Posted on 12/21/2013 4:38:29 AM PST by IbJensen
Ever wondered why you can’t find a post from your favorite alternative media website on the world’s most famous search engine?
The Register is reporting a pressure surge from politicians, judges, cops and the like to remove material from Google that’s critical of them:
Today, the advertising giant said that, in the first six months of 2013, it received 3,846 demands from public officials to remove 24,737 personal blog posts, YouTube videos and other pieces of content it hosts. That’s up 68 per cent on the second half of 2012.
And according to the web giant, which has just published its latest transparency report, 93 requests focused on content that was critical of people in public office. Defamation and copyright infringement were often cited, but less than one third of the highlighted material was removed in the first half of 2013.
A whopping 93% of the requests — basically all of them — were attempting to censor people who are critical of public officials on the web. While some content may actually be defamation, just how gray are the lines surrounding that definition?
In the U.S., requests were up 70% and included 27 federal agency requests to pull apps from the Google Play store for trademark infringement. As for the U.K., Google wrote, “We received a request from a law firm representing a former Member of Parliament to remove a preview from Google Books that allegedly defamed the MP by suggesting he was engaged in illegal activity. We removed the preview.”
Google legal director Susan Infantino wrote that these requests have become a consistent and “worrying trend” for the past four years. Worrying trend or slippery slope to a politically correct nightmare?
In 2012, the Internet Society took of poll of more than 10,000 Internet users from over 20 countries around the world and found that the majority of them (86%) strongly agreed that “Freedom of expression should be guaranteed on the Internet.”
But free expression isn’t guaranteed. In fact, depending on what country you live in, the Internet landscape can look like a very different place — one with a whole lot of “filtering” going on.
Take China for example. If you live in China, you are not allowed to access social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. They are just blocked, period. Information that might embarrass the Chinese government, such as information on the Tiananmen Square Massacre during which the government implemented martial law and killed thousands of pro-democracy protestors, simply does not exist on the Internet when accessed in China. It’s as if none of that stuff ever happened. China has essentially erased the online history books.
That’s what happened in George Orwell’s 1984 when history was literally erased and rewritten to a Big Brother-centric point of view.
And that is exactly what our so-called leaders would love to do to our Internet all over the world. Silence political dissent.
Don’t believe it? Check out the Stratfor email posted on Wikileaks claiming that CIA Director John Brennan is behind a witch hunt for “anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda”. (Probably not gonna find that link with a Google search…)
It’s sad we live in such an Orwellian time that politicians can just get whole chunks of the Internet they do not agree with (or that do not agree with them) erased, much like the Ministry of Truth rewriting history in the book 1984… which was a novel, not an instructional manual, for the record.
I never received this which is surprising considering the fact that I’ve been around a while.
Thanks.
If all I had to do all day long is to research various articles on the internet in an attempt to point out that posters can be fools and be fooled, I’d consider myself very fortunate. The thesis in this particular article is valid.
Your sarcasm as regards my education is duly noted. I can see that you visited my profile.
always
Nully, I know I have told you this before, but your Nut-job Conspiracy Theor[ies] for some reason keep coming true.
So how can it be a "Nut-job" and a "conspiracy?"
5.56mm
Interesting, image searches for "Valerie Jarret lizard, snake, reptoid, forked tongue, scaly, serpent, and alien" all fail to return a single image of her morphing into or side-by side with any of the above...
Don't PHD's research?
The thesis in this particular article is valid.
Sure. She co-authored the 'Chemtrails' article, too.
Your sarcasm as regards my education is duly noted.
That's what you get for decorating your profile page with our name.
I can see that you visited my profile.
A necessary evil prior to checking your rap sheet.
Shhhhhhh! That’s a secret!
Wow, that’s scary, nully. I’ve seen one where Hillary’s eyes shift (like a reptile’s) for just a split second, and that one was scary enough.
It's a slippery slope and I think many of us can see this coming:
First they erase the content. Then they erase the content creator.
Dissent will not be tolerated!
I think we need to be careful with the words censure and erase.
Google is a company and has no obligation to index any sites.
As consumers we can visit any sites we want on the internet. Google is unable to prevent us from doing so. That’s nothing like China literally blocking sites from everyone’s access.
So google is free to include whatever sites they like in their indexing. They have a financial interest to be perceived as “objective” and include all sites, not a legal obligation.
And we consumers are free to use whatever search engines we want.
If Google were ever declared a monopoly they could lose some of their freedom to choose.
Hey BQ! Haven’t seen you in a while!
I’m more scared by the inability to find that with any of the search terms I listed.
Censorship most foul.
You make some good points, however, we already know that Google leans to the left. So we already know what kind of erasing they are going to do.
Maybe if you weren’t so arrogant as to think what you find as an important opinion so it must be everyone else’s concern you might not get your panties in a wad so easily and would be happier.
For it is written in The Book Of The Won, Chapter Won, Verse Won:
"Thou shalt not speak against the deeds of Thy Lord and Savior, The Obama, The Messiah, The Won, lest thou be declared racist."
Here Endeth The Lesson.
Hey there! Thank you for all the pings — I always read your posts even if I can’t make it to the thread itself. (I’m finally on vacation now so can catch up and actually post things :))
LOL about the search terms, that IS bad!
Good trade craft, in fact, would require Google to leak some more or less innocent examples along with Google's "concerns" in collusion with spy agencies so that the full extent of this censorship is not perceived.
A far bigger problem -- which has always been the problem with mass media -- is the conspiracy of silence, in which Google does indeed participate. Google's top results and search algorithms are skewed to weigh heavily to the Left. Anyone who doesn't believe this should have followed the recent pajamaboy fiasco, or Phil Robertson's problems. Search results from Google slanted heavily toward websites expressing the leftist point of view in the opening hours of those scandals, and it has only been in the last day or so that the overwhelming number of postings mocking pajamaboy has finally driven the engines algorithms to accept the reality that in cyberspace -- on this issue at least -- the leftist view does not prevail.
Google of course, will never reveal the extent to which it is a fellow traveller with any left leaning government, and suppresses news favorable to the right.
I’m not doubting Google’s bias.
Nor am I questioning the fact that in some cases Google may have been a tool of the Leftist State.
My post was in response to the OP grousing at the fact that this article - which proved to be skewed and an unfaithful representation of the original article - was relegated to the blog section.
In fact given the liberties with the retelling of the story, it more likely should have been in the Smoky Backroom.
One of the interesting things to me about FR is that a thread seldom takes the direction intended by the original poster, provided enough intelligent FReepers are interested in the basic story.
Seems somehow appropriate, considering the Saturnalia festivals are ancient mystery Babylon celebrations.
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