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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.
I'm getting pretty tired of the whole "Russia narrative" that we get subjected to here at Slashdot again and again and again and again.
A Slashdot search for "russia" and a Slashdot search for "linux" both have Thursday October 19, 2017 as the date of the earliest submission listed on the first page of results.
So we get subjected to a submission about Russia just about as often as we get to read something about Linux!
It gets worse when we do a Slashdot search for "programming". The earliest submission on the first page of results if from Saturday October 14, 2017!
So we get subjected to noticeably more Russia submissions than programming submissions.
And a Slashdot search for "scifi" brings us to Saturday May 06, 2017. A Slashdot search for "science fiction" is even worse, taking us all of the way back to Saturday December 19, 2015!
Obviously we get subjected to far more Russia submissions than any having to do with sci-fi.
If we wanted to hear about Russia every single day, then we could just go read the news on CNN or MSNBC or BBC or some other mainstream news site.
The whole point of Slashdot is to learn about technology/science/math/computing-oriented news that the mainstream outlets don't have enough time or incentive to cover.
Yeah, a relevant submission about Russia now and then would be fine, but this constant barrage of "Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia ..." is getting old.
We should be able to read about topics like Linux and programming and sci-fi far more often than about Russia of all things.
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
Based on the clarity and brilliance of your remarks, I believe I'll buy some GOOG.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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
This Russian-Hacked-Our-Election is a an actual Conspiracy Theory being pushed by the establishment/media.So do you believe it? If so, you belive in conspiracy theories. ;)
:)
But you posted, so that opens up another option, as in you're obviously willing to have a discussion, so here I'll provide a few links. The more people that can actually look past this mainstream media-conspiracy about a Russian-hack, the better:
The DNC server is the source of this Russian hack conspiracy that's being shoved down our throats. So if this is true, you'd think our government would have looked at it right? They haven't:
Pick through the links, they're abundant and verifiable -- even Donna B. commented on it when she somewhat betrayed the DNC-cult after releasing her book:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DNC+...
We only have the word of Crowd Strike that maybe the DNC server was hacked. It's a belief, not a fact. So as mentioned, no one in our government has looked at it. Why is this?
http://investmentwatchblog.com...
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
I've been paying attention to what's going on, so it's hard to buy into any of this Russia-lie. And I like occasional CAPS, so suck it. Yelling is every single word in caps.
Sure, if you think of international megacorps as being part of "the West" then I can see why you might presume that they would respond to the situation in a culturally beneficial way.
But what if they're greedy, and have no cultural loyalties other than to corporate money culture?
RT pumps out conspiracy theories on an industrial scale. For example, here is a compilation of 50 of their 9/11 conspiracy theories: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Granted, Fox like a good conspiracy too, but even they can't match RT's dedication to manufacturing bullshit. They have reposted material from Infowars and had uber-conspiracy nut Alex Jones on many times. This story is a good example, this being the Infowars original.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC