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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

#101

Post by IncRnd »

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.

The reason is that it is illegal to use the FBI logo unless authorized to do so.

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

#102

Post by avianlyric »

slg wrote: post #73
avianlyric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dec…

> Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of those keys among multiple legal entities?

There would be thousands if not millions of legitimate decryptions every year. At each instance all of the fragments will need to be put together, creating an opportunity for the data to be exfiltrated.

Additionally your making the assumption that legal agencies will be able to securely store these keys long term (I.e forever). Regardless of your view on the operational and security competency of these agencies, it’s extreme difficulty to keep cryptographic keys secure long term if you need to be able to access them on a regular basis.

Even if you don’t think most criminal organisations will manage this, you can pretty much guarantee that large nation state actors like China and Russia will find a way to get hold of these keys. You then give your largest competitors the ability to seriously damage your economy or steal secrets by either using the keys themselves, or leaking them on the internet. Suddenly every single message sent by every citizen, politician, bank, weapons company etc becomes public for all to see.

> 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

You will 100% be able to roll your own, and trivially too. You’ll just need to go to GitHub and grab the source code, or pre-built binaries for a working crypto system, of which there are many. Banning the big companies from using crypto isn’t enough, you also need to ban anyone from talking about crypto as well.

This is very different to money laundering rules. Realistically you can’t opt out of the modern financial system, regardless of what blockchain proponents say, so introducing rules to gatekeep money flows at system choke points makes sense. Also one ability to censor money at choke points doesn’t also create an opportunity for enemies to exploit those same choke points.

The money laundering equivalent of crypto censorship would be like the US deciding that it was going to switch to Bitcoin so that all transactions are public and accessible to law enforcement. Then just kinda hoping that a country like China isn’t going to launch a 51% attack.

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

#103

Post by gambiting »

amalcon wrote: post #83
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…

I'm pretty good with electrical diagrams and such, and I know exactly what one needs to do to stay about as safe as one can. I've fished (ethernet) wires before. I still hire electricians, because it's the only practical way to buy electrician's insurance for a project. I know a retired electrician. He hires electricians for anything nontrivial, for the insurance. That said your broader point has a lot of merit. I hi…

What do you mean electrician's insurance?

I do have a so called "DIY insurance" on my home policy - if I damage something while doing a DIY project(drill into a cable or a pipe for instance) my home insurance will cover the repair. Is that not enough?

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

#104

Post by einpoklum »

amalcon wrote: post #83
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…

I'm pretty good with electrical diagrams and such, and I know exactly what one needs to do to stay about as safe as one can. I've fished (ethernet) wires before. I still hire electricians, because it's the only practical way to buy electrician's insurance for a project. I know a retired electrician. He hires electricians for anything nontrivial, for the insurance. That said your broader point has a lot of merit. I hi…

TBH the electricians I know tend to rely on their know-how to just do things right rather than on somebody else with the ability to sure in case it all burns down.

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

#105

Post by minsc__and__boo »

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.

2 ads and a card linking directly to the Google support article explaining how to remove it here.

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

#106

Post by avianlyric »

TurningCanadian wrote: post #88
avianlyric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't say it's all or nothing. Several of the more regressive countries already demand access to decryption keys. The government gets easy access to the data but it's still hard for the non-state bad guys to intercept.

Doesn’t help if people are using end-to-end encryption.

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

#107

Post by anamexis »

throwitaway1235 wrote: post #98
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…

It's simple. The user is a thinking, conscious being, he or she views, what he or she wants. No dilemma. Nothing shall be censored.

So if someone posts revenge porn of you, you're fine just trusting the 8 billion people on Earth not to look at it, and leaving it at that?

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

#108

Post by narrator »

pjc50 wrote: post #71
narrator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obviously you can use courts and the police in the form of the existing government. That works fine. We're trying to figure out how to do this in a borderless global internet via blockchain and so forth.

The victim would contact the organizations and ask that they remove the material citing their mission and bylaws. Maybe they would form a hierarchy with the most generally agreed upon rules being shared, like a treaty, between blockchains.

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

#109

Post by Cd00d »

deertick1 wrote: post #29
crazygringo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about? I just Googled "I don't care about gender identity" and the top results are all agreeing with that statement. The search is working perfectly. Google isn't inserting any kind of left-wing bias whatsoever. It's finding the same types of pages as DuckDuckGo does as well. So why are you spreading this misinformation?

I hadn't tried that particular search. Heres on I have tried and just double checked it : "I don't care about transgender rights" The example further down about the moon landing is a much better example though. Its a lot worse right when some political event happens. Like if trump said sonething really controversial and you search for more context around it, on google top results would all be articles about how shitt…

> I hadn't tried that particular search

So, the one example you provided you hadn't taken the 10 seconds to validate?

You're not providing value here. Please make an effort to make meaningful and additive comments instead of spewing misinformation or made up anecdotes.

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

#110

Post by IncRnd »

nradov wrote: post #91
jfoster wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's the type of thing that you'll have to search on the specialized Google Scholar site to find useful results. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=COVI...

That's exactly the poster's point.
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