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Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

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Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#81

Post by adventured »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #60
markbnj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be but if Google's goal is to promote authoritative sources there's no reason to consider WSWS to be authoritative for those search terms, imo. I'm not saying I agree with their goal, just that this seems consistent with it, and I imagine that's what the reply was getting at.

What does "authoritative" mean anyway? I don't want my search results to be authoritative, I want them to be relevant, varied, and interesting. Google is not an encyclopedia. Google fails recently at providing varied results, on any topic you get a Wikipedia article, a load of the same blogspam from sites like Guardian, Atlantic, or Daily Mail, and then the same 1-2 paragraph article repeated 15 times on content farm…

> Google is not an encyclopedia. Google fails recently at providing varied results, on any topic you get a Wikipedia article

That's not recent. Google has been returning Wikipedia as a near universal top result for a decade.

Regarding content farms, they overwhelmingly smashed the content farms with their panda & penguin updates years ago and have refined the destruction of content farms since then. Very few remain, much less sustain, outside of temporary niche corners.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#82

Post by diogenescynic »

KekDemaga wrote: post #55
diogenescynic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is not the same as propaganda and straight up lying about historical facts. If you claim there weren't famines in the Soviet Union, you're either a liar or a fool. I am fine with those being removed from Google. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the entire point of Google search. They should ban all disinformation sites, Fox News, Breitbart, and InfoWars would be a good start to add to WSWS. Salon and…

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist."

Ironic because Socialist forums are heavily moderated and quickly ban those who don't repeat the talking points. They hate having their ideas challenged, but get mad that a public company won't give them web traffic? Cry me a river.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#83

Post by squarefoot »

I have no way to tell if this was deliberate or not, but personally I lost any respect and trust in Google the day they removed the discussion search filter. Before that day I could find common people talking about a product or a political issue, now unless I'm prepared to jump dozens of pages I'm inundated by sites selling that product or affiliated with that political orientation.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#84

Post by adventured »

exikyut wrote: post #38

EDIT: I've noticed all the replies and I'd like to acknowledge them. Unfortunately I feel very stupid for not screenshotting what I saw when I searched one hour ago. I now see 62,900 results, and I can load up to page 6. I can't prove that I was not able to load page 2 before, but it's true. My original comment remains unedited below. -- For a concrete demonstration of pathological de-ranking, do a query for "site:we…

Page two for "site:web.archive.org" loads immediately on Google, no delay.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#85

Post by jessaustin »

evolve2017 wrote: post #11
leereeves wrote: post #4

When Google, Facebook, and others announced that they were banning "fake news", many on the left cheered. But it was probably naive to assume Google would limit itself to censoring political opinions with which one disagrees.

I don't quite understand the snark in your response - were you, unlike the purported cheering liberals, fond of the purveyors of fake news?

"Fake news" is a bullshit category. The purpose of talking about it is not to protect poor impressionable idiots like us from misinformation. The purpose is to continue pretending that the Democrat party doesn't have to make any changes in order to appeal to a voting majority. Now they're talking about Jerry Brown... it's as if they're determined to keep Trump in office for 7 more years, and get those 38 Republican legislatures it will take to pass all those horrific Constitutional amendments that the bigots have planned.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#86

Post by etplayer »

thephyber wrote: post #72
edpichler wrote: post #29

Unfortunately, some companies are becoming too powerful. Concurrency must be encouraged, it's always good.

At first glance, this looks extremely ironic. Don't Socialists advocate for a centralization of economic capital (among others like political and news) or do I misunderstand? If purist socialists had there way, wouldn't there only be one search engine? Obviously it would be great if others could compete, but I think it's simply a market gap (innovation, capital investment, etc) at this point and not for lack of compe…

>Don't Socialists advocate for a centralization of economic capital (among others like political and news) or do I misunderstand?

Not necessarily (distributed economic planning, comumnal planning and indeed some (though not I) advance market Socialism), and further, things like search can be decentralised, as I'm sure mosts Socialists would agree with if aware that such technology exists.

>If purist socialists had there way, wouldn't there only be one search engine?

No, I see no reason to think that. This is largely stemming from the myth that "everyone has one car under Socialism"; it neglects that aside from seeking profit, different cars have different uses and advantages. It's probably the same with search engines and GNU/Linux distros.

>Google has become so successful that their search is very advanced compared to upstarts.

I agree, and I think that in a world where there is less incentive to keep secrets (though of course there is always incentive, such as personal pride, mastery, or even embarrassment over how your code looks!) because profit doesn't need to be protected from "theives", such research might even be public for others to benefit from. The learning technology can be free. Google would not have to collect data "on the sly", perhaps.

However the response to this is - would people willingly (and by this I mean when properly and fully informed of what they are doing) give over this data that Google uses to learn in such a way? If the answer is no, perhaps it's time to consider the ethical ramifications of such 'learning'.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#87

Post by aaron-lebo »

ue_ wrote: post #76
aaron-lebo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not low quantity but it seems very filtered. Recently finished reading: https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-New-History-ebook/... The Russian revolution was co-opted by Lenin and the Bolsheviks who were funded by the German foreign office and more than anything else were unscrupulous about who they murdered. 25 million people were dead by the end of the revolution (early 20s). There's not so much as a hint…

Interesting, is there anywhere I can read about this aside from the book you've linked? Although I am a Communist, I am critical of the Bolsheviks and I have an open mind.

Wish I had more to suggest, but Wiki has some good articles on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#88

Post by nebabyte »

> The physical censorship implemented by Google is so extensive that of the top 150 search terms that, as late as April 2017, connected the WSWS with readers, 145 no longer do so.

> These findings make clear that the decline in Google search traffic to the WSWS is not the result of some technical issue, but a deliberate policy of censorship.

...or that they have not been keeping up with their SEO, are getting edged out by AMP sites, tripped over some other google rule, etc...

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#89

Post by diogenescynic »

diego_moita wrote: post #77
guelo wrote: post #58

FWIW, searching on Bing "russian revolution" wsws.org shows up on page 5.

Searching on duckduckgo, "russian revolution" shows wsws.org on 80th place. Didn't show up for "proletariat". The irony: they prefer to cry wolf instead of doing SEO and don't want to be called a conspiracy theory site.

I guess they'd rather play the victim and try to get free PR.

Re: Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms

#90

Post by jessaustin »

mempko wrote: post #59
leereeves wrote: post #4

When Google, Facebook, and others announced that they were banning "fake news", many on the left cheered. But it was probably naive to assume Google would limit itself to censoring political opinions with which one disagrees.

The news that the left cheered when google and facebook censored fake news, is itself fake news.

Lots of people think the Democrat party is the Left.
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