The New Censorship: 'How Did Google Become The Internet's Censor and Master Manipulator?' (usnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Robert Epstein from U.S. News and World Report writes an article describing how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. He writes about the company's nine different blacklists that impact our lives: autocomplete blacklist, Google Maps blacklist, YouTube blacklist, Google account blacklist, Google News blacklist, Google AdWords blacklist, Google AdSense blacklist, search engine blacklist, and quarantine list. The autocomplete blacklist filters out select phrases like profanities and other controversial terms like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." It can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. For example, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked." While Google Maps photographs your home for everyone to see, Google maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images depending on the property, e.g. military installations or wealthy residences. Epstein makes the case that while YouTube allows users to flag videos, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. As for the Google account blacklist, you may lose access to a number of Google's products, which are all bundled into one account as of a couple of years ago, if you violate Google's terms of service agreement because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you ... at any time." Google is the largest news aggregator in the world via Google News. Epstein writes, "Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser." Google can easily put a business out of business if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards and revokes a business' access to Google AdWords, which makes up 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue. Recently, Google blacklisted an entire industry -- companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. If your website has been approved by AdWords, Google's search engine is what ultimately determines the success of your business as its algorithms can be tweaked and search rankings can be manipulated, which may ruin businesses. Epstein makes an interesting case for how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. Given Google's online dominance, do you think Google should be regulated like a public utility?

Comments

This is mostly weaksauce...

[Anonymous Coward]

Autocomplete blacklist: Oh the horrors, people at work don't have to be frightened of opening a Google search on the projector.

Maps blacklist: Oh the horrors, you can't examine military bases at 30cm resolution? You can't creep on $celebrity's home?

Youtube blacklist: Call me when there's more solid evidence than "seem to". This reeks of another "IRS targetting conservative groups" lie (and or a Chris Rock "then stop breaking the law, asshole")

Google account blacklist: Wait, you're shitting me, they may cut you off for violating their terms of service?

Google news blacklist: Do we have any evidence that this is being abused?

Google ad/adsense blacklist: If you're going to convince me to be AGAINST censorship, you couldn't start in a worse place than payday loansharks.

This whole thing is long on speculation, and very short on any evidence of wrongdoing. And, if I may say, the political related parts have more than a whiff of conservative paranoid victimhood, which a cynic might imagine were the real point of the article (drag the Overton window right by crying or implying foul about any and all criticism - until critics shut up because they can't bear the whining).

Re: He really hates Google

[MightyMartian]

And conservatives never have lunatics who go around making overly broad and hasty generalizations because they don't have the wits to make a nuanced and sensible argument.