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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

And thus, Eric Schmidt applies the same patronizing wisdom used by the Chinese government when deciding that some search results are simply too disturbing to be viewed.

Schmidt is an authoritarian first and a technologist second. I really wish he were not so influential, and I'm frankly shocked that Larry and Sergey don't see this (or that they see it and are pleased about it).

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Deranking is sensible when the site is explicitly part of a campaign to manipulate its visibility though, isn't it? Aren't you drawing comparisons too quickly?

What do you mean by "a campaign to manipulate its visibility"? Do you mean the link being launched on social media?

And then re-shared and promoted by bots masquerading as US citizens specifically for maximum impact against targeted individuals who are most susceptible to manipulation and most likely to propagate the material.

So you are critiquing the mechanism of getting social media likes for content? Don't all newspapers do that these days? I think the way to criticize the articles is by pointing out untrue content or bad journalism. So far nobody has done that.

Did you really mean that? Do you think people who are susceptible to manipulation need to be protected by Google, not for their own good but because they can be manipulated to have political opinions that you personally disagree with? That means you think your political belief is so right that competing ideas should be suppressed. That's the complete opposite of freedom of speech that America is one of the world leaders in. Do you think the way China's government limits the spread of political ideas is good too?

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