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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

Before everyone screams too loudly, RT was recently forced to register as a foreign agent by the US government:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564045159...

So it's not as if Google is picking media organisations it dislikes at random.

But AIPAC isn't forced to do so, despite even engaging in espionage[1] and literally boasting about how they've corrupted and influenced top politicians[2]. So everyone should take this foreign agent registration stuff as more political theater.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs...

Exactly. It all depends on whose side you are. If it is from the side which the establishment/puppet masters favor, then its all fair. How much trust do MSM's have these days? They have bought it upon themselves by being slaves of people with agendas.

For better of for worse, when USAmerican citizens spend their own USAmerican money to lobby the US Government on behalf of foreign countries, they aren't considered foreign agents.

The AIPAC spies were fired by AIPAC.

RT is directly funded by the Russian government

Of course not, they follow the Red Scare trend because if you start with something else, you get pushback, but who would defend the Russians, especially now? Do you want to look like Putin's agent? And then when they'd need to tweak the ranking next time for next political scare of the day, the precedent has been already set, and there's nothing to it, just the usual...

What does this have to do with the fundamental fact that Google decides to make access to information / opinions from certain sources less accessible than others?

Google.com is a website, belonging to a certain commercial company, which is obliged by law to work in the best interest if its shareholders. They can do whatever they want with their website.

Same goes for Facebook. Each time you read or post there something -- they generously allow you to do that using their website.

They don't break no First Amendment -- one is free to create their own website and practice their own free speech any way one wants.

PS: I'm not trolling, I'm just tired of how many people used to treat media resources like public utilities.

> which is obliged by law to work in the best interest if its shareholders

That's a myth. There's no such law, at least not in simplistic understanding you are implying. E.g. see https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/why-the-maximizing-s... https://truthonthemarket.com/2010/07/27/the-shareholder-weal... etc.

> They can do whatever they want with their website.

This is completely vacuous statement. Nobody says Google has no legal right to tweak their search algorithms for political reasons. The claim is that this is despicable and unwise thing to do, not that Google shouldn't have control of their own website.

> "There's no such law"

But they can still get sued. So doesn't matter if there is no specific law.

You can get sued for anything. Especially if you have money - it gets some people into the mood "why would they have money which I should have instead?" Getting successfully sued is quite different thing.

Interesting links, thank you.

> "So it's not as if Google is picking media organisations it dislikes at random."

Letting a government decide what qualifies as legitimate news and colluding with corporations to do so is concerning.

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