Why are search engines getting involved in censorship? I understand that they need to blank out certain sites as required by law, but omitting them entirely is a bad move. When I perform a search I want it to search the web, not the approved-web.
To me this is a form of censorship together with the recent removal of fake news sites.
The approved web is what we'll have eventually with little resistance.
You can resist. You can use a different search engine. You can use other resources to get information out there. There is a myriad of different options. They're not all 'easy', but they're not impractical either.
I'm failing to see how this is going to be an "approved web".
type "George Soros is " (with the trailing space)
Compare and contrast
For example, when typing in "Martin Shkreli is a" on Google, the only auto-complete is "Martin Shkreli is actually good". Try the same on Bing and DDG, you will see all of the negative auto-completes you'd expect.
Edit: Wow you got a lot of downvotes fast. I honestly don't know if you're trying to advance a viewpoint or not, and I think you pointed out a very interesting split in the behavior of major engines that's worthy of taking a look at.
I, for one, think that regardless of your political views (I didn't even know who George Soros was), this comment was very high quality.
I downvoted because I spent hours looking into the related theory that Google was trying to influence the election by only showing positive autosuggestions about Clinton, only to conclude that the algorithm generally doesn't autosuggest negative things or allegations of crimes. (You can try with figures like OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby, etc.)
So, like the tired old discussions we have all the time (but Go doesn't have generics!, "if you're not the market, you're the product", etc), I downvoted since I don't think it was related to the discussion, particular interesting, or insightful.
Would it matter if one's filter bubble is more on the left or right here? I'm Dutch, living in Sweden and left-leaning - presumably the biggest contributors to any filter bubble that applies here.
Without getting into a discussion of politics itself, could people who do see a difference share their experience, and what they expect the search engines to infer about their political leanings?
This makes me wonder: has anyone ever looked at per-country filter bubbles?
Google gives me bland stuff like "..is how old" and "..is he dead."
Bing gives me "..is so evil" and "..is a convicted felon."
Duckduckgo "wins" with "..is the antichrist" and "..is satan."
Which is even stranger, shouldn't we all see the exact same thing with DDG?
What are your (relevant) DDG settings? Country is set to "All Regions" and Safe Search is on for me, but changing either doesn't change anything for me.
"Browser Preferred Language" (English-US in my case)
Safe Search "On"
Instant Answers "On"
Auto Suggest "On"
Censorship is a strong and emotive word, and I think using it in cases like this devalues its significance. Modern search engines consider a huge number of factors, many of them subjectively chosen, when deciding what to present on their results pages. In general, they have no obligation to provide any specific service to any specific visitor.
In most contexts, actively helping someone to break the law is frowned upon, or even against the law in itself. The big online services have a very cosy deal legally speaking at the moment, getting away with a lot of things that might otherwise be legally suspect because of special safe harbour rules and the like, which in turn means they can make a great deal of money by doing things automatically without the kind of human intervention and risks that would otherwise apply. It is unlikely to be in their interests to push their luck, because it isn't inherently necessary to give them such a beneficial treatment, and few people other than their shareholders would shed a tear if the climate changed and their running costs went up dramatically as a result.
A more positive point is that people who complain about other restrictive measures, like DRM and the laws that make breaking it illegal, often claim that it would be more effective for content producers to offer better legal channels for accessing that content. Promoting legitimate, reliable sources of good quality content is surely in the interests of any search engine.
In short, it's entirely reasonable for a major corporate player like Google or Microsoft to steer clear of supporting illegal activities and to promote legal sources for material online.
https://backchannel.com/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a...
Wired also has an older article talking about this too:
https://www.wired.com/2008/10/ten-years-later/
Its what allows so much of the internet to be the way it is, but abusing it or pushing it too hard could have serious negative consequences..this will be something to watch.
Soon, posting articles about illegal states or economic boycotting will deduct your social popularity on social media. It really isn't too far away. Just replace points with 'recommendations' or 'popular' and it will be done.
Social points seems too draconian. Recommendations is better. What we thought was years away has already begun.