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Google Seeks To Defuse Row With Russia Over Website Rankings (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the clarification dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google does not change its search algorithm to re-rank individual websites, it said in a letter to Russia's communications watchdog, after Moscow expressed concerns the search engine might discriminate against Russian media. The Roskomnadzor watchdog said earlier this month it would seek clarification from Google over whether it intentionally placed articles from Russian news websites Sputnik and Russia Today lower in search results. Responding to a question about Sputnik articles at a conference earlier in November, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google was working to give less prominence to "those kinds of websites" as opposed to delisting them.

28 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. More Russian evil! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm soooo glad Google is standing up to Russia!

  2. RUSSIA BAD...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    But we want your money and data please......

  3. The law of unintended consequences. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Moscow expressed concerns the search engine might discriminate against Russian media.

    This should be filed under the "things to consider before you inject yourself into US politics" department.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's difficult to avoid conflicts of interest when there's... well... conflicts of interest.

      I guess everybody did notice that Google don't use their famous original motto "Do no evil" anymore.

    2. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This should be filed under the "things to consider before you inject yourself into US politics" department.

      Good advice for Google as well. If these Silicon Valley companies weren't so completely myopic in their Valley Values group-think they might have some influence in Washington today. It's not really surprising that Comcast wins at every turn; the telecoms — unlike Google, Facebook, etc. — don't go out of their way to alienate the majority party.

    3. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics". In fact, even some private citizens have been caught expressing opinions on politics, and attempting to sway the votes of their friends and neighbors. Google needs to put a stop to that. We can't just have people going around saying whatever they want. Thank God that we have the corporate elite to protect us and tell us what to think.

    4. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by drago177 · · Score: 1

      Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics". In fact, even some private citizens have been caught expressing opinions on politics, and attempting to sway the votes of their friends and neighbors. Google needs to put a stop to that. We can't just have people going around saying whatever they want. Thank God that we have the corporate elite to protect us and tell us what to think.

      Ya! And Russia is best at curtailing freedom of speech (well, technically in top 20%), so Google should actually increase the rank of their state-sponsored views!
      https://freedomhouse.org/repor...
      https://freedomhouse.org/repor...
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

    5. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by ilguido · · Score: 1

      Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics".

      But Google already did that!!!! Alternet, Counterpunch, Democracy Now and many other independent media outlet were heavily downlisted.

    6. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics"

      Bugger off with your straw man arguments. Russia is a hostile country waging an aggressive information war against the west with an army of internet trolls and fake news intended to spread FUD. It is financing right-wing groups in Europe, an invasion of eastern Ukraine to prevent it from joining the EU and NATO and is just generally causing trouble all over the world. Protecting a dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people, providing separatists with an anti-aircraft missile launcher that was used to down a civilian airplane over Ukraine, all the while always denying all involvement. Meanwhile in the interior the country is cracking down an all independent media.

      Russia is a rogue actor these days.

    7. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just be careful you're not on the wrong side, my friend.

      You should be aware of propaganda from all sides. Especially those who are the most powerful in media.

      Use scientific principles and the methods of logic and reasoning. None of what you say can be confirmed using that. It is okay to not have an opinion before proof has been presented. I don't judge before I have proof, but I tend to sympathize with those who are the most quiet. I do feel very much alone with thinking like that, as everyone else seems to be okay with justice being bastardized to mean vengeance.

      It's okay to have a simplified view of the world, as it can be pretty tough to thoroughly investigate every story from the news and even the journalists have given up doing that. It is however irresponsible to spread that simplified view of the world as the truth, because we all know that reality is not that simple.

      If you were accused of sexually harrassing someone, would you not want people to be interested in learning all the details from both yours and the accusers point of view, before judging you?

    8. Re:The law of unintended consequences. by pots · · Score: 1

      "Injecting themselves in American politics" was not the reason given for downlisting the Russian media, that was just the parent's tongue-in-cheek description. Google's actual reason probably has more to do with deceiving the public, and yes there is certainly American media which also qualifies there.

  4. Russia: okay to sell Uranium to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    But if you buy really stupid ads on Facebook then it's COLD WAR MODE v2.0!

    1. Re:Russia: okay to sell Uranium to... by Noishkel · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Funny how net neutrality is in the news while at the same time Google is using it's own corporate influence to block other nation's access to the free flow of information. Which is exactly why I don't give a damn about it. It's nothing but different media corporations bitching over who gets the best access to the people they want to advertise shit to.

    2. Re:Russia: okay to sell Uranium to... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny how net neutrality is in the news while at the same time Google is using it's own corporate influence to block other nation's access to the free flow of information.

      Congratulations on winning the "I don't know what net neutrality is" award!

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re:Russia: okay to sell Uranium to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh, they know. It's argumentum ad obfuscatum. Why bother to make valid points when you can simply muddy the water?

    4. Re:Russia: okay to sell Uranium to... by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Congratulations on winning the "I don't know what net neutrality is" award!

      Pretty sure you're the one getting that award. Net neutrality is just a way of saying "don't make the major users of bandwidth like YouTube pay more for the service." The internet has been the wild west for a long time, regulations ALWAYS favor the people lobbying for them, which are the people with enough money to do so. Nobody is going to pay outright for a YouTube subscription and nobody is going to watch it at 14.4kb/s, so that means Google will be shelling out money to cover it, they will still make a profit on it but not nearly as much, and that means they can't use their bulk to expand into every other sector horizontally at breakneck speed. That means startups might once again compete with them in some area, etc. It has a bubble effect from one sector to the next which fucks Google sideways a dozen times at once, it's not just a good thing, it's actually profoundly good for society as a whole. There's no reason a company based so heavily in marketing that it has convinced people it isn't just a marketing company should have that much sway, if anything that's a sign they're too good at what they do to be allowed to exist at all.

  5. More "Russia" stories than Linux or programming! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's pretty sad that we're now getting more "Russia narrative" submissions on the front page here at Slashdot than we are getting submissions about relevant stuff like Linux, programming, or sci-fi.

    If we do a Slashdot search for "russia", the earliest story on the first page of results is from October 30, 2017.

    If we do a Slashdot search for "linux", the earliest story on the first page of results is from October 21, 2017!

    So that means we get subjected to significantly more stories about this "Russia narrative" than we get submissions having to do with Linux!

    It's even worse when we do a Slashdot search for "programming". The earliest first page submission listed there is from October 19, 2017!

    It's much worse when we do a Slashdot search for "scifi" (May 06, 2017) or a Slashdot search for "science fiction" (December 19, 2015).

    I know, I know, some fools here will start with the "Russian agent" false accusations, and other nonsense like that. But the real issue is that Slashdot's quality has declined so severely that significantly more focus is now put on purely political stories than on anything having to do with technology or computing or software or Linux or programming or science fiction and anything interesting like that.

    Slashdot has devolved into a political site that's more like the Huffington Post or Breitbart than it is like the focused tech/science/math/computing site it was during its glory days.

  6. Silicon Valley shooting itself in the feet by ghoul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The whole reason Silicon Valley can afford to pay huge salaries and create cutting edge work is because what they create is scalable. The money is spent once but can be sold to consumers all over the world at a very low marginal cost of production. Whether that is Operating Systems or Electric Cars.
    People all over the wold buy from the Microsofts and the Googles because they are considered apolitical. If these companies are seen as partisan and Patriotic than consumers and govts all over the world will pull a China and prop up local alternatives. Once the cheap marginal market goes away and its only the US Market you have left to sell too many ideas become non economic to execute . Once you cannot execute new ideas in Silicon Valley due to the cost, people with ideas will go away to cheaper locales to execute and you go into a downward spiral - fewer new ideas->fewer profitable IPOs -> fewer Angel funders ->Even fewer funding for new ideas-> fewer people moving to the Valley to execute->EVEN FEWER NEW IDEAS and so on.

    --
    **Life is too short to be serious**
    1. Re:Silicon Valley shooting itself in the feet by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If these companies are seen as partisan and Patriotic than consumers and govts all over the world will pull a China and prop up local alternatives.

      Actually, all other nations are also fighting Russia's meddling, so it's more likely that they would approve of these countermeasures. The mistake you are making is believing that the US is a one-off situation.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  7. Re:Cuz Russia's not w/ Brin & Page's true agen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Illuminists-Luciferian-Masonic-Satanists as Harold Wallace Rosenthal admits in this interview.

    That interview never happened, and the "proof" of it was provided by Nazis after his execution by the Nazis (now operating under the name PLO).

    Everyone hates the Jews. I've still never figured that one out. The only global conspiracy is the Capitalists, trying to install fascism/communism to take over the world.

    Yes, communism is capitalism. Look at Cuba. "communist", but everything was not owned by a democratic government, but by a single man. Everything owned by a single man is capitalism. And that's the capitalism that is in the US.

  8. Exact words by Meneth · · Score: 1

    Right, they don't "change their search algorithm", they can just hard-code re-rankings of individual websites.

    1. Re:Exact words by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 1

      Yep, the usual weasel words of advertising corporations. We can't believe anything they say.

      --
      Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  9. Hubris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Seems like Google is feeling invincible. Their only real revenue source is online advertising, so if coin mining replaces ads as a source of payment for content creators, they're going to have problems. Seems like Google power is peaking, sort of like Rockefeller right before oil pipelines made controlling railroad shipping irrelevant.

    1. Re:Hubris by Tailhook · · Score: 1

      Seems like Google power is peaking

      In all likelihood Google is about to find itself negotiating with Comcast et al. to stay in the "fast lane." I'm pretty damn sure that if Google occupied some apex of Rockefeller-like power they wouldn't be letting that happen.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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  11. Re:More "Russia" stories than Linux or programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Much of the news we read today is for generating clicks/eyeballs/ad revenue/polarizing discussion. I'd rather read a site dedicated to getting humanity off this rock through research and fundraising. Anybody know of one?

  12. The anon troll army is out in force! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    Russia is one of the few topics that brings out the anon troll army. The other topics I've noticed have this effect are net neutrality and systemd. It's almost as if some powerful people don't want some topics discussed.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  13. Individual Websites by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    Google does not change its search algorithm to re-rank individual websites

    Of course not, they just make their algorithms include the material they want omitted, that way they also catch similar material.