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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

#81

Post by pjc50 »

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"

The second one is part of the anti-trans campaign.

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

#82

Post by summerlight »

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…

To add more data points for your point:

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

Everyone, please DO NOT underestimate people's malicious will to abuse weak minority groups having un-moderated platforms as their primary tool. Due to lack of Telegram's basic moderation, those victims had been severely abused to the unrecoverable level, more than two years. This could've been at least mitigated if they simply closed the room based on user reporting, which they refused to do so.

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

#83

Post by amalcon »

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…

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 hire plumbers for anything more complicated than snaking a drain, and it's because of their specialty knowledge.

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

#84

Post by tyingq »

Rasta1s wrote: post #65
tyingq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the mugshot sites have adjusted their practices where it's much harder to prove what's really going on. Straight up blackmail payment pages are gone.

Aren't mugshots public records?

Sort of. Some police departments publish them, some don't. Some publish them only day of, then remove them. Some only show them if you do the right kind of search (last/first/ maybe + birth). The predatory mugshot sites scrape these variations and publish them in a "forever" way, with lots of SEO tricks. Then basically shake you down for payment to remove them.

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

#85

Post by pjc50 »

deertick1 wrote: post #34
brunoTbear wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd ask if that error might be better understood as downranking of two things that seem very reasonable to downrank in a search engine (something designed to return accessible and useful information): - bigots motivated by animosity towards minorities - open contempt for the truth Hard to feel there's a compelling interest in supporting bigotry when knowledge is best advanced by open inquiry and the net result of big…

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…

> Personally, I see people obsessed with gender identity as being wrong, anti-truth, anti science, disingenuous, etc.

Well, yes, that's the basis of the anti-trans campaign: obsession. It ends up taking over people and causing them to become mono maniac posters on the subject, sometimes to the detriment of their careers. It's worse than scientology.

People not caring about gender identity would in many cases be a huge improvement.

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

#86

Post by Blikkentrekker »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
quacked wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up "proof the moon landing was fake". I have an aerospace degree and don't think it was fake, but I still find it strange that Google won't return any of the conspiracy pages I enjoyed reading about a decade ago.

Probably not strange since they probably have very low PageRank, visits, etc. On the other hand, the top Google results go to The Guardian, Wikipedia, Time, the BBC, etc., discussing the topic -- hugely popular sites. Google's meant to find popular relevant pages for your search terms. Remember, that's what PageRank was all about. So seems to be working as expected.

This does run into the same problem that Wikipedia runs into, that it insists on using “credible” or “reputable” sources but does not really bother to define that, and it essentially comes down to that sources are not “credible” for disagreeing with their beliefs.

Personally, I have yet to see any “credible” news source and the adage remains that every news article about anything I have even the most minor inside knowledge of seems completely inaccurate, especially the politically laden ones.

No matter what mechanism Google uses to assign such ranking: be it their own judgement or simply an agnostic a.i. that lets the masses decide, I cannot see anything good coming from it and there will always be a bias not based in factuality, but politics.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by TurningCanadian »

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…

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.

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

#89

Post by kortilla »

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?

Because crypto is implemented in software and it’s trivial to remove the part that encrypts for the government’s key.

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

#90

Post by tlogan »

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…

There is saying in Balkan countries: (my translation) “who knows knows, who does not know then it is 500 deutsche marks (dinars, etc.)”.
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