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Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#231

Post by jamesb93 »

digi_owl wrote: post #152
chongli wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget pirate sites, Google is doing this for everything. I'm shocked at how often a search for some generic word or animal name brings up some company I've never heard of, with the Wikipedia page for that generic word buried at the bottom of the first page (sometimes pushed to the second page).

Really glad i switched to DDG for my random searches (i can always do a !g if i feel that the results are meaningless).

Wow... I always hated how sometimes the results for really niche things would not be found by DDG so I swapped back to evil corp search. I can't believe I haven't used these !g commands before! Thanks

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#233

Post by stcredzero »

skybrian wrote: post #220
stcredzero wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google probably doesn't want to censor results the way they have been forced to. From what I've seen, there is a large contingent of Google who doesn't want to provide unfettered access to information. Rather, this contingent wants to socially engineer everyone for the better using their power.

It's unclear what "unfettered access" would mean for a search engine. Google has always been ranking results from the very beginning (PageRank). To get unbiased results you'd need a random sample of something, which is never going to be useful in a search engine. So they are always going to make some people unhappy and the question is who. It used to be people nobody on Hacker News cared about like spammers and click…

So they are always going to make some people unhappy and the question is who.

What happens when these large companies start making people unhappy just because they have the wrong politics? What happens when groups of people within companies like Google start looking the other way when people start to manipulate/SEO page rankings to bury facts and promote their own interpretations of documented facts and science?

It's already happened.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#234

Post by prepend »

skybrian wrote: post #220
stcredzero wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google probably doesn't want to censor results the way they have been forced to. From what I've seen, there is a large contingent of Google who doesn't want to provide unfettered access to information. Rather, this contingent wants to socially engineer everyone for the better using their power.

It's unclear what "unfettered access" would mean for a search engine. Google has always been ranking results from the very beginning (PageRank). To get unbiased results you'd need a random sample of something, which is never going to be useful in a search engine. So they are always going to make some people unhappy and the question is who. It used to be people nobody on Hacker News cared about like spammers and click…

“So they are always going to make some people unhappy and the question is who. It used to be people nobody on Hacker News cared about like spammers and click farms (remember them)?“

For me, I want pirate sites when searching for piracy and I never want click farm.

Google used to have a simple mission- organize the world information. This means helping you find what you’re looking for. Link farms didn’t do this, they made it harder to find the real thing. If I’m looking for a document and Google knows I want it, and knows the document’s location and doesn’t show it to me, that’s bad. I don’t really care if Google morally doesn’t like piracy, or makes more money by blocking piracy, or whatever. It’s their site, they can do what they like.

But this is why they are worse at their job than they used to be.

One of the reasons I never liked AOL is because their search was like an index through the yellow pages and didn’t use what made the internet so awesome (all the world can connect to each other) and rather was about what was most advantageous for AOL and their advertisers buying keywords.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#236

Post by prepend »

iaml wrote: post #126
shiado wrote: post #124

I remember I used to do filetype searches for mp3, mp4, flac, etc... and get all sorts of good stuff. I would find ftp servers with thousands of songs and just download anything interesting. I feel like the Google search algorithm peaked many years ago and has gradually been neutered by all sorts of special interest groups who have no doubt harassed Google with legal threats. Google probably doesn't want to censor re…

It would be funny to see bing finally reach google search quality not because it got better, but because google got worse.

It’s even more funny since google got worse intentionally. It’s one thing to go IBM and just get slowly bad through attrition and attenuation. A whole different level of curiousity to cuck yourself.

I hope they wise up and improve as I actually would rather have 2-3 highly competitive search companies rather than just 1.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#237

Post by prepend »

jankeymeulen wrote: post #213
njarboe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people working at Google get a different google search from the rest of us. Seems likely.

No, doesn't seem different to me. Of course, when logged in with the corp Google account / on the corp network you can see some debugging info and there will be likely some experiments running, but pretty much the same.

If you’re inside Google, do you have access to api definitions or source? There must be some raw result before they apply all the various removals and cosmetic (piracy ban) weights.

It seems like you would to test with this to assess quality.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#238

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

clarry wrote: post #188
iaml wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be funny to see bing finally reach google search quality not because it got better, but because google got worse.

I just used Google Image search and in frustration switched to DDG because I have no idea how to get direct links to the images that Google presents. I don't think it was always this hard? Or maybe I've grown dumber. EDIT: Evidently you can right-click and view image. I thought that wouldn't get me to the original image since the image as presented in search is smaller in resolution than what Google says the image re…

There is a Chrome/Firefox/Userscript extension that brings back the View Image button:

https://github.com/bijij/ViewImage

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#239

Post by dawnerd »

dawnerd wrote: post #159
AngryData wrote: post #7

Google has been trash for pirate content for awhile now. 9/10 sites it does show are fake and straight up malicious with like 50 different things trying to hijack your browser and make you install shit. Not that real pirate sites are exactly safe, but at least they actually provide what people are looking for.

So I was looking for an older movie a while back, not even necessarily to pirate but just if it was available anywhere. Tons of results on YouTube that were just hiurbking clips with a frame that said check description for url. Amazing google can’t stop those but they can do things like demobilize lgbt content.

Wow, note to self, double check autocorrect when commenting after just waking up.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#240

Post by herewegoagain90 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #193
clarry wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just used Google Image search and in frustration switched to DDG because I have no idea how to get direct links to the images that Google presents. I don't think it was always this hard? Or maybe I've grown dumber. EDIT: Evidently you can right-click and view image. I thought that wouldn't get me to the original image since the image as presented in search is smaller in resolution than what Google says the image re…

You know what DDG is doing is illegal, right? Google Images used to link to direct images as well. But then there were lawsuit threats and a settlement with Getty, which forced them to stop linking directly. If DDG / Bing become big enough, they too will be forced to stop their practice.

Interesting! These makes me remember the documentary/movie “Bananas!” which was about the criminal behaviour of the fruit- and vegetable company Dole. During the making the Americans involved in the making got so scared of being sued their house from them that they left the project. The swedes never cared about the threats from Dole. This also made the news on Sweden that even parliament members backed the project and said that Doles threats where so unethical.

Having said that, I think Goggle is just hiding behind the lawsuit threats.

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