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Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

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Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#51

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dkokelley wrote: post #19

This is an example of a large central authority censoring information. How does the notion of a purely distributed, unregulated, uncensorable, blockchain-backed internet handle "revenge porn" or other genuinely harmful content? An argument I hear from the crypto community is that blockchain is good because it enables freedom of speech that can't be banned by governments or other central authorities. The crypto commun…

I'd love to walk into a business without shoes or a shirt and demand service. For some crazy reason these businesses are allowed to restrict my liberty on their property.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#52

Post by legitster »

oh_sigh wrote: post #44
legitster wrote: post #21

To Google's credit, it's literally the first search results for "how do I remove myself from Google". It is a bit ironic that people looking to remove something for being too easy to find via search are being stymied by a simple search. Still, good to provide some visibility about it. I certainly never knew this was a thing.

First result...under 4 ads that probably make you pay to do the thing google does for free for you.

A weird example of Google creating business for third parties.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#53

Post by majormajor »

danso wrote: post #2

Couldn't fit the whole tweet, so just to be clear, she's talking about manual, non-legal requests: > One of the surprising things about working on the slander series is how few people in the field, even experts, know that Google voluntarily removes some search results. (No court order needed!) You have to visit this generic url: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?... Down the thread, she adds…

> Because so few people know about it, "reputation managers" are charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging information from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out that form for free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my husband after he came under attack.

While that sounds like a high price, and you usually don't want to just hire the first person you see advertise a service, the concept of specialization there, and some people just not wanting to devote the time to becoming experts everywhere, seems perfectly fine and normal.

People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#54

Post by avianlyric »

slg wrote: post #43
kypro wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO both of these options are terrible. I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one doesn't exi…

>I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. >What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start de…

The difference is that strong encryption is an all or nothing proposition. You either have strong encryption that works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried.

Selective censorship by central authorities can be granular, choosing to create a legal process for selective censorship doesn’t suddenly allow any person on the internet to potentially censor any thing they want. Weak encryption however allows anyone, anywhere, with enough effort to break all encryption everywhere, and do so without without detection or needing to expose themselves via a legal system.

Also there aren’t “central encryption authorities” that all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It’s like trying to ban the concept of Pi.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#55

Post by dkokelley »

lozaning wrote: post #35
dkokelley wrote: post #19

This is an example of a large central authority censoring information. How does the notion of a purely distributed, unregulated, uncensorable, blockchain-backed internet handle "revenge porn" or other genuinely harmful content? An argument I hear from the crypto community is that blockchain is good because it enables freedom of speech that can't be banned by governments or other central authorities. The crypto commun…

I freaked a bunch of FBI agents out a while back by Base64 encoding a photo of an FBI logo and writing that to the Eth chain. They have massive concerns around this regarding data exfiltration. The cost of removing the data, once written to a chain, is essentially equal to the market cap of the coin for that chain.

Another thought experiment:

What would happen if someone encoded something horrible and illegal like child porn into a blockchain? Is everyone who operates on that chain guilty of possession? Does that make a specific crypto "illegal" if its blockchain contains illegal content?

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#56

Post by deertick1 »

danso wrote: post #48
deertick1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so thats the thing. You are just immediately assuming that you are right and everyone who disagrees is wrong and a horrible person. Personally, I see people obsessed with gender identity as being wrong, anti-truth, anti science, disingenuous, etc. So thats my point : I don't want google to give me the truth, I want it to give me the internet, warts and all. I don't want google to gatekeep the information I have…

Why did you start using Google in the first place? Their early papers on PageRank/BackRub describes how their algorithm filters for quality, and their most prominent example is explicitly political: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html > As an example which illustrates the use of PageRank, anchor text, and proximity, Figure 4 shows Google's results for a search on "bill clinton". These results demonstrate…

Huh interesting. But lets be real asjing "why did you start using google anyway" is a preposterous question.

You used to be able to find all kinds of weird ass fucked up shit on google but now its all internet based news media. I miss the raw shit.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#57

Post by kr99x »

dkokelley wrote: post #19

This is an example of a large central authority censoring information. How does the notion of a purely distributed, unregulated, uncensorable, blockchain-backed internet handle "revenge porn" or other genuinely harmful content? An argument I hear from the crypto community is that blockchain is good because it enables freedom of speech that can't be banned by governments or other central authorities. The crypto commun…

No, no information should ever be banned from any public/commons - the end. You want to ban certain information from a particular place you control? Go nuts. The wider public? No.

The power to ban information is too great to be entrusted to any authority at all. Depending on how thorough the "ban" (web text filter at the ISP level? mandatory AR implants at birth filtering banned content? worse?), it's anywhere from an abhorrent violation of human rights and the principles behind free exchange and scientific inquiry all the way up through literally the most powerful weapon which could even theoretically be designed.

This is not a road worth going down, for any amount of harm reduction. The cost today may be worth it. The cost long term is potentially too great to even consider risking. There is no guarantee of who holds the ban hammer tomorrow.

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#58

Post by jedimastert »

dkokelley wrote: post #32
jedimastert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like, I get what you're saying, but I feel like you didn't actually look past the title of the post. This isn't governments censoring information or whatever, it's a form you can fill out to request removal of coerced personal information like revenge porn or doxxing.

I understand what the post is saying. I see this as an example of censorship (by Google in this case) being a GOOD thing. This caused me to wonder about how a decentralized platform would handle similar circumstances.

Whelp color me an ass for commenting about not reading past the headline while also completely missing the main crux of your argument! That's my b

Re: Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results

#60

Post by [deleted] »

majormajor wrote: post #53
danso wrote: post #2

Couldn't fit the whole tweet, so just to be clear, she's talking about manual, non-legal requests: > One of the surprising things about working on the slander series is how few people in the field, even experts, know that Google voluntarily removes some search results. (No court order needed!) You have to visit this generic url: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?... Down the thread, she adds…

> Because so few people know about it, "reputation managers" are charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging information from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out that form for free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my husband after he came under attack. While that sounds like a high price, and you usually don't want to just hire the first person you see advertise a service, the concept of specia…

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