Posted on 05/31/2025 12:55:10 PM PDT by Openurmind
[Note: What follows is a blog-post formatted version of the 34 page letter I submitted to the FTC on May 21, 2025 in response to the agency’s RFI entitled: “Request for Public Comment Regarding Technology Platform Censorship.” I have also added a section at the end on what you can do to save the open web from Google’s AI takeover.]
In this letter I will explain how Google censored my travel website – and thousands of small and independent web publishers like me – all so that it can use AI to control the flow of information online.
In late 2023 and early 2024, Google released an unprecedented series of algorithm updates that utterly decimated thousands of independent websites.
Travel Lemming lost more than 95% of our Google organic search referral traffic in these updates.
The shadowban algorithm that hit us was supposedly based on the content on our websites. But we later realized the shadowban really was about the type of website we are (i.e., small and independent).
While Google gives large publishers an appeal and recovery process, small and independent publishers have no path to appeal our shadowbans.
This is true even though Google admitted our shadowbans are its fault and not ours.
In fact, last October, Google even flew me and 19 other publishers out to its headquarters for a tour, an admission of wrongdoing, and an apology.
Though Google apologized, it also said that search has permanently changed with AI and thus our traffic may never return.
In this letter I will describe how I believe Google has been laying the groundwork for a grand plan to rethink search from the ground-up so as to profit from AI.
Google isn’t satisfied with its monopoly on the questions we search.
Google wants to use AI to monopolize the very answers themselves.
As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.”
Google plans to use AI to consume and replace the open web.
I believe demolishing independent sites like mine was Google’s first step in clearing ground so it has space to rebuild search from the ground up for an “AI-first” future.
Google envisions a future where “Google does the Googling for you,” its AI and ads do the answering – and users never need to leave Google.
Google will just source information from a handful of sources and partner websites that it controls and selects – effectively creating an information cartel.
If Google can use AI to censor a travel website from the web arbitrarily and without opportunity for appeal – it can do the same to any source of information it wants.
And American citizens and Internet users everywhere will be worse off for it.
So while you may not really care about the plight of some random travel website getting censored, everyone should care about the way Google is deploying AI to build a censorship cartel that lets it control the flow of information online.
What follows is a lengthy summary of my experiences and my opinions as an independent publisher trying to survive in a monopolist’s information economy.
Much more great exposure...
Which is why X is important.
X is important but I’ve been using Google, less and less, I’ve found using the AI Chatbot from X called Grok has been more useful than Google.
I like to work with Microsoft Excel, I had Grok write a Excel Macro in Python for me to use, it took me several iterations to get it working just the way I wanted, but Grok wrote the Python code and made all the changes I need in a fraction of the time it would have taken me, assuming I could have ever gotten it working.
This is the problem with monopolies. Should there be a one stop source search engine?
Google can sway any close congressional election with just a simple tweak to page rank in any district. Congress critters know this and act accordingly.
“This is the problem with monopolies. Should there be a one stop source search engine?”
Absolutely not. But the problem with Google is much bigger than just search engines. Just about every website on the net is utilizing 3rd party Google service scripts such as Google Analytics Etc. So all these sites are now going to be owned and controlled through the backdoor by Google AI.
Every website that utilize these need to dump Google for an alternative immediately. Google is NOT needed to have a website up. They have brainwashed everyone into thinking it is.
Google needs to go the way of Ma Bell.
Monopoly.
I would like to see China or Russia release a clone of Google circa 2012 or something. Something from before the AI, before the “decision engine” concept.
Back then you could search for something and find it. Today it utterly ignores all your search terms and serves up things with a hard commercial or recent news bias. None of the old tricks like quotation marks etc work.
A pirated one in a country they couldn’t reach would be really cool to hurt google.
Google is becoming the “Big Brother” Orwell only dreamed about.
It is as big a threat as the Deep State.
The Media is becoming less and less relevant as both the left and right do not believe them. The uncensored flow of information on the internet is the most relevant source today.
It is raw, uncensored and full of truth and lies. That is okay as that is what our dying media is today. The most important thing is censorship of the internet which is ongoing today by the left.
When the free flow of ideas, politics, opinion, philosophy, religion, etc. is not compromised we have freedom. If not we have tyranny.
“Google needs to go the way of Ma Bell.
Monopoly.”
I agree. But there is a problem. Google is owned by Alphabet, and Alphabet is owned by BlackRock, and BlackRock owns our government. So indirectly Google is Government...
So it will probably never happen the way it should.
One old trick of mine still works well.
I pick a topic and put the search into the search engine.
It returns the usual leftist propaganda sites.
I look through them and identify three or four key words they keep using that show leftist bias.
Then I redo the initial search followed by the minus sign before each leftist key word.
The mainstream and leftist media articles disappear.
This works because the propaganda uses the exact same words no matter the publication.
Format:
Mykeywordsformysearch -leftistwordone -leftistwordtwo -leftistwordthree
The Media is becoming less and less relevant as both the left and right do not believe them. The uncensored flow of information on the internet is the most relevant source today.
It is raw, uncensored and full of truth and lies. That is okay as that is what our dying media is today. The most important thing is censorship of the internet which is ongoing today by the left.
When the free flow of ideas, politics, opinion, philosophy, religion, etc. is not compromised we have freedom. If not we have tyranny.
Google is not as social agency. They are not here to help the common good. The are a publicly traded company with a primary goal of increasing shareholder value.
There are a lot of places that do search engines. There are a lot of ways to market your company on the internet. People want to use the inexpensive route to make their millions. Marketing a business on the internet is hard work. I had to build my own internet brand from 1999 through 2014. It is how I made my living. It took a couple of hours every day to keep the site running and up to date. Then I spent the rest of my day doing my actual job.
The first amendment applies to government. It doesn’t apply to Google.
Build a better mousetrap.
Excellent! Thank you.
Is it possible what they’re really doing is harvesting information from all sources to block conservative voices/businesses from search results?
“I would like to see China or Russia release a clone of Google circa 2012 or something. Something from before the AI, before the “decision engine” concept.
Back then you could search for something and find it. Today it utterly ignores all your search terms and serves up things with a hard commercial or recent news bias. None of the old tricks like quotation marks etc work.
A pirated one in a country they couldn’t reach would be really cool to hurt google.”
This is one of the best statements on the topic I have seen in a long time.
ABSOLUTELY. Brave is trying to do this with their search engine but I am finding it too is manipulative, filtered, and commercially oriented also.
It would not be that hard to do, the problem is the time it would take to crawl the net to fill it up. It would take years...
I was thinking about this a few days ago. What might actually work is an old school “directory”. Let everyone come add their site to it in categories. And have a “report” feature for users to help police it for illegal content.
Make it self driven and non-profit so that there is no incentive to commercialize it and be partial to businesses. Just plan old information links where everyone is equal. It would be extremely easy to make that database itself keyword searchable.
The problem would be storage... Cloud based maybe?
Thanks, I’ll give that a try. Although I have largely abandoned Google search because it eliminates so many things. If I google something there, I get slightly different results from Bing, significantly better from DuckDuckGo, and radically different from Yandex. Yandex is good for forbidden topics like human dosage for Ivermectin horse paste, etc. But they often add some completely unrelated porn. Very odd...
“Is it possible what they’re really doing is harvesting information from all sources to block conservative voices/businesses from search results?”
Oh you bet! And steer social ideology “norms” and HISTORY... All this AI is going to be used by ALL parties to reshape humanity and create a false reality. Google just happens to have their foot in the door first because of their sheer massive presence in everything on the net.
I noticed that I am definitely shadow banned from youtube comments.
While lefties can just say whatever they want.
There has been a very obvious shift in commentary allowed since the election.
Google is a private business…I guess they can get away with it.
It has to be very easy with speech tyrant AI programs.
Exactly.
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