OT: Hands Off Google!
Vaughn Treude
vltreude at deru.com
Thu Feb 9 07:27:03 MST 2006
On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 03:39, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
>
> Still essentially the same non-.cn results for US search at
> Google.com.
>
>
> thats wierd! when I click the Tiananmen in .cn I get 'super happy
> fun' pictures, when I click on .com I get tanks with students, etc.
>
>
> Wonder what happens if you make an English search of Google.cn
> from within
> .cn?
>
> If Google and m$ are truly notifying people when results have
> been left
> out due to government restrictions that's already pushing the
> envelope to
> reduce censorship. Do Google or m$ notify us if searches are
> censored in
> the .us? Are there pages that don't get indexed by Google due
> to content?
>
>
> I know of at least one site http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com that
> is not indexed in Google news because it has been classed as
> 'extremist'. take a look at the content, Im not sure who considers
> this site to be extreme.
>
I searched "little green footballs" on Google News and did turn up a
number of articles that referenced the site, though none referenced the
blog directly. I suppose that the whole point of a news search is to
filter out what you don't consider news - though LGF is definitely a
popular political site, so I'd say filtering it out is a mistake at best
and evidence of bias at worst.
OTOH, I do agree LGF _is_ extreme in the sense that it's generally
anti-Muslim, which doesn't bother me, but will certainly bother a lot of
other people. :-) What I find distasteful about LGF is the amount of
anti-Arab racist invective you see there. I certainly would not ban
that, though politically correct countries like the UK would, so perhaps
that's a reason for the omission. BTW, I'm somewhat flattered that the
folks at LGF hate anti-war libertarians (such as myself) so much that
they call us "idiotarians." It's a nice change after being marginalized
and ignored. :-)
>
> I can't read the dominoes and things at the bottom of the .cn
> page, so no
> idea if those are warnings of censorship.
>
> > do no evil... well maybe just a little evil. no one will
> notice.
>
> Turning info over to the .us gov't without fighting the
> illegal request is
> evil. Turning over personal info the the .cn gov't or the RIAA
> or MPAA
> without fighting it is evil.
>
>
> These problems are surely the beginning of much bigger ones in the
> future. One can imagine the number of ways that a search company
> could control a group or society through an engine that users assume
> is impartial and objective. I would think that eventually there will
> be government regulations on search engines, in addition to new
> regulations introduced at the IP transport level as well. This of
> course would require a much higher level of formalization in the
> information and linguistic sciences. There is a growing contingency
> of tech savvy activists who are vehemently fighting this encroachment
> into thier digital communication infrastructure. http://www.eff.org
> . There is Lessig of course, and a few other important lawyers and
> technology people. I had mentioned on the Azipa list more than a year
> ago the problems concerning municipal wireless and how hidden cost
> structures will effect their success. Verizon has since 'put on a
> happy face' and are now ostensibly more positive about the prospects(
> and sales value ) of a 'neutral network'. It seems more like bait
> than an honest sales bid.
>
> In general most people do not understand to what extent this
> indexing of content can be used. Natural Language Processing has made
> some serious strides in recent years. It cetainly touches on a lot of
> hot topics such as privacy, etc.
>
>
> If they lose the fight they still have to comply with the law.
> I'd like to
> think one would choose to just not do business in a country
> like that, but
> I doubt Google, m$ or Yahoo are going to stop doing business
> in the .us...
>
> As to Joshua's point below. No, I don't just jump up against
> something
> because m$ is doing it. I try to only criticize the evil
> things m$
> does. Pretty easy considering how large that list is...
>
> BTW, is m$ still skewing search results to censor critics and
> abnormally
> promote its own pages?
>
> The Tiananmen queries below end up both being handled by .com
> servers for
> me and have the same results.
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
>
>
> > On 2/6/06, Joshua Zeidner <jjzeidner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> This is too good to hold back.
> >>
> >> Tiananmen image search in
> China<http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen>
> >> Tiananmen image search in the rest of the world
> >> <http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen>
> >>
> >> On 2/2/06, Randy Melder < randymelder at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> What's really sad is that if it were Microsoft agreeing to
> censorship,
> >>> you'd be all over them... for some reason, Google gets a
> pass? Why?
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
> --
> # https://www.LuftHans.com/ http://www.CiscoLearning.org/
> # Join the League of Professional System Administrators!
> https://LOPSA.org/
> # Science is magic explained. - der.hans
>
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