Rights Campaign (which my wife and I donate regularly to) takes note of this and lowers Google's ranking over it. It's just disgusting that they would act this way.

I hope the Human Rights Campaign chooses to focus on issues of, well, human rights, and not worry about someone putting a "warning- you might not want your kids exposed to this yet" on a site. Specifically, on a site containing a debate that literally millions of people do not want their kids involved in.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you start forming family units that are no longer capable of producing the primary mission, you are the one that has fucked up

And when we persecute heterosexual couples who either choose to have no children or are sterile, your point of view will seem less comical.

And when we start persecuting anybody who lives together without being married, your comment will make sense. Because right now, same-sex couples aren't being treated any differently than any other non-married pair of people, or single person. There is a vast difference between giving one group preferential treatment over everybody else, and persecuting a specific group of people.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, how the fuck is describing a family unit that is headed by two females in any way, shape, or form "family unfriendly"? What the fuck is wrong with the world?

I hope the Human Rights Campaign (which my wife and I donate regularly to) takes note of this and lowers Google's ranking over it. It's just disgusting that they would act this way.

Here is the actual warning which is displayed. Italics are theirs:

"However, you are going into a section of the wiki that may be less family friendly. Topics and discussion intended for a mature audience are in this section of the wiki. "

Yes, here we have a clear Human Rights Violation. Fuck clean water, fuck child sex slavery, fuck 2nd-class women, we've got a really massive Human Rights Violation going on here and we need ALL our resources! Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!

If you really want to know what's wrong with the world I'll tell you- It's assholes like you that don't bother educating yourself, assume everything you read is true, and fly off the handle screaming hellfire and damnation over anything that happens to possible differ from your own opinion. Fuck you, and Fuck your smug sense of self-importance.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[nosferatu1001]

Your "basically" is false.

Which tends to lead to a false conclusion. Not that you shoudl need telling of course...

Your definition of "family" is also way off.. 0 /10 for accuracy.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[TheRaven64]

Google didn't end their censorship in China. They temporarily disabled it, got a lot of free publicity, then brought it back after the Chinese government threatened to block them completely.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather a billion families that are 'no longer capable of producing the primary mission' than just one where the primary mission is to perpetuate the bigotry that is supported in this post.

If we're going to use standards like 'whether they can have children' to decide what constitutes a family - then maybe we should start asking what other harms to societal inclusion should be removed from the 'sanctioned family' category as well?

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disgusting that people find this disgusting

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Just Some Guy]

Well it starts and ends like this: Family is basically the principal institution for the socialization of children.

I'm a straight, married Conservative with 4 kids, and think you're utterly wrong. First, that's your idea of what "family" means, and there are a lot of couples (subset of "families") who think it means having an intimate, personal relationship with someone they love and want to share time with. Second, the topic at hand is about couples (who happen to be gay) who are raising and "socializing" children, which is pretty much exactly your definition of a family.

Unless, of course, by "socialization of children" you meant "teaching of my specific mores to children".

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

So having a statistically large demographic that believes such a relationship is morally wrong or at least improper to show children is not grounds for "possibly family unsafe"? I would say that a decent threshold might be whether or not more than 10-20% of parents would find the content objectionable. You and the Human Rights Campaign might find it disgusting or wrong to find it objectionable, but Google doesn't want those 10-20% of parents associating its name with inappropriate content. The gay rights movement stopped being for human rights when it switched from asking for toleration to demanding affirmation of homosexuality. You want a "chilling effect"? Take a look at the chorus of "bigotry" thrown at people for voicing their own beliefs on morality.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Lanteran]

If I go to google.cn, it's still just a link box to google.hk. I did a test search on Tienanmen square, and it showed relevant results.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[cduffy]

Because right now, same-sex couples aren't being treated any differently than any other non-married pair of people, or single person.

But they're certainly treated differently from married couples, which is the point you're attempting to sidestep.

Inheritance rules, hospital visitations, adoptions, tax reasons... and if you're going to argue that tax benefits to being married exist for the benefit of children, why do my wife and I -- who have no intention of ever procreating -- receive them, while our good friends who recently adopted a child (but whose marriage is not recognized by the State of Texas on account of their gender) don't?

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[dreampod]

If they arbitrarily lowered HRC's pagerank than it would definitely be an abuse of their monopoly. On the other hand if they altered their algorithm in a way that negatively effected HRC's pagerank, but also collaterally altered other sites rankings it would probably be ok. As long as they can make a straight-faced argument that their change somehow improved the accuracy of the system then they would win any lawsuit that could be brought agaisnt them.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[wvmarle]

winning lawsuit != (long term) profit.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[NemoinSpace]

a subset of a family, is not a family. Otherwise I'd have called it that. Consenting couples of any inclination should feel free to do whatever they want. Couples with children, in most of the States are dictated by Societies laws which pretty much are set by the majority of the people, and ar pretty much put in place to ensure the survival of said society. So by socialization, I mean passing a culture to the next generation. I get a little weary of the Orwellian double speak where terms like marriage and family get diluted to the point of being unrecognizable. Get back to me when a gay couple successfully passes down their traditions to their biological grandchildren
Second,the topic at hand was a link on a freakin website and politically correct people jumping all over Google for not being liberal enough. Don't expect me to be sorry for being the not so silent majority.

That's not the real reason

[AdmiralXyz]

The real reason behind Google pulling their advertising is pressure from governments and schools to increase worker/student productivity, and if you think I'm kidding, you've never been to TvTropes. As far as a free-time black hole, it's orders of magnitude worse than Facebook.

Re:That's not the real reason

[tepples]

As far as a free-time black hole, it's orders of magnitude worse than Facebook.

But once you've completed your initial binge on TV Tropes, it isn't any more of a time waster than Wikipedia. You can wiki walk on any large wiki, but they become shorter as you become familiar with the subject matter.

Re:That's not the real reason

[mvdwege]

You know, being a time-waster is not against the AdSense Terms of Service. Or can you point me to evidence to the contrary?

Mart

Re:That's not the real reason

[KingAlanI]

I agree with you, but cracked.com can also be in the running.

Re:That's not the real reason

[SharpFang]

But being a time-waster is EVIL.

Re:That's not the real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to click that link, then I realised: It's a trap!

Re:That's not the real reason

[Requiem18th]

He/she is talking about an ArchiveBinge. For the record.

Re:That's not the real reason

[Xtifr]

But once you've completed your initial binge on TV Tropes, it isn't any more of a time waster than Wikipedia.

Cool! How many years does that "initial binge" take? Because I've been visiting TVTropes off-and-on for over two years now, and I still find it as much of a black hole as ever. :)

Re:That's not the real reason

[tepples]

Cool! How many years does that "initial binge" take?

It took me a few months. Nowadays, occasionally I visit and end up with a dozen tabs open, but my point is that the same thing happens on Wikipedia.

Family friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I certainly don't agree with Google using its advertising to promote "family friendliness" in a site, to claim that this site is completely blameless is a little disingenuous (hint: notice the drawing on the right).

Now, that kind of picture doesn't bother me one bit, but it will bother some. Either they have complained to Google at some point or Google is preempting their complaints.

Re:Family friendly?

[eriqk]

People who have a problem with that picture really should move to Saudi Arabia.

How are you supposed to recycle/rehash...

[Yergle143]

...plotlines if there is some damn website giving out all the magic tricks to the little ones. Battlestar Galactica: WOW! The crew is named Adem and Eeve and then named the primitive planet Urth. V: Wow! The Aliens want our water. Star Trek: Wow! An creature made entirely of some unknown energy. Glee: Wow! Will the gang of misfits prevail?!

Re:How are you supposed to recycle/rehash...

[zeroshade]

Perhaps come up with something new?

Wait, what was I thinking....Of course we have to recycle and rehash. No one creates anything new anymore...

Re:How are you supposed to recycle/rehash...

[Anonymous Coward]

Glee: Wow! Will the gang of misfits prevail?!

Are you saying that they ripped off the San Francisco Giants?

Hopefully rectified quickly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that a company as stocked with nerds as Google has a fair number of employees who value TV Tropes. Eventually, some of those guys will hunt down the paper-pushing marketeer/lawyer who fucked this up and read him the riot act.

The tyranny of children...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a mature adult, I object to having every aspect of my media dumbed down
to avoid inflicting the truth on children.

I'm entitled to be entertained at levels significantly above 5th grade.

Not all of us are average ;-)

Re:The tyranny of children...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a mature adult, I object to having every aspect of my media dumbed down
to avoid inflicting the truth on children.

I'm entitled to be entertained at levels significantly above 5th grade.

Not all of us are average ;-)

Yet you post to slashdot.

Re:The tyranny of children...

[cheekyjohnson]

"As a mature adult, I object to having every aspect of my media dumbed down to avoid inflicting the truth on children."

As someone who isn't completely detached from reality, I object to censoring (yes, I know that this isn't necessarily censorship) anything in the name of children. Even children know what is fiction and what is not, and even if they don't, they won't magically become a murder/rapist because of content that they viewed.

Re:The tyranny of children...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

As a cloistered, intolerant, outraged ball of suet, I am offended and insulted by not only by the content of your post, but the very existence of it. Furthermore, the possibility of you being able to make other posts like it frightens and upsets me.

Therefore, by the powers vested in me by public mass hysteria, I denounce both you and your post and move that you both be stricken from the internet for the sake of the children and for all.

And guess what pal; now I've got the mighty Google behind me. Let's see you blog your way out of this one now.

Re:The tyranny of children...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all of us are average ;-)

No, only mean people are average.

Re:The tyranny of children...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there.

Re:The tyranny of children...

[badkarmadayaccount]

Ever got your e-mail slashdoted, bub?

Oh really?

[QuantumG]

I thought TV Tropes was being banned because you can waste *days* reading that website and end up destroying your vocabulary. ;)

Re:Oh really?

[Xtifr]

you can waste *days* reading that website

As explained here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TvTropesWillRuinYourLife

end up destroying your vocabulary

As explained here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TVTropesWillRuinYourVocabulary.

Upside down world?

[Concerned Onlooker]

So, some "non-traditional" values are worrisome to Google? More worrisome than dealing with authoritarian governments who truly have some terrible "traditional" values?

Re:Upside down world?

[Tim C]

Well, yes - dealing with authoritarian governments is at best expensive and difficult and at worst may end up with you dead; dealing with some community run TV site is much easier and safer.

Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[Ron Bennett]

Since they have years worth of AdSense data, surely they know who their primary advertisers are.

They should approach those advertisers and deal direct, which would allow the site to operate more freely. As a bonus, cutting out the middleman (Google), would likely result in more revenue than before.

Selling ads is presumably not their forte, so the site would likely need to find someone versed in on-line sales and price negotiations - could be well worth the effort in the long-run verses passively relying on Google.

Ron

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[DerekLyons]

They should approach those advertisers and deal direct, which would allow the site to operate more freely. As a bonus, cutting out the middleman (Google), would likely result in more revenue than before.

There's a reason why people use middlemen. Sure, they take a cut of the revenue - but they also do much of the heavy lifting. I seriously doubt that many websites can make any money off of advertising if they have to pay for all the legwork that 'approaching those advertisers and dealing directly' would require. (Assuming the advertisers are willing to spend the time/money/effort it takes to deal with individual websites - there's a reason why they are using middlemen too.)

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[tverbeek]

Another solution would be alternative ad networks that allow web sites catering to adult audiences. I'm a bit surprised that there don't seem to be any, or that Google itself doesn't have such a service.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[Anonymous Coward]

... find someone versed in on-line sales and price negotiations

Like google?

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea... use the advertisers themselves, who have no qualms about installing malware... or running annoying Flash ads... or selling your info to outside companies. AdSense works because it has some amount of trust. Every other delivery method is adblocker meat.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[bertoelcon]

Another solution would be alternative ad networks that allow web sites catering to adult audiences. I'm a bit surprised that there don't seem to be any, or that Google itself doesn't have such a service.

There are, but it is the more questionable ad networks that do it.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[mibus]

tvtropes is very likely large enough to make it worthwhile.

I previously worked with a company that sold ~10-20M banner impressions per month (so, under that in raw pageviews) and it was more than worth our while dealing directly instead of via Google. Google AdWords paid very poorly in comparison to what our (energetic and talented :) ad salesman got us.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[DerekLyons]

tvtropes is very likely large enough to make it worthwhile.

Maybe, but almost certainly not. It's a very niche audience on a fairly small site.
 

I previously worked with a company that sold ~10-20M banner impressions per month (so, under that in raw pageviews) and it was more than worth our while dealing directly instead of via Google.

I find it hard to believe that so few impressions paid the salary of a salesman and left anything over to make it worth selling the ads in the first place. That tells me you have a site that people want to advertise on - either due to the nature of your demographics or the nature of your content.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[mibus]

It's a very niche audience

The bulk of impressions I had, came from a forum about CG & VFX & digital art "stuff".

That tells me you have a site that people want to advertise on

Sure - and I'm sure that TVTropes could find advertisers willing to go directly with them.

It's also not an all-or-nothing necessarily; they could serve ads via a proxy (eg. an OpenX install) that picks either a direct advertiser ad or an AdWord ad, depending on impression levels.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[broken_chaos]

or running annoying Flash ads [. . .] AdSense works because it has some amount of trust.

It lost what little trust I had in it when it started running Flash ads.

Which family?

[rueger]

Sure as hell not mine! Most six year olds I know these days know of at least a couple same sex couples, and honestly couldn't care less.

Now if you want to warn people away from America's Next Top Model, I'm with you - no child should be traumatized by watching that!

Happening to many sites

[Anon E. Muss]

Google seems to have recently started enforcing AsSense TOS in ways that they were never enforced them before. It's their business, and they have the right to set whatever TOS they want. I also have the right to think they're a bunch of assholes.

See also: the-great-google-adsense-purge-of-2010

paranoid

[cybrodroid]

Censorship and content warnings (regardless of how arbitrary they may seem) are not even remotely the same thing. Even though you or I may feel that two females raising a child isn't a big deal, there are people who seriously object. But what is it with .'ers and these misleading headlines. Someone always calls it out instantly, but then again, I guess that means someone always comments. Personally, I don't think this is that bad. In fact, I think it would be kind of neat if there were standards set up for classification. All this would be background info that people would provide themselves (initially, with checks in place to fix fake info, and with people scouring the web for those who don't care to provide), only to be accessed by any given "parental blocking" type software. Let it be there, but keep it out of my face unless/until I care. As much as I tend to find ratings (especially game ones) are absolutely useless, when there is more content than any one person could sift through in a lifetime, but potentially stumble upon any of it at any time, some form of guideline would certainly be helpful. Either way, this is a company that has a choice in who to advertise with. You can argue that Google is too big and ingrained in the current structure of the web to take too many liberties with this sort of thing, but you don't ever hear anyone crying for 4chan now do you?

Re:paranoid

[mvdwege]

Actually, they are. Censorship is the suppression or editing of information on moral or political grounds. Putting it behind a content warning may not be deleting it, but it takes a very narrow definition of censorship to say that this is not (self-)censorship.

Mart

Re:paranoid

[Pentium100]

Even though you or I may feel that two females raising a child isn't a big deal, there are people who seriously object.

Somebody will object to anything, so how about just putting a warning on the ISPs contract - "The internet is not filtered and may contain objectionable material".

Family safe....

[antifoidulus]

Do the ostensibly "pro-family" conservatives who seem to idolize the time before the industrial revolution realize that for most of human history children were exposed to their parents having sex with eachother(or other people for that matter) from a very young age. What do they think happened in those 1 room houses? The parents would kick all the kids out in the middle of winter so they could have time to bang out a quickie? I don't know where these people are getting information on children and sexuality, but it aint from the right place(hell, some of these people are Catholic so they seem to think it's ok for priests to diddle little kids, just as long as they don't talk about what they are doing.)

This...

[Chicken_Kickers]

From the Tvtropes site linked in the summary:

We got audited by a human and they haven't been yet. The most likely explanation for that is that someone officially complained to Google about something here.

(my bolding) My guess is someone with an axe to grind complained to Google and with what the ultra-litigious society that is America now, Google decided to cover their ass.

1st amendment at work

[Charliemopps]

TV Tropes has the first amendment right to say whatever they like. Google has an equal right not to support them. This is exactly how censorship should work. No government involvement, no heavy hand laws or hypocritical politicians to be seen. TV Tropes could still publish whatever they'd like, but TV Tropes has decided that profit is more important than keeping the warning labels off their content. This should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, not as if Google is trying to squash their speech. Everyone has the right to speech, but if they want a megaphone, someone has to pay for it.

Re:1st amendment at work

[cheekyjohnson]

"This is exactly how censorship should work."

A giant corporation with a large amount of influence dropping support for people that dare say something against their views? I mean, yes, if censorship exists at all, I'd rather have this happen than the government doing it, but that doesn't mean that censorship isn't completely pointless and an obscenity in and of itself.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Charliemopps]

I very much doubt this has anything to do with Googles views. It has to do with Googles customers having a reasonable expectation that their ads not show up supporting something they might think is questionable. And in this case, the exact same content is still there, it just has a quick warning blurb in front of it that in now way hinders it's affect. Google has every right to do this. This is how it's supposed to work. You just agree with the outcome. You have every right to boycott Googles goods and services in protest, but of course, you'd be doing exactly the same as Google then wouldn't you? It's you're right, go for it.

Re:1st amendment at work

[bonch]

This has nothing to do with the First Amendment, which is protection of free speech from the government. Nobody's talking about the First Amendment or rights.

What people are talking about is how stupid and arbitrary Google's behavior is.

Re:1st amendment at work

[cheekyjohnson]

"It has to do with Googles customers having a reasonable expectation that their ads not show up supporting something they might think is questionable."

But, really, who are we talking about here? Anyone who doesn't like the website can just... not visit it. It's not hard to understand, but then again we are talking about people that are so detached from reality that they can't possibly be saved, so I wouldn't be surprised if this decision was encouraged by them.

"it just has a quick warning blurb in front of it that in now way hinders it's affect."

Yeah, but that still doesn't make this any less annoying and pointless.

Re:1st amendment at work

[dragonhunter21]

This is exactly how censorship should work.

And an even better reason why censorship- in any form- shouldn't be allowed in an, if you'll allow me to borrow the expression, enlightened society.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Google's customers should be able to opt out of appearing on such pages if they don't like it, not force the pages to include some useless disclaimer page.

Want to bet the same ads are still showing up on the pages?

Re:1st amendment at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep on kidding yourself.

Re:1st amendment at work

[dasdrewid]

This should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, not as if Google is trying to squash their speech.

No, this should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, *AND* as if Google is trying to squash their speech. You're right, there is no government intervention, so we're fine as far as 1st Amendment going. We still are left with Google using it's business to discourage free speech. Someone has to pay for it, you're right. But there are many people who can pay for it and letting Google have a free pass just because they have the right to is wrong. Raising the alarm that Google is doing something "evil", boycotting, avoiding Google products, etc, are great examples of free speech, as well.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Anonymous Coward]

But, really, who are we talking about here? Anyone who doesn't like the website can just... not visit it

That's like saying someone who has seen Goatse can "just forget it." What has been seen cannot be unseen. You can't know you don't like a website until you do visit it. Should they just shrug and move on? Yeah. But we're talking about the same people who wanted to start a civil war over Janet Jackson's 2-second nipple slip.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Tangent128]

TV Tropes has decided that profit is more important than keeping the warning labels off their content.

More accurately, "continuing to exist without choking levels of advertising or cutting back on community" has been deemed more important than keeping the warning labels off.

Re:1st amendment at work

[anti-pop-frustration]

U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed... If you've got the money!

Everyone has the right to speech, but if they want a megaphone, someone has to pay for it.

The megaphone part is exactly what is wrong with free speech in America right now. Go ahead and exercise your first amendment right in the woods (aka a “Free speech zone”), but good luck if you want to exercise that same right on any kind of mass media. Want to say anything on a national level that might upset a corporation? Not possible unless you’ve got the resource to outspend them.
In essence, freedom of expression now has a financial barrier of entry and this prevents significant critical discourse from ever reaching the broad public. This is how you manufacture consent, by keeping dissident voices out of the loop.

Money dictates the public and political discourse in America. The government isn't telling Americans what they can and can't say, corporations are. And the TV-Tropes case is a perfect example of that.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when a company acquires an information monopoly as big as Google's then effictively the company has become a kind of government branch. Unelected and unanswerable, but their influence is certainly on par with that of many governments. Our laws simply aren't ready to deal with situations like this.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Hatta]

I mean, yes, if censorship exists at all, I'd rather have this happen than the government doing it,

Oh, no. I have to disagree. As Chomsky says, the government is potentially democratic, corporations are pure tyrannies. If I have a problem with the FCC censoring someone, at least I can pressure my representatives to change the policy. With Google, I have no sway at all. I don't even know who I would complain to.

Economic power is political power. When we limit the power of government, private power fills in that void unless we limit that too. We haven't gotten that far yet, but we need to if we are ever going to be free people again.

Re:1st amendment at work

[DragonWriter]

TV Tropes has the first amendment right to say whatever they like. Google has an equal right not to support them. This is exactly how censorship should work.

Saying that Google should have the legal right to do this (or to refrain from doing this) is not the same thing as saying that Google should do it.

It is possible to believe both that the law should not prevent a particular course of action while at the same time believing that the actor that is legally free to take that course of action should not choose to do so.

This should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, not as if Google is trying to squash their speech.

Since that is exactly what Google is doing, I disagree. The first amendment at its best is when people exercising their legal freedoms provided by the First Amendment use them in manners that produce good outcomes, not when they do so and produce bad outcomes that, nevertheless, are not so bad as to be worse than the sum of bad outcomes that would be produced when people aren't free.

This should be, at best, recognized as an accepted cost of 1st Amendment freedom, not celebrated as the First Amendment at its best.

Re:1st amendment at work

[alexo]

A giant corporation with a large amount of influence dropping support for people that dare say something against their views?

What's the alternative? Forcing corporations to support people that go against their views?

Re:1st amendment at work

[cheekyjohnson]

No, I just meant that censorship is idiotic in all forms and that I'd rather it not exist.

It ain't just Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Church of Happyology isn't so thrilled about TVTropes, either.

CAPTCHA: Impeach.

*yawn*

[Altanar]

Until Google actually makes a statement on this, I'm just writing it off as a single Google employee misrepresenting company opinion and a (relatively) small website complaining to a favorable audience instead of doing the appropriate thing and appealing to someone else at Google.

Re:*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

TVTropes.com has been in contact with Google from the beginning, determining what has to be done to be reinstated as good standing customers. The appeals process began within days, as soon as a strategy for being "safe for Google" was formulated and began being implemented.

No official requests have been made from TV Tropes management to have the internet community demand Google change their policy. The site has been in technical violation since the beginning, and is only in this position now because someone got offended and reported it to Google.

Re:*yawn*

[bonch]

Uh...why? That you titled your post "yawn" and outright proclaimed that you're writing this off is almost unbelievable, especially after the vitriol other companies get around here, such as Apple when it comes to the app approval process.

Is Google fanboyism really so blind?

Re:*yawn*

[dragonhunter21]

Look at it this way- Yes, we have blind fanboyism and vitriolic hate. But we have people who call them out on it as well, and they're not pushed to the bottom of the stack.

It's an improvement over CNN and Fox's comment threads, anyway. The only thing they're good for is trolling (And a mighty fun pastime that is, to be sure).

Re:*yawn*

[Anonymous Coward]

It says right in the damn article that they're appealing to Google. Talk about a knee-jerk, defensive reaction to your beloved Google getting criticized. What happened to holding a company accountable for its actions?

  "Yawn, I don't care that this company I happen to like is acting shitty." Sigh.

Re:*yawn*

[ToasterMonkey]

Until Google actually makes a statement on this, I'm just writing it off as a single Google employee misrepresenting company opinion and a (relatively) small website complaining to a favorable audience instead of doing the appropriate thing and appealing to someone else at Google.

As an experiment, lets copy and paste this s/Google/Microsoft,Apple,Sony,Whatever/g and see if it works elsewhere.

Re:*yawn*

[mvdwege]

Erm. The closest thing the AdSense Terms of Service come is the mention of 'no pornography'. If relatively innocuous pages like 'Has Two Mommies' is a technical violation of that in your eyes, I suggest you visit an optometrist.

Mart

Not Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is doing a service by warning users they are visiting tv tropes, so they have a chance to escape.

Big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the content is still there, and the only difference is a single screen click-through that you can skip entirely if you just register an account with TvTropes. This isn't censoring anyway, advertisers have had the right to stop advertising with any business they want to for hundreds of years.

I am a fan of TVTropes and have wasted a lot of my life there. But this news item is just trolling and should be recognized as such.

Re:Big deal.

[Robert Zenz]

I'd +1 you if I could.

Blaze

[Anonymous Coward]

like rancid coffee poured onto the concrete, evil spreads.

This is not a rights issue...

[Entropius]

... where "rights" means rights guaranteed by law.

Google can choose to do business with whomever they want. But while this isn't a legal problem it's still the symptom of a problem: that prudish Christians have far too much sway in our country, and that Google actually takes seriously the idea that some idiot with a cross up his bum might whine loudly enough for it to impact Google.

The fact that Google's response wasn't "sorry if this site mentions tits, many of us have them, go away now" is a problem, and not a problem with Google necessarily; it's a problem with our society, and the whiny Christians that get their way in it.

Re:This is not a rights issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

This article chose only the most mild TvTropes articles to show that they were "censored". There are articles such as High Octane Nightmare Fuel that do deserve the warning far more than this token example with the lesbians with a kid.

Re:This is not a rights issue...

[Entropius]

And I've read it.

The writing there is no more disturbing than going to the BBC News and seeing that my tax money is going to blindfold people and run electricity through their genitalia at Abu Ghraib, yet Google has no problem advertising on the BBC.

Re:This is not a rights issue...

[mvdwege]

I picked exactly of the mildest pages behind the warning to show the absurdity of the situation. I'd have no problem if the entire 'Porn Tropes' index landed behind the warning, but any discussion of human sexuality, or even a simple discussion of alternate family compositions in fiction? That just shows how utterly idiotic American neo-Puritanism has become.

Mart

Welcome

[turkeyfish]

You have entered into the brave new world of privatized America. Do not attempt to adjust your internet experience. We will control all that you see and hear.

Re:Welcome

[feepness]

You have entered into the brave new world of privatized America. Do not attempt to adjust your internet experience. We will control all that you see and hear.

Yeah, it was much better when website advertising was run by the government.

Re:Welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

The family-friendly, corporate Internet will come. Consume and obey, that's your only purpose in live and you will step in line!

Re:Welcome

[icebraining]

Bullshit. The web isn't like that, at least yet.

They can use another advertisement provider.

They can take down all ads and set up a donation page. They can sell products, like TShirts or whatever.

Private companies only control your website if you and your users let them.

Re:Welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I wouldn't mind two distinct internets with an option in the browser to switch between them (or to stick with one or the other), so all the people who want to live in their isolated little commercial capsules can do so, and everyone else can just make our own distinctions between right and wrong. Any site which wanted to feature unsafe content would have to sign up the the underworld internet, although they're free to maintain a "safe" version on the alternative internet. Hell, it might even solve some of our short term IP issues.

Re:Welcome

[Tangent128]

TV Tropes has a donation page, and a small Zazzle store. Neither generate nearly enough funding to break even at the moment.

Re:Welcome

[Hal_Porter]

Back to work, peasant!

Re:Welcome

[icebraining]

So, any censoring that might occur is the users' fault for not supporting the site.

Contracts are contracts

[Fallingwater]

I was in the TVTropes IRC channel when all this was going on, and what came out was: the contract for the ads that the tvtropes people signed with Google explicitly stated that no family-unsafe content was allowed. The wiki flew under the radar for a good while, probably because it has nothing explicit and so nobody thought of checking too hard, but ultimately someone did. Now, while the wiki has no porn or anything like it, it's undeniable that some of the arguments might be seen as not suitable for young children. Whether talk about lesbian erotica or massive amounts of profanity harm children or not can be discussed at length, but the matter remains that the contract conditions were clear. I hate censorship as much as the next slashdotter and I hate self-righteous moralization even more, but in this particular case I find all this anti-googlism to be way out of proportion. Especially considering that TVTropes didn't really self-censore anything, they just put the relevant articles behind an "are you really sure" clickthrough barrier; all the content is still there.

Re:Contracts are contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

YTMND had the same problem with advertisers. Sucks so much to find an ad server or even a hosting service that doesn't panic about the Picard Song and the hypocritical c&d letters on parodies.

Fortunately YTMND isn't so relevant these days anymore. Bikes stolen are old hat.

Re:Contracts are contracts

[Hatta]

Define "family unsafe". For whose family? Should they be forced to censor all pictures of women in shorts because a conservative Muslim family would find it unsafe? If not, why should they have to censor "fuck" because a conservative Christian finds it unsafe?

Personally I find the existence of these warnings more offensive than any of the content they are hiding. They should be censored!

Right.

[FatherDale]

What are the chances I'm getting the whole story here? Zero? Oh, carry on, then.

Re:Right.

[mvdwege]

Of course, if you had read TFA, you'd have seen I scrupulously posted the TV Tropes' admins side of this incident.

That you are not getting Google's side of the story is the fault of strictly one party: Google, for not giving information to TV Tropes as to what is the exact violation.

Mart

Re:content itself hasn't actually changed!

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll relate it to something near and dear to our hearts - Linux!
"The features of Linux are there" but then one update regresses here, another regresses there, the UI is clunky on a third, the feature is stuck in Alpha on the fourth, then someone decides to ditch the feature altogether, ...

"But the feature itself hasn't actually changed!"
No, but if you obscure it far enough people not under penalty of law have this amazing way of deciding not to bother and going elsewhere entirely!

Song quote

[KingAlanI]

And here comes your presidential cheerleader now,
so “disturbed” by the marriages in my home town [San Fran]
that he’s got to take the tip top law in the land down
scribble on it: “I hate homos, big bad frown.”
Put it back up, be like “What? It’s better!
Y’all were with me a second ago
when I said that marriage was threatened!
And it was! Under siege by these villains.

MC Frontalot, I Heart Fags
Not talking about prop 8, but judging by context, the nerdcore icon is with ya. :)

Flowers are flowers

[Adrian Lopez]

Google is under no obligation to serve ads to TV Tropes, but saying that "contracts are contracts" does nothing to address the issue of whether Google's policies, as expressed in their contract, are reasonable.

If Google's only problem with websites like TV Tropes is that advertisers might object, wouldn't it be better for Google to provide a mechanism for advertisers to exclude themselves from such websiteS?

The bible is already porn

[aepervius]

If you read between the line, what they are "thrusting" isn't always spears, and worst, usually it is the kind of very bad porn the bible offers , what I call snuffporn (a lot of incest and semen spilling everywhere, as well as rape). IIRC for example Noah and his two daughter in the cave. Or the "bash baby head on the rock" and "kill all of them except the nubile women" type of fiction. Seriously there should be a disclaimer on the whole OT that it is not family-friendly and certainly not kid-safe.

Re:The bible is already porn

[kevinmenzel]

At least come up with examples that exist. It's LOT and his two daughters, not NOAH. Noah had sons.

it is censorship

[aepervius]

It is The worst kind of censorship. The one a quasi monopolist can do, and you CAN'T do anything to fight it, except taking a stand and losing revenue.

Being born in the western europe, I never feared governement censorship. But private censorship done by all media, advertising, now that is the one which is difficult to fight, as the *conduit* which are supposed to be used to spread info, are stopping that info to go out. First amendement , lost schmamendement. I would wagger a bet that it is the same in the US: most censorship , is not done by the governement, but by private media. It is all nice that the govenrement can't stop your free speech, when all you can do is take a soapbox and go in the street yell your opinion, because NONE of the mass media will let you carry it. But with some form of speech, this is the situation where we are headed to.

Re:it is censorship

[magamiako1]

This is precisely the problem. And you're exactly right. Here in the US, The government doesn't really regulate much of any free speech. There are a few things in that regarding depictions of underage children doing adult acts, but that's about it.

The "movie ratings" and ESRB are all completely private companies. And it's private companies that get to decide what media you consume and how you consume it.

The worst part about it is a rather significant amount of people, even the ones who are "educated", do not see this as a major problem. At least with government, you have actual legal recourse to get stupid laws overturned. But if for some reason a private movie company suddenly decides that showing a boy and a girl hold hands is R-rated material, they very well can do that--and there is nothing you, nor even the content creator, can do about it.

How's this for you?

Microsoft, Sony, nor Nintendo game consoles can play AO-rated games. In order to play them, you have to modify the console. Of course, this means violating the DMCA, of which there is a rather significant court case in the Supreme Court about this.

Walmart, for the longest time, refused to carry games and violent media due to cursing, blood, gore. Both Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior required patches to re-enable this content after purchasing it from Walmart. Nowadays the games are less bloody and violent as a result to sell as many copies as possible. Very few games these days show any real amount of blood or dismemberment. I suppose Fallout: NV has some, but nothing quite on the level of Soldier of Fortune 1/2, nor blowing someone up with Quake 3's Quad BFG hits :P

With the movie-ratings board, essentially this is how they control: Not all movies have to be rated by the system, it is "voluntary". Except, in this case, voluntary means "you either want to release your movie or you don't." No movie theater is permitted to run unrated movies. In fact, if a movie theater starts showing unrated content, the MPAA will pull the rest of its content from the theater. So sure, you can play your unrated movies, you just can't play G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 rated movies if you do.

Arguing for private censorship like this is horrendous. And it's absolutely terrible. You have no recourse against either of these acts. Hell, in the first case, it's completely illegal (in an indirect way) to let you enjoy the content you can purchase and play.

Meta-Warning

[Ardaen]

If your a child with two mothers, finding that page is behind a this may not be family friendly warning could potentially be damaging... So not family friendly...

Can we get a "the following page is a warning that may not be family friendly" warning on the warning?

Am I trying to be funny or just applying logic?

Isn't it ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

That when we are MOST capable of learning, information is shielded from us? Does it protect us? Or does it only protect people who don't like the idea of somebody being raised with 'different' ideas?

Re:Verbal intercourse!

[sempir]

So a little session of verbal intercourse is a nono now?

Ah Tvtropes, the less crappy Wiki

[Anonymous Coward]

TV Tropes , aka the "fun wiki", compare against Wikipedia "The no-fun-for-you Nazi" site.

Part of the reason TV Tropes is popular at all is because it doesn't impose editing rules. Now they have to. You get big enough, you either have to have people who support the cause (eg wikipedia) or people with deep pockets who like to have fun (like free-to-play MMO's) to keep it running. If people ever lose interest in the site, it disappears.

And something to me suggests that the site isn't being run anywhere near as efficient as it should if a mostly-text-only site is costing thousands of dollars to run. A 100Mbit connection with no bandwidth capping in the US for a server is 400$. If they're paying any more, they are absolutely being ripped off.

Yup

[SmallFurryCreature]

This however is NOT a brave NEW world, is the same old world the US has had for a very long time. He that pays the piper, chooses the tune.

Advertising is NOT free money. The advertiser advertises in your media because he thinks that has the appropriate audience. That sound harmless BUT the eternal search for more money means that this isn't static. The advertiser will seek to influence the media he is advertising in to increase the effect of his advertising.

Simple examples are easy to find. The disapparence of the eye-catch, the short clip between the tv-show and the advertising block. Ads being overlaid over the actual tv show. Websites that block access until you seen the ad. Ads inline of the page, rather then to the side (out of view).

There are plenty of examples where content is not just payed for with ads, but the actual advertiser creates the content. Read up on how Soaps were created. Do you think these completly paid by the advertisers productions did not listen to their money supplier as to what should and what should NOT be in them?

But that is only mindless entertainment, who cares... well, anyone wanting fair and balanced reporting? Everyone who can subsidize, sorry, sponsor a production has a lot of money. Ergo the filthy rich have had a say in an awful lot of content that has been shaping the western mind. No filthy socialist tv-shows to corrupt the american mind. Where would they get the money?

And if you think socialism is bad anyway, look at what happened to Oprah when she dared to question the beef lobby. She was by that time mighty enough to resist, how many other shows have in the past caved in to the advertiser before you ever heard of it? Was all the fuzz about Toyota because they don't advertise enough perhaps? Certainly other recalls that killed far more people AND with far more direct evidence did not get the same attention. Puzzling that, follow the ad money perhaps?

Self censorship, either because one wants to appease an advertiser or for fear the government might regulate you is far more dangerous then actual government regulation. That at least is clear. But how much does not get reported in the US because the editor fears cut ads? How is this different from cutting content for fear of a visit of the secret police?

Right now advertisers determine what is available for "free". Do those advertisers have the same concerns as you? No? Then that should concern you.

Children being raised by two females is an outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

> relatively innocuous as children being raised by two females, whatever the reason

The Lord created humans as men and women, so they could unite to produce and raise children in order to further the human race and populate the globe. Any violation of that is NOT innocuous, but extremely dangerous to the natural and heavenly law. The Vatican is very clear that a family constitutes one man, one woman and several children and therefore same sex marriage simply does not exist. Any such construction is null an void in the Heavens and whoever assists in them is going to be punished by the Eternal Judge, because it is a sin!

Listen to the Pope, rightful heir of St. Peter, who speaks with the authority of Jesus Christ. Save your soul before it's too late!

Dammit, Slashdot!

[uxbn_kuribo]

That's not fair, linking me to TVTropes. Every time I go there, I wind up reading dozens of barely related articles. I guess it's a good thing I didn't have any plans today.

On the damaging effects of monopolies

[jonaskoelker]

[Company] having a monopoly with [Product] is perfectly legal

Agree (modulo jurisdiction).

no problem there

Disagree.

A fairly straightforward microeconomic analysis will (if you believe the models are good models) show that monopolies cause society losses by setting prices above the market rate---i.e. they make all of us less well off compared to how well off we could have been if there was effective competition.

Re:On the damaging effects of monopolies

[wvmarle]

Them charging higher price than necessary will allow competitors to step in easier. If the result is a price war (in which the monopolist has the advantage) then prices will come down, and fast.

Or the monopolist getting lazy (e.g.: MS) also allows competitors in the market, such as Linux/Android in the OS market and Safari/Firefox/Opera in the browser market.

I assume

[ThatsNotPudding]

this is due to their new product Google TV? Just the thin wedge of the big G censoring all of the net prior to allowing it onto the TV?

Censorship isn't *always* bad

[hort_wort]

Well, based solely on the number of comments on this story thus far, I'd say Google made the correct decision. It's a touchy topic that a lot of people are upset about, that's enough reason to censor it. There are a couple types of censorship in my mind. There's the kind that holds back information as a way to rewrite history. That's the bad kind. Then there's the kind that holds back something that's not a bad topic, but is somehow distracting from what you're doing. That's the good kind that people still whine about like it's government mind control.

For example, censorship in videogames: If I am playing a game and suddenly hear a lot of cussing, turn around, and there's a naked person running by, it's distracting. I'd rather it just be censored so I can get the idea that I'm in a bad neighborhood without totally losing track of what I was doing. I've heard cussing. I've seen naked people. It doesn't add anything to the plot.

Another example: Food preparation. Do you want to see what happens to the cow/pig/chicken? Probably not. Is the information accessible? Yes. Is it censored so you don't just come across is by accident? Yes. Problem? No. Is good.

Now if we could just get society to censor those tampon commercials that come on every day when I'm eating lunch....

if suck(1) == suck(2) then ???

[Quiet_Desperation]

When your civilization depends on a technology, are you saying you trust a private, for profit corporation more than you trust a democratically controlled government?

Can't I distrust both equally?

Silver Lining

[webgiant]

With some content restricted, it will become easier to stop reading TvTropes.org after a piddling three or four days, instead of current week-long minimum.

So being sent to TvTropes is no longer something which might get you fired or make you use up all your sick days.

Jim Profit wins the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boohoohoo, Tvtropes is finally getting a taste of it's own medicine. I've been waiting for this event for two years, words cannot describe the amount of joy I feel rightnow, or how much I love google right now. Makes me almost forget about how they have satalites in space, watching my every move...

Where the fuck was all this defence of free speech when tvtropes was banning people left and right over abstract "violations of terms of service?" I swear to God, I want to blow the brains out of anyone who uses that term. It's so pretencious and arbitary. Just another way to get people to do what you want without any reasoning or context. Unless you post child porn or hack, there should be no reason for you to get banned from anything, period. The irony is 4chan does both, all the time, and is still around. But that's another battle for another day.

I just want to be the one to say fuck you Fast Eddie, you had this coming to you. That cunt never gave me the recognition when I built more then half of those tropes articles with my bare hands!!! Me, Jim Profit!!! I didn't ask for money, I didn't even ask for fame, I just wanted to be respected as a writer, an observer, and as a human being. And Fast Eddie didn't. Now he's going to learn his place, when the capitalist beast devours him... And I'm just going to laugh at his fat fucking face, and nothing short of them crawling on his knees and barking like a dog is going to make me help him get out of this. I hope he fucking KILLS HIMSELF from the depression and heart ache of losing his creation! If anyone knows how it feels, it's me. Fast Eddie banning me was kind of like social services taking your child away. Tvtropes was my monster, and I was saddened by what he did to it. Turned it into a clusterfuck of weaboos, fags, and armchair liberal morons who just whined about their problems. A bunch of redundant articles and personal tastes cluttering the forum. If I still had my influence, there wouldn't even BE a "crowning moment of awesome". Notice that article is bigger then the vag of fast eddie's mother!!!

I am just so happy that my creation can finally rest in peace, and no longer be under the control of that piece of shit. And I hope the worst befalls him and all his cretin followers!!! Jim Profit wins again Fast Eddie. Jim Profit always wins... even if it takes YEARS to do it! Xanatos Roullette, just as planned, yaddayaddayadda. I win, hahahahahaha!

Jim Profit wins again

[Anonymous Coward]

(It specifically states noone owns the posts written, yet conviently I can't see mine. So I'll say it again. Also, no human can read that stupid cache bullshit. Whoever made that clearly is some reptillian, horse's ass.)

Oh boohoohoo, Tvtropes is finally getting a taste of it's own medicine. I've been waiting for this event for two years, words cannot describe the amount of joy I feel rightnow, or how much I love google right now. Makes me almost forget about how they have satalites in space, watching my every move...

Where the fuck was all this defence of free speech when tvtropes was banning people left and right over abstract "violations of terms of service?" I swear to God, I want to blow the brains out of anyone who uses that term. It's so pretencious and arbitary. Just another way to get people to do what you want without any reasoning or context. Unless you post child porn or hack, there should be no reason for you to get banned from anything, period. The irony is 4chan does both, all the time, and is still around. But that's another battle for another day.

I just want to be the one to say fuck you Fast Eddie, you had this coming to you. That cunt never gave me the recognition when I built more then half of those tropes articles with my bare hands!!! Me, Jim Profit!!! I didn't ask for money, I didn't even ask for fame, I just wanted to be respected as a writer, an observer, and as a human being. And Fast Eddie didn't. Now he's going to learn his place, when the capitalist beast devours him... And I'm just going to laugh at his fat fucking face, and nothing short of them crawling on his knees and barking like a dog is going to make me help him get out of this. I hope he fucking KILLS HIMSELF from the depression and heart ache of losing his creation! If anyone knows how it feels, it's me. Fast Eddie banning me was kind of like social services taking your child away. Tvtropes was my monster, and I was saddened by what he did to it. Turned it into a clusterfuck of weaboos, fags, and armchair liberal morons who just whined about their problems. A bunch of redundant articles and personal tastes cluttering the forum. If I still had my influence, there wouldn't even BE a "crowning moment of awesome". Notice that article is bigger then the vag of fast eddie's mother!!!

I am just so happy that my creation can finally rest in peace, and no longer be under the control of that piece of shit. And I hope the worst befalls him and all his cretin followers!!! Jim Profit wins again Fast Eddie. Jim Profit always wins... even if it takes YEARS to do it! Xanatos Roullette, just as planned, yaddayaddayadda. I win, hahahahahaha!

Not already law?

[wdef]

... a law that required everyone (except parents) to keep at least 200m distance from a kid or even better - go inside until the kid passes.

You mean this isn't already law in the UK? I'm shocked. Isn't there a mandatory 50 year prison term for being within 200m of a minor?! Someone told me they once talked to someone who had watched Oprah who said that numerous social workers have stated without citing any references or criticism - so therefore the research must be 100% conclusive - that children are irrevocably damaged and mentally scarred by being within 200m of a typical male adult! It's true!