Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

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hello,

I do agree with you mostly, and in general I think that censorship is hardly ever good. In this particular case censorship was a force for good.

As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for quite a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run?

Australian society mostly takes a very dim view of racism, and especially racism towards the aborigines. Our elected representatives and the people of australia put in place laws such that this type of thing does not happen.

However the government and politicians did not make this particular case of censorship happen - the courts of law made it happen. I think most of society agree that it is a shit thing that google was doing in this instance.

Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA.

Where do we draw the line? Obviously sociopaths shouldn't be able to say whatever they like to millions of people if their words will cause harm. How about spammers bent on selling their products? Google already blocks some of the spammers. As do they block malware serving sites, and sites that don't play by googles rules of what constitutes a good web page. Make a website more google friendly, and google will reward you with higher rankings. Put more google messages (adverts) on your pages, and get more people to see them, and google will pay you more money. How about companies abusing trademarks or abusing copyright? Are those censorship too?

Do we take the values of a multi national corporations(ie google)? Isn't that a form of cultural imperialism? What is to stop the courts abusing their power? There are many processes in place to try and let all sides of society have their input into what the courts do. What is to stop google from abusing their power and imposing their views on people who do not want them? ... glibly, I guess the answer to that is adblock.

I don't think you can have a 'censorship is always wrong' approach, or a 'totally abusing censorship in terrible ways' approach either. Reasoned arguments by courts of law are an answer - to find out where censorship is appropriate and where it is not.

The people who made that site should get a dog up em.

Well dude, if it were up to me, I would have a "censorship is always wrong" approach. No exceptions. I realise this will never come to pass, but that's none the less how it would be if it were up to me. Censorship is never a force for good in my opinion.

As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for quite a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run?

I had not heard about this, but honestly I could not care less. If people just ignored this shit rather than pandering to the trolls, maybe there'd be no incentive for them to keep doing it.

Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA.

And this censorship would be gone too, if it were - once again - up to me.

I think you must see where I draw the line now, i.e. I don't draw it. I can imagine that many people may think my view extreme, what about the children and all that? Well, that's what parents are for.

Whether a sociopath is able to say whatever they like on the Internet or not doesn't bother me in the slightest. Because I am an independent person who thinks for myself and feels quite comfortable judging for myself whether I wish to read the writings of a sociopath.

But more than anything else, I was actually commenting on the technological naivety of the people involved in this particular situation. Were I inclined to get a bee in my bonnet about satirical racism on the Internet, would I think having the offending material removed from Google is really any kind of satisfactory outcome? Can people still get to the offending content? Certainly. Do more people know about it now than could have ever possibly known about it previously? Yes.

My point is that no matter how tightly the Conroys of this world try to clamp down, there will always be cracks that are exploited. No matter how "clean" the feed, there's always going to something on the Internet that offends someone. Instead of worrying about where the line is drawn, we could start worrying about taking personal responsibility for ourselves and our children and leave everyone else free to do the same.

I had not heard about this, but honestly I could not care less. If people just ignored this shit rather than pandering to the trolls, maybe there'd be no incentive for them to keep doing it.

eBay has (or had?) a habit of spamming ads in Google searches that said things like "Looking for ${WHAT_YOU_SEARCHED_FOR}? Buy it new or used on eBay!", no matter what you'd searched for.

So of course people would search for all kinds of imaginary/dangerous/illegal/offensive/etc. things just to see if it would spawn any "hilarious" auto-generated eBay ads.

Well there you go, didn't know that either. if this is the mechanism that the story is based on, it's even less to be kicking up a fuss about IMO.

>Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA.

You are confusing their quest for relevance with censorship. Google filters out pornography from most search results in general under the assumption that pornography results are not desired. If, however, you do wish to view pornographic content, you can always search for pornography related topics directly, in which case pornographic results will be returned.

Turning on Safe Search, a user controlled option, will try to do a stronger job filtering the results. A notification is displayed that safe search is on, and the user can always choose to turn it off. This is not 'censorship', it is a useful tool for their users.

It's satire. If you can't cope with that, please off yourself for the good of the rest of us.

'It's satire. If you can't cope with that, please off yourself for the good of the rest of us.'

ok

tyvm, but before you do could you please provide your name, so I can have the satisfaction of looking up your obituary tomorrow?

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