
Censorship by Google - billme
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
======
dang
This is far too generic and popular a topic for a Wikipedia page to make a
good HN post about it. See recent explanations at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041)

When I say generic and popular, here's what I mean: the #1 and #4 stories on
HN yesterday were about this theme:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-18](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-05-18).
Even apart from the Wikipedia aspect, a good HN submission on a theme like
this needs to meet two criteria:

(1) It needs to not be generic -
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(2) It needs Significant New Information (SNI) -
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

When the theme is one of the hottest controversies of the moment, multiply all
of the above 10x.

If you're worried that this means we're censoring Google-censorship stories,
we're not, and HN search is your friend:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E100%20google&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E100%20youtube&sort=byDate&type=story)

~~~
deathgrips
Censorship by one company isn't specific?

~~~
dang
Not when it has been discussed many times from many angles. And probably not
when the company is a planet.

HN discussion thrives when there are details for the mind to sink its teeth
into. This actually brings up another point: lists. Lists don't make good HN
submissions. See previous explanations:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20denominator%20list&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
deathgrips
Ah, ok. So an article about a specific incident or a specific, small
subsidiary would work?

~~~
dang
A specific incident, yes. Whether it's a small subsidiary or not probably is a
red herring, unless there's something unexpected about that small subsidiary
being involved in such a thing.

Really, though, this is just about avoiding repetition. The first principle of
HN is curiosity. Everything else follows from that
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
Curiosity withers under repetition
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
Generic discussions are bad because they're repetitive. There's a close
relationship between genericness and repetition: generic is what you get when
you take a bunch of things that have been seen and heard before, and blend
them in a blender.

When a topic has been repeated enough to become generic, SNI is our only
friend (see link upthread). That's basically the same as your specific
incident. By the way, these specific incidents quickly become generic in their
own right. An ongoing example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23213213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23213213)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23172564)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23232115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23232115)

(those are just the ones with significant comments that I happen to know
about)

Edit - by the way, it has taken years to hammer out these principles to the
point that they've become building blocks of moderation that can be linked to
and expressed in clear, concrete ways. I think it's probably time to collect
this material into a more orderly form.

~~~
billme
For what it’s worth, me posting like to the Wikipedia page was the result of a
random Google search trying to find examples of new Google SERP features;
Google search being...

[new message in Google search -"support.google.com"]

...with results limited to the past 24-hours. I had not even heard of the
YouTube issue and was honestly surprised how much information was on wiki’s
about Google censorship.

All that said, lol, didn’t have an issue with your reasoning, and when I saw
how fast the post was climbing wasn’t shocked to see it fall just as fast as
it happens all the time and you’d pinned your comment too.

------
deathgrips
One big example was Google's censorship during the 2016 American election. The
autocomplete suggestions were wildly different than every other major search
engine (DDG, Bing, etc.). Typing "Crooked" into every other search engine
would suggest first the completion "Crooked Hillary". Searching on google
about the Wikileaks Clinton email server leaks wouldn't yield results that
would take you to the links. Most notably, the Chrome browser would try to
divert you from the website entirely claiming that wikileaks was unsafe to
visit.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples and I'm not attempting to portray any
particular motive or larger scheme, but there is boatloads of evidence that
Google censors political information and news during American elections. For
all the talk of Russian interference, you'd think we'd talk more about
Google's interference.

~~~
r00fus
Is it that Google "censored" it or that other search engines were engineered
into posting astroturfed content?

I mean, maybe the proper link would be to crooked.com?

------
pkaye
Some of this censorship seems to be at the request of various governments. For
example the "right to be forgotten" in some EU countries. What do people
expect Google to do in such cases?

~~~
billme
Stating the obvious, Google’s response depends on the context, that being:
what Google makes of the request, the country, changes requested, demand for
Google in that country, blowback from other countries, etc.

Unless Internet is available via a connection not controlled by a given
country, which would be hard given even satellites report to countries — and
the end user had a safe way to access the connection without upsetting the
country they’re in, including if they’re in the ocean, since (most) boats &
airplanes are still bound to a given country and/or country space the happen
to be in.

------
KayL
Even they removed search suggestions for "黃色" (Yellow).

It's related to the color of the Hong Kong protests:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Economic_Circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Economic_Circle)

------
runawaybottle
Will the wiki link be censored if it mentions the censored stuff?

~~~
billme
Appears Google even suggests it, or at least that’s how I ran across it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23242571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23242571)

------
Commodore_64
Its a good article

