Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
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Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
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Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#2Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb" and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I'm logged in.
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#3Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb" and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I'm logged in.
The third sentence (in bold):
"Google’s blacklist prevents the names of sites appearing in their Instant and Autocomplete search services, while the pages themselves remain indexed."
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#4Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb" and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I'm logged in.
The third sentence (in bold): "Google’s blacklist prevents the names of sites appearing in their Instant and Autocomplete search services, while the pages themselves remain indexed."
All of the search terms showed up just fine in the auto complete and instant for me.
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#5Extremely inaccurate title, torrentfreak should be ashamed.
The results are "censored" only from autocomplete, not from the index itself.
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#6This doesn't really explain the back story. Google's autocomplete used to suggest searching for torrents (e.g. type "the dark knight" and it would autocomplete to "the dark knight torrent" because so many people have searched for that). While this was certainly a boon to certain sites, Google has no obligation to provide it (considering that autocomplete didn't even exist for many years). Google's new policy for pirated stuff is the same as for porn: if you're explicitly looking for it they will find it for you, but they won't suggest it. This particular article is just complaining about some new fine-tuning of the same policy.
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#7Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb" and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I'm logged in.
From the article "Google’s blacklist prevents the names of sites appearing in their Instant and Autocomplete search services, while the pages themselves remain indexed."
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#8Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb" and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I'm logged in.
The search results themselves are unchanged, but the instant suggestions are. From a couple quick tests, this seems to be the case for me as well, though it would be easier to be sure if I had results from a year or so ago to compare against.
For example, "the pirate ba" returns "the pirate balthasar", "the pirate bar", and "the pirate bar" in several different cities. Amusingly, "bittor" doesn't complete to bittorrent, but does include at least one "piracy" related term. It also has a torrent client as its top result.
Spelling suggestions don't seem effected for now. "bitorent" suggests "bittorrent". "thepirtebay" shows results for "thepiratebay".
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#9Extremely inaccurate title, torrentfreak should be ashamed. The results are "censored" only from autocomplete, not from the index itself.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
#10This doesn't really explain the back story. Google's autocomplete used to suggest searching for torrents (e.g. type "the dark knight" and it would autocomplete to "the dark knight torrent" because so many people have searched for that). While this was certainly a boon to certain sites, Google has no obligation to provide it (considering that autocomplete didn't even exist for many years). Google's new policy for pira…
This is true, but by Google's filter is not as smart as you would expect and the filter is too broad.
Why include the word "BitTorrent" as it's the trademark of a fine US tech company?
Why include ALL variations of searches with the dictionary word "torrent"?
These decisions appear to be quite arbitrary, which is dangerous when we're talking about censorship.