Had a debate with Google engineer and the page was removed from Google. Related? | Hacker News Reader

Had a debate with Google engineer and the page was removed from Google. Related?

27 pointsfuzzymind12 comments

The page with the commenting thread is here:

https://volument.com/blog/sendbeacon-is-broken

Yesterday, the page was the first result in Google search with "sendbeacon is broken". Now it's completely gone from the Google index.

Still first on bing.com and duckduckgo.com

How is this possible? Really wish someone can answer this. This sounds a bit scary.

Thanks!

View on HN

>One former contractor the WSJ spoke with described down-voting any search results that read like a "how-to manual" for queries relating to suicide until the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline came up as the top result. According to the contractor, Google soon after put out a message to the contracting firm that the Lifeline should be marked as the top result for all searches relating to suicide so that the company algorithms would adjust to consider it the top result.

>Or in another instance, sources told the WSJ, employees made a conscious choice for how to handle anti-vax messaging:

>One of the first hot-button issues surfaced in 2015, according to people familiar with the matter, when some employees complained that a search for “how do vaccines cause autism” delivered misinformation through sites that oppose vaccinations.

At least one employee defended the result, writing that Google should “let the algorithms decide” what shows up, according to one person familiar with the matter. Instead, the people said, Google made a change so that the first result is a site called howdovaccinescauseautism.com—which states on its home page in large black letters, “They f—ing don’t.” (The phrase has become a meme within Google.)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/google-search-re...

tl:dr - Human oversight / manipulation.

I think this is the WSJ article mentioned there:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-...

"This method is for analytics ... before the document is unloaded"

so nothing a user should ever care about. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, another garbage to stub out in my userjs, navigator.sendBeacon = undefined; bam!

I see your page and this thread when searching on Google, it is probably some hickup in their algorithm.

I also see this thread under Hacker News, but not the article on volument.com, which was first yesterday with "sendBeacon is broken".

Try searching in an incognito window; it might be just an issue with your personalized search results.

As another data point, volument is the first result in my search

A friend of mine had a discussion with Matthew Garret (Google) here on HN and his account was banned without a warning

Related?

No idea if it's related or not but it's certainly terrifying.

I guess instead of a polite "no, thank you" I'll stop responding to Google recruiters altogether, for the safety of my Google account.

I can't believe I have to say this, but no, it's not related.

Scary indeed

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