Google Erases Thousands of Links, Tricked by Phony Complaints

This is the expected result of increased scrutiny over Google. Whether or not to respond to claims of abuse is a tradeoff between limiting false negatives or limiting false positives. When there is an increase in the cost of false negative, both monetary and in terms of status and reputation, then Google is going to optimize to reduce false negatives at the expense of creating more false positives.

This should definitely be part of the conversation when discussing regulating content on Google and other large aggregators and social media platforms. I find that the so-called "techlash" has resulted in more stringent policing of content, but also greater opportunity to abuse reporting functionality. Using copyright claims malicious has been a known practice for years now, at least between content creators (e.g. feuding YouTubers having their fans report rivals). I'm not surprised to see governments using the same tactics.

I get emails all the time from Google about DMCA notices and pages from my site being removed from search. They'll just give me a list of 100s of pages that have been removed. The requests make absolutely no sense. For example, it'll be a URL for a comment permalink, which redirects to a comment that says, "Great!". The vast majority of the requests are because someone mentions the name of a TV show or movie. Some company that represents them just issues a DMCA removal for any page that uses their name, claiming it infringes on their copyright. So, I've had thousands of pages removed from Google during the past year. I don't have time to make counterclaims for each of them. Most of them are old pages that receive little to no traffic. Still, it's a shame for anyone trying to search for them.

This is the result of every "Remove Bad Internet Stuff" law.

It's extremely important for the whole world to start to understand - as shown by stories like this - that Google does not hold "the world's information" anymore. Other search engines are increasingly needed. (Do I need to go back to Dogpile?)

Yesterday I even noticed Google censoring an enquiry of mine which I happen to know is a scientifically honest, but politically incorrect thing to apparently ask in Google's particular culture. (It's quite a tame line of enquiry, and not racist at all. In fact, it's information which can save lives, and yet Google was blocking my access to that information.)

I had to use Yandex to even find what I was looking for.

Only Google, no more.

I cannot believe this - but I just tried my query in Dogpile, and it was superior to both Google and Yandex.

Mirror: http://archive.md/7ShhN

I think much of this foreshadows how the infrastructure of networks will evolve over the next decade to cope with difficulties of this nature.

There was a project I worked on several years that required becoming familiar with SEO in the earlier days and tactics like this have exploded and become more automated since 2010.

On a global network, enforcement hurdles (real or perceived) are turning the information superhighway into a digital concentration camp.

I personally can enjoy an I.S.H. without having to access a global network and forecast segmentation of networks branching off and web properties poping up on the new canvas to cater to domestic or local norms, rather than accessing a network where lowest common denominator dictatorship engagement/enforcement cancels out any benefit of ease of data retrieval.

We can easily siphon anything from a global network, so IMO, you may still access a network to assist with day-to-day tasks, but Internet 1.0`s days are numbered as being part of many folks daily routine/lifestyle.

There is a deeper question here of: "Should information about people be trivially easy to find via Google (or any search engine)?"

It's one thing to have the world's information available to learn and improve. It's another to have any mention of your name going back decades easily retrievable, whether that information may be true, false, slanderous, complimentary, or what-have-you.

And what causes the threshold to be crossed? A friend who names you as part of a pub-crawl/bachelor party in Las Vegas in a public social media post is different from someone who is charged in court and found guilty of a crime. But what about someone who is accused of a crime, but then acquitted later? Or someone who is named in a civil suit that is later dropped?

I don't think we can have a blanket policy of these things but it certainly makes sense for some measure of a "right-to-be-forgotten" mechanism to be in place.

Zero financial incentive to stop phony complaints , lots of incentive to ensure you comply with government regulations.

OK, maybe Google is easily fooled, or maybe it cuts rights holders lots of slack, or whatever.

But why would anyone need to search for pirated stuff using Google? For media I just use TPB, and libgen for books. And I presume that streaming services do their own searching.

Reads like a how-to guide for anyone wanting to start their own "web reputation management" company.

I'm guessing interest in this will die down, and Google won't change their automated system.

Seems like google could use some of that ml magic to determine if a blog post was published four months before the events it describes and maybe flag that for further review.

How come Google can't detect who was there first? Last I checked they had a massive index, timestamped even, of webpages. Dumbfounding.

Google don't negotiate.

I had an Blogger(run by Google) article removed by Google in 2019.

https://cpplover.blogspot.com/2012/04/blog-post_9853.html

This article quoted an interesting local Japanese news in 2012. It reported an arrest of a suspect(with real name), the suspected crime was copyright infringement for he quoted the local city's official web sites. This is strange as the Japanese copyright clearly stated that the publication from the government body cannot be copyrighted. It seems to me, that the suspect has some kind of mental issues or strong personal dislike toward the local city he is living. His web site blame every move by the local city, like he don't like the recent announcement from the city as it can be interpreted to mean malicious intent or blame the news of the minor crime by the local city's civil servants. So I suspect that local city claimed the bogus copyright violation and let local police arrest him to silence him.

What unusual about this removal is, that the reason they stated was defamation, not the usual copyright violation claim that US infamously force Web service provider to censor the information without the court order. As this is not the usual DMCA takedown notice, they don't give a person who claimed the defamation, so I cannot easily sue back the person who claimed that.

The definition of the defamation varies between jurisdictions, In some jurisdictions, the mere fact does not constitute as the defamation, In my jurisdiction, Japan, simply stating the fact can be a defamation. But not all statements be a defamation off course. The right to be forgotten does not exist in Japan. So simply quoting the news source with real name of suspect widely reported is not a defamation.

As I consulted with my lawyer, they advised me it doesn't worth it to take action. This is the first case they've heard. As I stated in the beginning, Google don't negotiate. It's so hard to negotiate with the real living human from the Google as all the response from the Google is BOT. But at least, the Google comply with the law and the court order. If it's DMCA takedown notice, it should be trivial to reveal the claimer, as the law requires to reveal the claimer.

There was interesting techniques to let google censor the information wide spreading in the wild. That you sue without explicitly specify the defendant in a minor country, win because there is no defendant to argue, using that court order to let Google censor the information as Google at least comply with the court order.

In my jurisdiction, Japan, there is a procedure to sue without specifying the defendant, but it's rarely used. The court usually won't allow such procedure. And in my case, I revealed my real name and address in my blog so it's unlikely Japanese court allow such lawsuit to happen. I don't know about the foreign countries but I cannot practically know the lawsuit of all the countries in the world.

With the unusual defamation claim, and google don't reveal the information, because of the rule "Google don't negotiate". If I were to sue the claimer, First I have to sue the Google to reveal the information of claimers. It costs so much money and time. This is my personal blog with no ad revenue. It doesn't worth it.

Still, it's interesting who is the claimer. The local city and police won't do this. No matter how corrupt they are, they can't do this. That leave the suspect, but the article was written in favour to the suspect and if he has the sane literacy and mental state, he won't interpret it as the defamation toward him. But his web site was full of strange interpretation and hateful interpretation on the local city's publication, I'm not so sure about this. Still, it's strange he successfully let the Google remove the article of him with unusual defamation claim.

There is another possibility that the third person, a complete stranger claimed it just to screw me. But it's a tiny achievement considering the fact that I have hundreds of article in Blogger, mirroring it to GitHub Pages, and I can simply repost the same article to anywhere if I want to(with the consequence on me if this really, legally constitute the defamation).

The moral is, Google don't negotiate.

FWIW, the last Google's transparency report said 4.6B URLs removed. I wonder how many were like like this. I suppose we would never know, since no human can audit 4.6B URLs.

Not sure I believe Google is that gullible.

wsj clickbait. tell us news.

It is funny how no one ever speaks of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google - I never hear anything from him. About the only time I've seen Sundar say anything is a few mins of pre-rehearsed teleprompted speech at Google I/O, mostly about AI buzzwords.

Sundar - if you're reading this, get on talk shows. Talk about your company and it's future in candid, off-the-cuff manner. Put the corporate lingo behind and speak in honest, truthful and unambiguous ways. You should be on Joe Rogan, you should be doing more interviews and generally have a lively presence. Look at how Stripe founders defend their company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22937303

What kind of leadership is this? In my opinion, Google's image and its opinion has gone down hill since Sundar's appointment as CEO, but that's just a general emotion I have - not sure if it is financially or more widely true.

Not to mention the army of gatekeepers and moderators employed by the likes of Twitter often in countries not know for democracy or free speech to take down individuals.

At least some of it can be attributed to oil money greasing their palms.