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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

#71

Post by pjc50 »

narrator wrote: post #28
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…

When talking about the blockchain and other voluntary systems, I tend to look at these things from a "what if there was no government that could just use physical coercion to implement its laws, how would you get people to voluntarily sign up for this?" perspective for these kinds of problems. You would get users to sign the social contract with some online entity and that entity would censor the blockchain for their…

That doesn't (and can't) prevent revenge porn or blackmail or doxxing in any way, because the victim is not a party.

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

#72

Post by Blikkentrekker »

thrwawy11jun21 wrote: post #17
deertick1 wrote: post #7

Yeah also if you compare results from google vs duckduckgo for controversial search terms like "I don't care about gender identity" Google will return only content that tells you why that opinion is wrong e.g. "why you should care about gender identity" Whereas duckduckgo will return stuff that actually matches your search. Google always errs on the side of left wing political platform. Its actually really egregious…

Searched Google and DDG for "I don't care about gender identity" google top: reddit post about "What are you if you just don't give a fuck about gender and you have no kind of dysphoria?" DDG top: blog post titled "Don’t care about gender Self-ID? Here’s why you should"

I also echo this; I'm not sure what exactly the poster you replied to suggests.

Both normal and incognito on Google return similar results to what was returned to you.

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

#73

Post by slg »

avianlyric wrote: post #54
slg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

>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.

This is always stated as a universal truth of the technology, but this mostly seems like a people and organizational problem. We already have encryption algorithms that can encrypt content for decryption by multiple optional keys. Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of those keys among multiple legal entities? That would require coordination and agreement to decrypt anything. That wouldn't be a true backdoor anymore than the original key is a backdoor, it would simply be overhead on the existing encrypted content to allow it to be decrypted by multiple keys.

>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.

This is true, but defaults matter. If the US makes a law regarding encryption, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc are all going to follow it. You still might be able to roll your own encryption, but the people who do that will be a tiny share of overall communication. Laws like this aren't meant to completely stop something. Putting in financial regulations to crack down on money laundering doesn't stop money laundering. The goal is to make it more difficult and prevent the most egregious cases.

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

#74

Post by pjc50 »

ipaddr wrote: post #36
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…

You don't undo a harm by trying to erase it. If the porn has been created/recorded the ex has a copy and could upload it to non-block chain locations. Once he shares it it has been decentralized. There was never a way to undo porn video you made when you were younger.

You can't 100% undo it, but you can criminalize distribution. Uploading it to a system from which it cannot be deleted guarantees no leniency.

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

#75

Post by Blikkentrekker »

jfoster wrote: post #25
deertick1 wrote: post #7

Yeah also if you compare results from google vs duckduckgo for controversial search terms like "I don't care about gender identity" Google will return only content that tells you why that opinion is wrong e.g. "why you should care about gender identity" Whereas duckduckgo will return stuff that actually matches your search. Google always errs on the side of left wing political platform. Its actually really egregious…

> Google always errs on the side of left wing political platform Reminds me that yesterday I tried googling around the topic of how covid affects fertility (eg. "covid fertility") and nearly every result that comes back is about vaccines not affecting fertility. Okay, thanks Google, but how about the actual disease? Results were a fair bit more relevant by adding "disease" to the query, but still got one or two about…

Perhaps much of it is not ideological on Google's part but actually simply the machine learning about what people want to see.

It's entirely possible that such a disproportionate number of persons is more likely to access links about vaccines and such politics than what you searched for that the machine, not the man, has elected to favor those without having any real political motive.

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

#76

Post by gist »

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…

> 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.

'ALL THEY DO' is what anyone does in a similar way. You are paying for what they know that you don't know how to do. There is nothing wrong or deceptive about making money in this way. (use of 'all they do' seems to imply this). Plenty of people are busy and willing to pay for things to have someone else handle the details. Google could easily publicize this but they choose not to.

Here is the thing. Someone charging $500 (or any amount) has already filtered people that feel they have a real need from everyone attempting to do similar. Now you could argue the fee should be less but the friction caused by that higher fee (for those who can afford it) is worth it. And those that can't can do research and effort (like with anything) to find a way to achieve the same.

People often expect everything to be free and nobody to make money off of knowledge. By the way if reputation managers are charging $500 nothing to prevent someone from doing the same for less and changing the market price. Also I'd image the rep managers possibly massage some things to get the job done something many people wouldn't know or want to do.

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

#77

Post by slg »

kypro wrote: post #66
slg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Personally I'm not convinced the rewards outweigh the risks in regards to encryption, at least not at this moment in time. But again, I'd much rather issues like these were debated democratically than some tech company deciding one day that they need to view my private messages to "protect the children". But to your point, if the sharing of child porn or other illegal content ever got so bad that something urgently n…

>I'd much rather issues like these were debated democratically than some tech company deciding one day that they need to view my private messages to "protect the children".

I agree with your general point except most people in the tech community are not willing to even have these debates. It is often treated as an issue with a single right answer and that encryption can never be compromised.

Removing ourselves from the debate is only going to end up with the decision being made without our input.

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

#78

Post by majormajor »

theli0nheart wrote: post #70
majormajor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all. Not really. People pay electricians for their experience and knowledge that give them the tools to solve complex problems, simply, without messing up your wiring, causing a fire, or blowing something up. Removing a link on Google, on the other hand, involves clicking on a link and filling out a form. You don'…

Let's say someone wants to replace a lightswitch. Google/Youtube will show you how to do that safely in a matter of minutes.

People pay because they're afraid of at least one of (a) their ability to be sure they're getting the right instructions, or (b) their ability to execute. In the electrician example, (b) could be substantial if you don't understand electricity. "Electricity can kill you" is basically the home-maintenance version of "the internet is confusing" that would prevent someone from wanting to find this Google form themselves.

In the "reputation manager" example, (a) is going to come into play more, I bet. A good "reputation manager" probably isn't going to just fill out one form on google, I imagine there's a lot you could do to cover Bing, wikipedia, and various other sites and services. I don't know where employees go to get background checks, for instance, but maybe I need to have that covered, too. So now the problem still parallels working with an electrician - how do you know if you found a good one? Lots of handyman/contractor horror stories and scams out there too!

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

#79

Post by lostmsu »

dkokelley wrote: post #55
lozaning wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you extend it wide enough, one should ban natural numbers because some of them in binary form are identical to child pornography video files.

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

#80

Post by version_five »

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…

Huh? The google example is about content being available in public, essentially the equivalent of someone posting dirty / embarrassing pictures in a public square and needing there to be a way to take them down. That sounds pretty reasonable.

The encryption example is about being able to intercept private communication (never mind outlawing math) because someone could use that private communication for something illegal.

The two examples have nothing to do with each other IMO.

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