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Russia To Act Against Google if Sputnik, RT Get Lower Search Rankings (reuters.com)
Paresh Dave and Jack Stubbs, reporting for Reuters: The Kremlin will take action against Alphabet's Google if articles from Russian news websites Sputnik and Russia Today are placed lower in search results, the Interfax news service cited Russia's chief media regulator as saying on Tuesday. Alexander Zharov, head of media regulator Roskomnadzor, said his agency sent a letter to Google on Tuesday requesting clarification on comments Saturday by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt about how the Russian websites would be treated in search, according to Interfax. "We will receive an answer and understand what to do next," Interfax quoted Zharov as saying. "We hope our opinion will be heard, and we won't have to resort to more serious" retaliatory measures.
The moment they started manually messing with search rankings in order to appease people they fucked up.
They should have their algorithm and let the chips fall where they may.
That way no one can accuse you of favoritism or whatever.
It's their RIGHT to organize search rankings as they see fit, and the right of others to accuse them of bias in suits. That's capitalism. It's funny when conservatives don't support these things just because it's xyz company that isn't 100% republican.
When will Russia learn that they can't force us to acquiesce by issuing an endless stream of threats and lies?
Google are absolutely going the right thing. Just as well, they can afford to.
Putin can go and fuck himself.
The abusive bully yelling "What are you going to do, hahahahaha!" is always the last think the bully says, before another kid gives him the surprise knockout.
I was that kid in school. Twice.
The second time, in 10th class, the teacher didn't even blink. Bullirs get what they deserve.
The BRICS countries work hard on freeing themselves from the US. The whole point of the EU is, to counter the US influence, in case you hadn't noticed. And the third world countries never could stand you to begin with. Which might have something to do with you invading and toppling the government of nearly every single one of them.
Everybody hates you. You are all alone. The only reason anybod listens to your notjob government aka psycho industry, is because you threaten everyone who doesn't. And that starts to fail now
So excuse me, while I get my popcorn.
Quick, report him to the authority! That will be the proof you need that the Russians HACKED the election, which we know is ""true"".. Why? Because Hillary's privately hired security firm(Crowd Strike ), says MAYBE the RUSSIANS hacked the DNC server, which NO NO ONE OUR government has ever looked over to confirm is there's even a MAYBE! And those that say they were MAYBE confident it was plausible, were hand picked and appointed by the Obama administration to give their OPINION on this fake-national-security. But who cares about facts when we have feelings, let's instead use it as an excuse to impose censorship on the web.
It sounds simple, but who defines outside my country? RT America produces content in Washington DC, for example. If we choose to ignore Reuters because it's based in the UK, how do we feel about Rupert Murdoch owning News Corp?
The thing is that technology has moved to the center of our political reality. Personally I'm equally interested in both types of stories, and feel that there is a good balance.
What I do worry about is that in many of these more political stories the comments often seem very reactionary. For example, on the stories about how Russia used Facebook to drive the left and right further apart. There you get comments like "nothing to see here, we always had propaganda, doing it through Facebook doesn't change much". While clearly it changes the scale, precision, subtlety and cost - all meaningful differences. But there were multiple comments downplaying if that all got up-voted. That gets me more worried. It means that either Slashdot is being manipulated, or that Slashdot's more critical readers have disappeared.
So for me the problem is not these stories, the problem is the low quality of discussion around them.
What the fuck, seriously what the fuck. You sound like a cultist that has drunk way, way too much google cool aid. Google is basically a web site that searches the internet and nothing more. First they started with do no evil and then the corporates took over and it was do evil all the fucking time. Basically either Google ponies up details or the Russian government kicks them out to favour Russian enterprises competing in the same area. To put it simply https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fuck... or the funnier version https://www.yandex.com/search/....
Google's number one marketing skill is self promotion. Scamming advertisers into believing they need to spend shit tons of money with Google to sell product and all based upon Googles research proving it, yep, uh huh. Google does only one thing well, self promote, sell the ability of Google to sell, reality is every one ignores googles ads, everyone skips youtube ads, google has very little influence in reality and that control, is the control over the people it sells it's marketing lies to, the real suckers spending billions on google ads that lead no where.
Now you have the big shit at alphabet carrying on like they have the actual power, they pretend to for marketing purpose. I can't tell whether the big shit is gas lighting them or he believes his own marketing and hype and sees himself as a internet GOD.
The internet connects people without people the internet is nothing. It is the people that give meaning to the internet. Google is shit, a big marketing scam, that has in the most pathetic cultist way started to believe it owns marketing. When google cuts off people it actually cuts itself out and the more people google isolates the more isolated google becomes. The reality is google has fuck all power and is the people's bitch, now suffering from delusions of grandeur and is going to get a rude awakening.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's not one Russia narrative, it's several, all of which are relevant to slashdot. It's almost like they're a major power in the world and there are a lot of facets to it!
2016 election: Russia relevant (not saying Russia did it, just it's a story)
Cybersecurity: Russia relevant
Censorship online: Russia relevant
Anything geopolitical: Russia relevant
Uranium (non-political): Russia relevant.
Wikileaks: Russia relevant.
Partisan politicial issue about GOP, dems, greens: Russia relevant.
Is it possible that you're just upset because you're worried Russia will turn out to have ties to your preferred political side (applies to all sides)?
I'm looking at RT.com's front page right now. Everything looks semi-normal, no glaring "FAKE!" story, at least stories that go completely counter to what Western media is spouting. Taking a particular piece, about Lebanon's Hariri and the whole "quitting from Saudi Arabia" debacle of the last week :
https://www.rt.com/news/410561...
Comparing said story with the Washington Post's story on the same event shows near identical facts being stated by both outlets :
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
So... what's the issue with RT.com's coverage ? Only the fact that it's state sponsered ? But by that token, so is PBS, BBC, CBC, ABC (the Australian ABC, not the American one!)... This all seems rather unfair and lacking any actual substance. It seems to be ... actual anti-Russian propaganda in a way. Maybe if Alphabet were a bit more transparent about their findings that led up to this decision. I mean, surely they're not just doing this based on the "Russian meddling" narrative, that's based on a report from a private firm like Crowdstrike... or worse... the Steele Dossier that's been proven false in many regards. And why are they not blocking Buzzfeed news ? Let's be real. Buzzfeed.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
That story got debunked hard. The Russian lawyer was magnitsky act lobbyist, and it was a setup. Both Jr. and the Lawyer were lied to about the meeting. Also, it's not actually collusion or illegal to receive information from foreign nationals about political opponents. What's illegal is paying for it.
Not to mention the links that Natalia Veselnitskaya has with Fusion GPS, which brings us to ... You know... the DNC and Clinton campaign paying for the Steele Dossier from Fusion GPS. Why do you think nothing ever came out of the Russian Lawyer meeting ?
If anything, we're discovering that any and all collusion in the election goes through Fusion GPS. And it all ties back to the DNC.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
One has to differ between these four "offizicial state media":
1. Russia Today Russian Site
2. Russia Today International Site
3. sputniknews.com Russian Site
4. sputniknews.com International Site
All four usually deliver 80% of rather well written and researched. Stuff like "heavy rain damaged a road" or "prices for apples are up". Sometimes they even critizise single politicians. Not Putin and never the system for sure. You read rarelly about the opposition.
It is the other 20% where things are getting interesting.
1. and 2. usually reports whatever the russian goverment wants to get reported and do so in a mostly sincere way. They will not outright fabricate fake news or conspiracy theories but will gladly repeat these if the goverment came up with em. Most disputed content is given a heavy pro-goverment tone.
3. and 4. are less strict about bullshit. You will sometimes read really lame fake news and strange stuff and they will not even stay clear of fabricating "alien abduction stories" and worse... also they often click traps like "war porn", "whataboutism" and such stuff.
be aware: The russian and international edition often differ on subjects.
How would they represent "fake moon landing"?
1. "it happened but most parts have been overdramatized through selective media representation"
2. "it happened but some parts have been rearranged through selective media representation"
3. "there are many people and lots of evidence it never happened that way. Most americans don't believe it either.
3. "there are some people and some evidence it never happened that way. Smarter americans don't believe it either.
fun fact, there is a german public broadcast station sputnik.de targeting teens and tweens, broadcasting music and news from entertainment which gets mixed up a lot with sputniknews.com.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair