Google's top results for 'Did the Holocaust happen' now expunged of denial sites
searchengineland.com
searchengineland.com
No, it's not. This is what google does. They rank pages and present the most valid search results for a given query. Returning easily falsifiable nonsense as the first result for a common search is a bug, not a feature, and they've now fixed it.
I do agree that it's dangerous but it's not new; this is built into the DNA of google searching.
I would guess they are simply adding an "odiousness" factor to some sites which will penalize them in search results, or giving a boost to "consensus" sites as necessary until the results are socially and politically acceptable.
The expectation of search engines in the early days was that they were neutral parties and reflected whatever ideas were current on the Web itself.
Since then, people gaming Google results for political reasons, and the occasional Google countermeasures such as this one, have become routine.
In the current climate the technological gatekeepers are being explicitly politicized very quickly.
To me this is part of a rejection of personal responsibility for political opinions and an urge to lay blame.
I wonder if we won't soon see distinct social media and even search engines with distinct political biases, as we do already with traditional media.
The shift towards increasing political interference with these algorithms raises additional issues. Google becomes responsible for what you are able to see, rather than just showing you what exists on the web relevant to your query.
You may remember that Google exited the world's largest market some time ago precisely because they were not willing to accept political influence on search results.
"Political bias" has nothing to do with it, whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of fact, not political opinion. You can't fault Google for removing disinformation.
Either stating or denying historical fact is political speech.
Indeed, you are being glib because this happens to be a clear cut issue. Precisely because it is a clear cut issue, it is also totally irrelevant in this particular case. The tiny minority of deniers will still be a tiny minority whether Google tweaks its search results or not. If not for some outrage-baiting journos, none of us would ever have seen or cared about these search results.
The cases where this matters are precisely those where things are not so clear cut. Who do you want to define disinformation when it is not so clear? Google employees?
If it's non-biased library, of course they would. There are plenty of books that deny holocaust or at least doubt it's popular version.
Holocaust deniers often mimic the forms and practices of scholars in order to deceive the public about the nature of their views. They generally footnote their writings by citing the publications of other Holocaust deniers and hold pseudo-scholarly conventions.
AGAIN, google's goal is to organise all knowledge and that's exactly what it's doing. That holocaust denial is a thing is also knowledge, and so you can find it by typing "holocaust denial".
For Google to move it, would be not giving people the results they want for political reasons.
I'd hope this is just due to the site having technical difficulties as some have suggested.