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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

I stopped letting Google filter my world when I saw that it had de-indexed conversations between extremely well credentialed scientists when they came to unpopular conclusions regarding Covid policy. This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission. I don't really object to that when the ideology is about transparency, neutrality, objectivity, so this isn't anti-ideology. But I do object when it's about censorship, advocacy and feelings, because my own ideology is pro-Enlightenment. So I've de-Googled, and I will be ready to de-Kagi, de-Zoho, de-LineageOS, etc. if they become similarly captured. I just hope that ends with me still having access to modern tech.

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You position is still kind of anti-ideology because transparency and neutrality doesn't force a perspective, it just maximizes available information. So there is a staunch difference to how Google does behave since it delegates decision making to those that should make it. And people will do so with different results.

I stopped using Google for search in 2017 and haven’t missed anything about it.

That's around the time that the Google Now feed became blatantly opinionated. It would find articles about things that I'm interested that were also related to political hot topics, and if I clicked the button to tell it I wasn't interested in the hot topic, the only option was to tell it I wasn't interested in the topic I am. Even if there was plenty of content about the topic I am interested in that wasn't being tied into the zeitgeist.

What do you use to find businesses, opening hours, ect.?

Lots of businesses have websites that can be found on other search engines. Those websites often include their opening hours.

The thing google really excels at is questions like "what bakeries near here are open on Sunday after 12:00h".

Sure, I can go to 15 individual websites, select the specific branch I want (if I got another map service to spit out names of bakeries) and hunt for their opening hours in 15 different styles of menus.

Google is just really good if it can sell you something. And sometimes, I need something to be sold to me.

Duckduckgo (uses Apple Maps) works just fine. Search for bakeries and observe every listing has a closing time or notes they're already closed. Bing maps works just fine. Search for bakeries and select "late lunch" in the hours dropdown.

Yelp can do that.

For opening hours, usually Facebook pages. Google is too unreliable for that, especially when it's a holiday.

Google is hard to beat on that matter, but I volunteer some of my time to keep my area well-mapped in OpenStreetMap, including business hours, etc.

StreetComplete is a nice tool to accomplish this while I'm taking a walk.

> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission

That's confirmation bias. I could do the same argument going the other way. That google profits of misinformation by promoting content that is demonstrably false and have caused harm in the real world. BTW, scientist can have opinions too, and such opinions can be wrong. What opinions were expressed? That closing borders doesn't work? Yes, once there are multiple spreading points restricting movement in international scale doesn't work and would be unpopular due the economic harms it brings. That mask doesn't work? Yes, they don't work because to be correctly used you literally have to have them 100% of the time when you are outside of your bubble, something that the public isn't very disciplined about.

Treating content without bias and having some things you don't like crop up next to the things you do like isn't "promoting" anything one way or the other. The moment you start meddling with boosting or deboosting things, you get into censorship territory. This is what the people fixated on "misinformation" or "disinformation" or "malinformation" or "information I don't like" don't get. Doubly so when they act like their favorite scientists, journalists and pundits are always right. Speaking of confirmation bias...

And speaking of masks as well, recall how early on in the corona debacle, The Science said that they don't work... :)

The mask that were "popular" like cloth mask, etc. that weren't up to the N95 standards didn't work because the virus is aerosol. Not all masks are equal, that's what the science has discovered.

Also, not being associated with certain content is the purview of each individual and organization. The EU is a standard of this, that tells companies, like Twitter, that they still have responsibility about their user content, so they must moderate their site.

I distinctly remember US health authorities claiming that surgical-grade masks, perhaps specifically N95s, that I am not 100% sure, were not helpful, and this led to social media companies deboosting posts disagreeing with that assessment and applying labels basically calling them fake. I don't recall if they were banning people at that point. But I am surprised that so few people remember the constant flip-flopping and goalpost-shifting. I would think that anyone paying attention would be very wary of "informationisms" as a result.

By the way, questioning the usefulness of cloth masks after that period would get you shunned or banned on many networks well past the point where we had ample evidence to prove that they were ineffective, so even ignoring the initial screw-up, there is plenty of easily provable information that was systematically censored by Internet information brokers.

Can you pull the article? Because I remember several times repeating to others that it isn't that they didn't work, but that the public doesn't need 'em, since social distancing should be enough. The N95 production of mask at the start of the pandemic wasn't able to give a mask to everyone that wanted one. Nowadays, there's sufficient production to do that. That was the whole thing.

How about this - US Surgeon General claiming masks are ineffective against the coronavirus, just four years ago: http://web.archive.org/web/20200301001854/https://twitter.co...

That's as far as I'll go since I am about to head to work, and I've spent enough time playing the game where I'm told to dig for articles by people who don't bother doing it themselves, so hopefully this is satisfactory. The deletion should be telling, there's a lot of retconning and memory-holing going on unsurprisingly.

From: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

> So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?

> "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

I also have this one bookmarked: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-...

Edit: that link 404s now (curiuous). Still on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20210802065432/https://slate.com...

In other words: stay inside people rather than wasting masks that are needed elsewhere. In his position, I would have done exactly the same thing. Do not use masks, stay indoors. Managing public perception of safety is hard yo!

I do remember this, though finding an article might be difficult or impossible at this point.

My recollection is that very early on (like the first couple of weeks) Fauci said that masks didn't work. Then later on once there were plenty of masks available, he admitted that he had lied because the medical personnel and others needed the masks more and he didn't want people to go out and buy/hoard all the masks. Basically the "noble lie" theory[1].

So I don't think there was any science saying masks didnt work. It was just that the person who is supposed to be our trusted head guide and Mr. Science himself, is a consequentialist more than a scientist.

Now for all the people (like Google) who censored posts and labelled them misinformation, etc based on Fauci's noble lie, I would cut them a little bit of slack the first time. But once he admitted to the fib, that should have been the end of his credibility. If he was willing to lie before, why wouldn't he do it again? Especially when it worked out perfectly for him?

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210802065432/https://slate.com...

> If he was willing to lie before, why wouldn't he do it again? Especially when it worked out perfectly for him?

really hope you've never told a single lie in your entire life before.

The early days of the pandemic, when everyone was actually most scared, had authrority figures tell us not to wear masks and that the virus is not airborne, just droplets (so that it's important to wash our hands and anything we buy). The idea that the virus isn't airborne persisted even after they started admitting that masks are critical.

And regardless, any mask of any kind helps. N95 is much better, but even a basic cloth mask will help reduce the amount of viral load you breath out or in. Especially if both the person breathing out and the one breathing in are wearing them.

The issue is that we didn't know the virus was aerosol (airbone means something else). The best evidence at the time was that it was droplets. In the case of aerosol, just being in the vicinity of where an infected patient was, was enough. Washing hands has limited effect on aerosol since it "hangs around" in the air. The issue is that the virus also uses droplets. Coughing and breathing both spread. It was effective against one form of spreading, not all. With time we learned. That's how science works and expecting anything else is ripe for disappointment.

The EU is certainly not a standard here, it is neither its competence nor legitimacy to evaluate information as true or false.

> That's confirmation bias.

Did you actually read the article? Google literally is telling them to remove content that they don't want. This article is confirming bias.

Bullshit. Google is telling them to remove content if they want to comply with Google's advertising T&C, otherwise the ads won't run and they won't make money. That's not censorship; if you're running an ad-supported site, you have to run ad-friendly content. If Google is paying you to run their ads, you're their piper, and you play the tunes they call.

That is censorship. Sometimes large businesses remove their advertising from a paper publication because they disagree with the reporting. When that happens, the whole industry rightfully calls it censorship and abuse.

> If Google is paying you to run their ads, you're their piper, and you play the tunes they call.

You just described censorship in crystal clear terms.

No, that is not censorship. You calling it that does not make it so.

Consider the alternative: Either morally or legally, Google and/or their advertisers have to run ads on sites that they disagree with, thereby supporting them both financially and reputationally. Where, in that scenario, is their free speech?

You're free to say anything you want. I'm free to not endorse it or support it. So are Google and their advertisers.

(You might make a case for actual censorship if Google refused to index such pages.)

It is censorship, even though they have the right to do it and even if they can have justified reasons for doing it.

During war, letters home from soldiers and even generals are read by a censor and censored, so that sensitive information cannot get to the enemy. That is legal, that is agreeable, that is still censorship.

In this case, Google even specifies what articles need to be removed for continued advertising, so it is crystal clear censorship.

Repeating the claim still doesn't make it true.

The definition most of us use for censorship is "I prevent you from saying something." What Google is doing is "I decline to help you make money from saying something." That is not at all the same thing.

Prevention is one way to censor. Prohibition is another. Suppression is a third. In this case it is suppression by economic means. There are degrees of everything, including censorship. Google withdrawing ads because they don't want to be associated with a publication is a different thing than Google sending dictates on exactly what is allowed to be said for continued business.

Is Google breaking any laws? Probably not. Are they practicing censorship? Yes, they are.

Google didn't supress the content; they declined to pay for advertising alongside that content. That's their prerogative.

If you sup with the Devil, sup with a long spoon.

> you have to run ad-friendly content

Of course that is censorship.

It is the same abstract principle as TikTok removing unhappy or ugly people, even the motivation can be consolidated to a common position.

> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission.

Google isn't threatening to deindex them, they're threatening to pull ads on the site. This is likely not because Google-the-ad-company cares very much but rather because their advertisers are very sensitive about what kinds of content their brand is associated with.

Additionally, the content that is most likely triggering Google's let's-not-scare-off-advertisers alarms is most likely not in the content itself but rather in the comment sections. For example, one of the articles they call out as being flagged falsely [0] for vaccine misinformation and hateful speech doesn't mention vaccines in the body but does have comments that would get flagged to death on HN, one of which mentions vaccines in a hostile way.

So this really isn't a case of Google censoring Naked Capitalism's content, it's a case of Google's advertisers not wanting to be associated with an unmoderated right-wing comment section. We can discuss whether that is broken (for example are the advertisers less skittish about unmoderated left-wing comments?), but it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.

[0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twe...

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