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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?
He seems to have it out for Google ever since they detected malware on his website. All of his articles since then have been Google bashing.
Google is simply buckling under the social, political and commercial pressures - it's completely external. I'm sure Google doesn't *want* to spend dollars having to dig through text to find things that someone finds offensive but we demanded it and they delivered it. Don't shoot the messenger.
This reads as "You did what I asked? YOU IDIOT!!"
Everyone decided that censorship was OK when it wasn't the government doing it, so nobody tried to stop Google.
Stop enriching Google already. Stop sending them the contents of all your emails, stop giving them info about everything you search for, block their tracking shit that's all over the web, use alternate map services, don't send them your real time location throughout the day, etc.
If enough people don't want Google knowing every fucking shred of personal info about them, and having increasing control over their view of the world, then stop using them and Google withers and dies.
If you're going to keep using Google services? Fine, but then do please STFU when down the road you don't like the world you created.
I noticed the "google censor" effect just the other day when I went searching for some info on a piece of software that is probably considered to be "evil" because it helps aid the circumvention of copyright.
This is a *very* popular bit of software but oddly enough, Google's search returned almost no results.
Censorship?
I think it's pretty obvious.
Ever thought the no-fly list that you cannot see and cannot change is a bunch of bullshit?
Well right now a number of house members in the U.S. are having a sit-in to try and base gun control around that same list.
May as well integrate the YouTube block-list while you're at it I guess.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are ten Google Blacklists. Epstein failed to mention, perhaps deliberately, the Kenyan birth certificate blacklist.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Google Play bans Bomb Gaza
http://www.israelnationalnews....
http://www.channel4.com/news/b...
Google bans Whack The Hamas
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/...
Google Play bans Milo Tosser
https://twitter.com/riffraffga...
Google Play permanently bans developer of "Hilliar Clinton" game
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/...
I think Robert Epstein is giving Alphabet (Google) way too much credit in it's ability to "manipulate" people. It is a mega corporation that is only getting bigger. Economies of scale still apply and they're probably trying a lot harder to keep cutting edge rather then manipulating things.
My experience has been that Google news provides the least biased news source. But as everyone here will know, you get your sources from several places to avoid any bias they might have.
As for search sources whenever I try others like Bing and DuckDuckGo I still find what I'm looking for faster with Google. I suspect that if Alphabet were to really try and manipulate people their credibility would drop like a rock and we would all find other sources for information.
Google provides a very popular, but not the only WWW indexing and search service. Personally i have moved on to DuckDuckGO because of their commitment to user privacy.
Good. We need less guns, not more.
Nobody should be able to walk into a Walmart and walk out with a cart full of machine guns and ammo.
No other "civilized" society accepts this nonsense and neither should the US.
Then you should get the constitution amended.
That's another aspect of "civilized" societies - you can't just pick-and-choose which rules to break.
Google blocking torrent searches: using 'filetype:torrent ' gives me more search results than any other search engine, and the DMCA bullshit is not by google. If a search result is blocked you can see at the bottom of the page exactly why. As for politics, it depends on the number of search results based on a query. In your mind 'ted cruz lying' may be equivalent to 'hillary clinton crook' but the results say otherwise. Also Google did not bow down to China's demands for censorship, depriving themselves of one of the largest markets. /. where people generally understand how algorithms work, and the search results are generally independent of human manipulation. The article being accepted just goes to show how far slashdot has fallen. Is it still called news for nerds?
It's strange to see this article on
Try to buy ammo through Froogle. The first results won't be actual ammunition. Even becoming more specific (such as ".223 ammunition"), mostly only gives ammo boxes and belts. Live rounds have somehow been filtered (mostly, a few results seem to slip through). In the past, the results gave actual ammunition and not inert rounds and such.
Just now I was typing "How many elephants..." and the moment I hit the "d", it came up with exactly what I wanted, "...does it take to change a lightbulb", first response. You can't beat that.
Unfortunately the joke sucked, so I won't bother...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Create a new google account or go through tor . You get the same results he mentions.
People have been attempting to control information and the social discourse since always. This is not new.
And whether you like it or not for whatever your political reason... consider that corruption that serves your political interests TODAY can be turned against you tomorrow.
Don't be that dumb. You either believe in democracy which requires an open exchange of information or you don't and we trend towards kings, aristos, and various other elites that will just control your life for you. And again... while you might like that idea now because you assume said aristos will hold your values... consider that they might not in the future. And at that point your opinion will be literally worthless.
Stop it now while your vote counts. Or your hypocritical complaint later will be a joke.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
When I search for something, I type in what I'm searching for. As for the rubbish in the article, here you go.
Just to see how far this goes, I typed in "dipshit" and Google didn't autosuggest "Robert Epstein"! That's an omission that must be corrected!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Back in 2012, Epstein's website got blocked by Google because it was hosting malware. He's hated Google ever since.
This is a way of taking advantage of the way the page-rank algorithm works, in that it counts "incoming links" (they're doing a weighted, iteratively calculated count, but lets keep things simple).
Left to its own, there would be little the page-rank algorithm can do against such obvious abuse of the algorithm to self-promote certain sites. Thus, in the best traditions of the unenlightened self-interest that so pervades our society, the wellspring of the Commons is poisoned. The best of it is that it's all "legal" (there is no law against). As a consequence the value of Google's search results is at risk, and with it the public service they provide.
Rather than seeking redress from the law (which simply doesn't offer any), Google decided to mete out its own kind of justice: it corrected the search rank of sites that do this downward (manually or otherwise) so that they were starved of traffic. The message Google sends with this is: pull this one on us and we'll bury you.
In cases of genuine abuse (websites inflating their rank through this kind of "Search Engine Optimization" I agree with this measure. Unfortunately downgrading a site's search rank is a powerful weapon which, even when used without malice, can lead to injustice against which there is no appeal. Simply because either people or algorithms that do the downranking will make mistakes.
Alas, our world is not perfect. On the whole however I prefer Google to protect its search algorithm from abuse by SEO con artists at the expense of killing the odd innocent website. Sorry but my interests are better served by having high-quality search results than by preventing injustice.
It gets really tiresome seeing people attempt to claim that all these massive corporations and immensely wealthy people are just powerless to do anything and can't be held responsible for their own actions. Google does what they do for the same reason other powerful companies do, which is nefarious and immoral at best. It should take you all of about 10 seconds of studying the CISPA web campaign to realize that these companies have immense power on politics because masses of people can tune into the message. "Hillary want's us to censor" would have probably ended up in a Sanders candidacy, but Google knows where the power and money should be for them (read Sergey and Larry) to get the best bang for their buck.
Reality is that people don't get rich and powerful by being stupid. We can however say that the opposite is true, so the poor and ignorant will remain so. It's really really easy to get the ignorant to remain that way too.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Autocomplete blacklist?
So, he's complaining that if you want to search for "Crooked Hillary," you have to type the whole phrase, it won't complete it for you?
Oh, your aching fingers, evil google making you have to type another seven whole characters. I am so sorry you have to do all that extra work.
By the way, it's not really news. Here's Boing-boing in 2010: http://boingboing.net/2010/09/... (pointing to a list at 2600.com: http://www.2600.com/googleblac... )
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm not a fan of regulation, but it might be required in order to break the stranglehold one company gets on a particular industry. The example I always think of is John D. Rockefeller and his company, Standard Oil, which was ultimately broken up into smaller companies due to its absolute domination of the industry which it used to destroy competitors. Google may be in line for at least an investigation into whether it's gotten too big for market competition. Facebook as well.
Its more the fact that if you type "Hillary In" you get "Hillary India" which google's own trends show NOBODY is actually looking for whereas you type the same phrase into yahoo or Bing? You get Hillary Indictment which actually IS trending according to Google's own trends, which is what the autocomplete is SUPPOSEDLY based on..
Oh and just FYI the former CEO of Google is on the advisory committee of HRC and making something like half a million a quarter for his services. If you think a guy whose political views are well known and who is actually working for one side isn't gonna tilt things in his favor? I have a bridge you might be interested in.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I get the following autocomplete results for "Hillary in":
Hillary Indictment
Hillary Indictment Odds
Hillary Instagram
Hillary Interview
Is it possible you've previously searched for Hillary India and it is replaying your search?
First, if you want to search "Hillary indictment" but you're so lazy that you complain if Google doesn't finish typing after you have typed the first nine letters of the search, you're seriously lazy.
Second, when I type "Hillary in" to the google search box, its first suggested autocompletion is "Hillary indictment" and the second is "Hillary indictment news". So, your google seems to be different than mine.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
ROFL keep drinking that koolaid SJWs, but I can provide citations showing the manipulation, the fact google's own trends does NOT support what their autocomplete is coming up with, oh and the fact that the CEO is getting paid by HRC, specifically he is owner of "the groundwork" which is a company whose goal is to put HRC in the white house.
Gee search results aren't backed up by their own trending data AND the CEO is part of a company to elect the person the results are being skewed for? Nope don't see nothing fishy here, please ignore that man behind the curtain.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In my opinion you've missed the point of Epstein's article.
Epstein contends (and I agree) that Google's services are so pervasive that it really has taken on the role of a public utility, while still being an ordinary commercial enterprise without any responsibility whatsoever to anyone except their shareholders.
By its very nature, Google *cannot* be transparent about its page-rank algorithm because the instant it is, every SEO con artist in existence will proceed to abuse that knowledge and undermine the quality and usefulness of Google's search results.
The bottom line is: Google is a company that provides a service that's as essential as power, water, roads, trash collection and sanitation that's beyond oversight and cannot (ever) be transparent about its service. How would you like that same level of transparency and total un-accountability with other utilities?
What you call "freedom", I call risky concentration of power without checks, balances, or oversight. An appeal to "freedom" is, I think, an oversimplification. Why not allow utility companies to switch off the power, the water supply, or block the sewers if they it would be in their corporate interests to do so? When water authorities ration water usage because supplies are running out, everyone is up in arms, but you'd like to lie down and take it if it's in the corporate rather than the public interest? After all, nothing stops you from buying bottled water, does it? Or installing a swimming pool as a backup water cistern, right? How about allowing the wastewater treatment plant to shut down the sewers in the city centre if somebody (perhaps a restaurant) dumps a load of fat down the sink that plays hob with their sewage treatment?
What Google does (and must do) to keep its services humming really does lead to injustice in individual cases.
To that extent I agree with Epstein. Where I disagree with Epstein is whether it's worth the price in this particular case. However, with Google, whilst transparency is impossible oversight isn't. We may well need regulations and oversight for search engines somewhere down the line.
> If you think a guy whose political views are well known and who is actually working for one side isn't gonna tilt things in his favor? I have a bridge you might be interested in.
And if a private citizen wants to use his private business to push his personal political views then that is entirely his right. You didn't think citizens united would only work for republicans did you ? Did you think really think only the Koch brothers would try to buy elections for candidates that suit their personal business and political desires ?
Republicans turned the USA into a complete plutocracy, they don't get to now complain because occasionally a rich guy likes a democrat too - they made this bed now they gotta lie in it.
Ironically - this is far less insidious than what republicans do. Republican supporting rich guys use dark money and bribes. If the worst thing the democrat-supporters do is to slant their own businesses public operations in favor of the candidate and work for the campaigns - then it's still FAR less corrupt.
Democrat voters have been demanding that money be removed from politics, that campaign contributions be severely curtailed (or better yet - outright banned) for decades. They've been clamoring against things like superpacs. Warning that the USA would turned into an oligarchy where the rich chose the powerful if these trends were not stopped.
They were ignored. Their own party politicians stopped fighting and went to feed at the same trough and the republican voters called them horrible people who want to censor political speech (because one dollar one vote is soooo democratic right ?).
Now you complain ? Because of what, arguably, is the only ACCEPTABLE way a rich person can influence politics ? Seriously I have only three words to say to that: fuck you all.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Conspiracy theory much? Google filters a lot of words from auto-correct. Various crimes, the names of porn stars, all sorts of stuff. It's just removed from auto-complete, so that Google doesn't suggest things that would be inappropriate or slanderous.
In comparison when I search for Aonal wallets on Amazon it suggests "anal" and offers me some Just Glide Anal Lubricant 50ml. I'm not upset or anything, but I might be embarrassed if I asked my Amazon Echo for an Aonal wallet and it tried to sell me anal lube, so I can see why Google tends to err on the side of caution.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have always considered instant search to be completely and utterly useless.
Negavites of Instant Search
- Distracts you from what you are actually trying to type.
- A partial "result" is not useful until you are done typing.
- It can display subliminal bias (pull up death, fear, victim as you are searching 'Donald Trump's hat).
- Often freezes your browser while pulling up your half typed results.
- Undesired profanity (Try typing 'big black').
Positives of Instant Search
- Autocomplete feature on par with highend smartphones.
- At times, displays multiple suggestions to save you time before you need to write the entire search query.
I think the decision is clear.
Google is very happy to suggest "Hillary indictment" to me, with generally right-wing sites among the top results.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Really? Because mine pops up with indictment right away. Don't be such a conspiracy theorist. I would like to point out that there are several disparaging things about Trump that don't show up either. If you type "does trump have tiny" it does NOT autocomplete "hands." Clearly this is a conspiracy against Marco Rubio. I mean really, anybody who says crap like that needs to realize how stupid and whiny they sound. If you type "trump frau" it does not add the "d" at the end. If you type "trump is hitle" it doesn't add "r." Perhaps Google is just more polite than Bing?
Bing results for "trump is"
Google's results are:
Still think it's a conspiracy?
This is my problem with people who use "SJW" incorrectly. If you use it to disparage anybody you disagree with, it loses all meaning. What's the point of using letters as a slur if a) it refers to something that isn't actually offensive, and b) you use it for things that have nothing to do with women or gays or racial minorities? What does pointing out facts regarding a google search have to do with fighting for social justice?
It reminds me of the good old days when Rush coined the term feminazi. What does fighting for equal pay for women have to do with fascist dictatorships? So stupid to muddle things up like that. What's so disappointing is how easily monikers distract otherwise intelligent people (on both sides of any argument).
There are real problems with people who try to over-correct for perceived social injustices. Please focus on them, and people might take you a little more seriously. Hell, you might even get some people to change their point of view if you express your argument in a cogent fashion rather than relying on dog-whistles and obscure abbreviations.
All Google search results have been personalized and unique to you for several years. Which is why SEO scams are scams; everyone is seeing different search results, based on their own interests.