Slashdot Mirror
Former Scientologist: CoS Told Brin It Wanted Only "Good" Search Results
An anonymous reader writes "Former Scientologist at the highest level Geir Isene reveals that he was brought in to educate top Scientology officials about the Internet, and learned that they had met personally with Google's Sergey Brin (YouTube video), asking him if it were possible for the search giant to filter results so that only positive information about the church would be returned on the word 'Scientology.' You can imagine how that went over. Isene also says that he begged the church's officials to give him a full day to explain the Internet to them before they met with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had regularly criticized the church for its stands against Internet freedom. Apparently, the church is missing Isene's counsel, because just a few days ago, the EFF put the Church of Scientology into its 'Takedown Hall of Shame.' Last month Geir published his journey 'From Independent Scientologist to Just Me' under the GPL v3 license, recognising how being an open source advocate helped with that."
Wait! Wait wait wait....
Let me get my popcorn!
Anyone want a beer while I'm up?
ad words
Those bastards shut down Julf Helsingius anon.penet.fi remailer back in '96 and we'll never forgive them for that! The internet is not in any way new to them!
Clearly, the CoS understands at this point how much control places like Google have over people's web traffic, and they're quite aware that Google can gerrymander the results. Brin seems to mistake understanding the internet as a technology to understanding the technology as a means of control.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Is that given recent exploits by Snowden who is making a name for himself by exposing governmental spying, people that leave the Church of Scientology are treated exactly the same way.
You leave your "religion" because it's a sham, and then you're harassed and attacked anywhere. Amazing.
Thankfully I gave up on religion at 13, I can't imagine being lured into a cult like this. That said, Scientologists are stupider than I thought.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The 'Church' of scientology was started by a bad science fiction writer who said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."
It's a complete sham and a fraud.
We're somehow supposed to believe there's thousands of alien souls occupying us? This magic machine you have is going to cure my problems when it has no basis in science?
Seriously, just look at Tom Cruise and his claims that anti-depressants don't work. You think Katie Holmes went running away because of any other reason than the idiocy there?
The CoS is a joke, and how any country has still given them tax exempt status is beyond me. Those idiots standing outside offering you a 'personality test' are just recruiting for the cult, and should be punched in the nose.
Posting as AC to keep these whack-jobs the fuck away from me.
OK, I try to keep an open mind and really don't care what people believe so long as A) they don't get into people's faces about it and B) the message is peaceful.
I don't even mind their big back-story about aliens and what-not. Ignoring the fact that a sci-fi writer wrote it, who's to say that's any more laughable than other stuff. And you could say that maybe he was just inspired by the spoken word or universal secrets to write his other stuff, which isn't that much more implausible than where many of the stories for the Bible came from.
But... in practice Scientology is making it quite hard to like or respect them. Between the lawsuits, making people's lives hell for leaving or speaking out against them, the pay-to-learn thing they have going on, etc it's hard for me to say "fine whatever"
And now this... sigh. It's just making it hard to respect you. I mean, lots of people HATE the Catholic church but you don't see them trying to stifle people's thoughts and comments about it.
Nothing is perfect in the world and they are tradeoffs. If you believe that something is perfect (terrestrially speaking (I don't care to debate if God Exists or is perfect or not, today)) Then you are probably wrong.
Everything has an up side and down side to it, whether or not the upside make it worth it or not, is open to debate. That is why we have free speech, it is so we can be allowed to look at the universe with our own objectives and try to measure if the up side or down side is worth it. However Free Speech often comes with broadcasting misinformation, outward lies, or just ignorants. In order to keep free speech working we need to keep our education levels up so we can help spot this.
Propaganda, is sending one side of the issue and blocking debate about it. If your side is well thought out and expressed, there could be a lot less idiocracy about the topic, but it is limited and prevents growth, however this is often abused and used to spread lies as well.
Saying you should block all sites that say something negative about your beliefs is trying to say I want you to be part of our propaganda engine. And restricting free speech.
Now Google biggest value is in Good Will, an accounting term to express Brand Recognition and Trust. If Google were to degrade their customers trust, they will go to different sites and ruen Google.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
was last Sundays episode of Venture Bros.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ahhh, Google Glass makes sense now. :D
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Burzrzrzrzrzr...
In many countries the mainstream churches were or (as in the US) are an import social factor in the battle against poverty and much of their money is going to 'Worthy Causes' that save the community at large from a lot of grief.
Take one look at the vatican with all their gold leaf and artwork and fancy architecture and tell me that they are truly concerned about directing their money towards fighting poverty. While I don't deny that many churches do indeed do some worthy charity work, I've never seen one that wasn't hugely hypocritical about what they do with their money. Most of it goes towards salaries, buildings, and other tangible trappings of wealth that have little to do with charity but a lot to do with making religious officials powerful and the institutions wealthy.
In many countries the mainstream churches were or (as in the US) are an import social factor in the battle against poverty and much of their money is going to 'Worthy Causes' that save the community at large from a lot of grief.
Dead. Fucking. Wrong.
The churches you speak of do everything they can to create and promote those very problems so they can solicit donations and use them to ameliorate a small amount of the damage their policies intentionally cause while pocketing the profits.
Their anti-choice, anti birth control, and anti gay policies exist to *increase* poverty. They exist to ensure that there are *more* children born into poverty in a vicious circle leading to more need for their "help" in the "battle against poverty".
Now, think it through. Even if you don't understand and are unwilling to accept that that is the reason that they have such policies, it is absolutely unassailable that their policies have this effect regardless of their reasons.
If they actually give shit one about anything decent, then they would change these policies in order to attain results with a shred of decency.
But they do not. They continue applying shotgun blasts to the face of society and jump up and down claiming great moral superiority when they toss a band aid at their victims.
Yeah, and let's not forget that the *majority* of Christians support an organization that has as an official policy to aid and abet the rape of children and lie about condoms to promote the spread of AIDS.
And that's not even talking about the whack job fundies in America.
So, no, they are not "import" social factors in the battle against poverty. They're the enemy in that battle. As part of their business plan.