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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

"Gun Control" was not what was searched for, it is not up to Google to tip the scales on what ideological conclusion is seen, only what item is searched for with relevant results. They have a moral obligation to be neutral. If you were in Saudi Arabia, searched for "women's rights" and Google switched it to an article on "obedience to your husband," I'm sure you'd have a huge problem with that.

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Yes it was. The concept of gun rights cannot exist without the concept of gun control, it's quite literally the same theme. Gun control is what defines which gun rights people have.

To pretend that rights vs control are not highly loaded terms seems purposely ignorant. There are clearly a few ways of approaching the issue, and defaulting to one is undoubtedly going to annoy those of any other interpretation.

Search "Free speech" and get "Censorship" would be your stance, then.

Thank you for pointing this out. I don't mean to be an alarmist, but people need to wake up to the fact that algorithms, or lack thereof, bear a great responsibility on human rights now, and that's only going to grow. If Google is trying to change free thought or information flow through algorithms either for internal political stances or the whims of a government (ie China,) that's a huge problem.

The implication being what, that returning the “Censorship” article is pro-censorship? That people who choose to type in “free speech” are so stupid as to flip their position because Google responded with an article on the exact same topic, which is no more pro-censorship than the free speech article is pro-free-speech?

You’re being silly.

Oh no, my opinion is being voted down. Must be the algorithm!

Here's another reply so you can vote me down again.

And another. Why would I care.

But hopefully at some point you'll engage with the argument?

Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

> Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

Such a result would definitely be odd framing, though. Especially if it was the main infobox and not, say, the seventh result.

For instance, I could see a "soft authoritarian" regime subtly justifying its censorship regime by preferentially surfacing content that makes censorship seem more justified. One way to do that is to encourage the idea that "limits are common" and discourage the idea that "free speech is a natural right," which you can do by changing the search ranking to surface an article like you described.

Absolutely, yes. Because if I'm searching about "free speech" I will be looking for information about how it's limited, aka: censorship.

> The concept of gun rights cannot exist without the concept of gun control, it's quite literally the same theme.

This is simply not true to the many people out there that believe in natural rights.

You can believe in so-called natural rights as much as you like, that doesn't make them any more real. In fact you can set aside the concept entirely; all so-called "rights" are mere artificial constructs of hierarchical societies. You have the privilege to do whatever your particular society permits. You can call these rights, but they're certainly not natural.

(Meanwhile, I live in a society with absolutely no gun rights, and I'm extremely glad that I do. I much prefer my "right" to live in a city where guns are difficult an expensive for criminals to procure. It keeps me and my family much safer than your gun rights. And that's not an opinion, it's a proven indisputable fact.)

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