Posted on 12/21/2013 4:38:29 AM PST by IbJensen
Ever wondered why you can’t find a post from your favorite alternative media website on the world’s most famous search engine?
The Register is reporting a pressure surge from politicians, judges, cops and the like to remove material from Google that’s critical of them:
Today, the advertising giant said that, in the first six months of 2013, it received 3,846 demands from public officials to remove 24,737 personal blog posts, YouTube videos and other pieces of content it hosts. That’s up 68 per cent on the second half of 2012.
And according to the web giant, which has just published its latest transparency report, 93 requests focused on content that was critical of people in public office. Defamation and copyright infringement were often cited, but less than one third of the highlighted material was removed in the first half of 2013.
A whopping 93% of the requests — basically all of them — were attempting to censor people who are critical of public officials on the web. While some content may actually be defamation, just how gray are the lines surrounding that definition?
In the U.S., requests were up 70% and included 27 federal agency requests to pull apps from the Google Play store for trademark infringement. As for the U.K., Google wrote, “We received a request from a law firm representing a former Member of Parliament to remove a preview from Google Books that allegedly defamed the MP by suggesting he was engaged in illegal activity. We removed the preview.”
Google legal director Susan Infantino wrote that these requests have become a consistent and “worrying trend” for the past four years. Worrying trend or slippery slope to a politically correct nightmare?
In 2012, the Internet Society took of poll of more than 10,000 Internet users from over 20 countries around the world and found that the majority of them (86%) strongly agreed that “Freedom of expression should be guaranteed on the Internet.”
But free expression isn’t guaranteed. In fact, depending on what country you live in, the Internet landscape can look like a very different place — one with a whole lot of “filtering” going on.
Take China for example. If you live in China, you are not allowed to access social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. They are just blocked, period. Information that might embarrass the Chinese government, such as information on the Tiananmen Square Massacre during which the government implemented martial law and killed thousands of pro-democracy protestors, simply does not exist on the Internet when accessed in China. It’s as if none of that stuff ever happened. China has essentially erased the online history books.
That’s what happened in George Orwell’s 1984 when history was literally erased and rewritten to a Big Brother-centric point of view.
And that is exactly what our so-called leaders would love to do to our Internet all over the world. Silence political dissent.
Don’t believe it? Check out the Stratfor email posted on Wikileaks claiming that CIA Director John Brennan is behind a witch hunt for “anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda”. (Probably not gonna find that link with a Google search…)
It’s sad we live in such an Orwellian time that politicians can just get whole chunks of the Internet they do not agree with (or that do not agree with them) erased, much like the Ministry of Truth rewriting history in the book 1984… which was a novel, not an instructional manual, for the record.
Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood will not tolerate any form of criticism as they fear the light of truth as most feral rats do. It's sad that Google and other sites have caved in to this oppression when they could be of immense help in saving our Republic.
We, who support this website, can only hope that posting edicts are relaxed in order that important articles reach the largest audience possible.
Especially since on another site with the same rules, content from FR would be put in the same category.
The government pressure is only to erase “some” content, not all of it. We know what content they want erased.
I do not know what they are censoring in this country, but I would think it is what is harmful to their buddy Obama.
Post the content of the take down requests and allow comments.
It's sad that Google and other sites have caved in to this oppression when they could be of immense help in saving our Republic.
Cronyism can be enormously profitable... as long as the cronies remain useful to the lord high oligarchs, of course.
Truth is potent; it stops tyrants. No wonder they want it erased.
It's a blog. Maybe that is a clue about why it belongs in the blog section.
The good news is there are other search engines, I never use google anymore, my current favorite search engine is ixquick.
https://ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
bm
Sounds like Anna, from the TV series ‘V’, about a year ago. She tells the news reporter that he can ask any question he wants as long is it doesn't cast the Visitors in a bad light. That's the Obama Admin. Remember Anita Dunn? (Mao is my favorite philosopher) She said the smartest thing the Dems did in the run up to the 2008 election was ‘manage the Media”. They are still doing it and the Media is marveling at the Admin’s ability to spin the Media. Bizarro World with a Pravda American Press.
The kids are smart enough to use proxy servers. There are plenty of young Chinese on Facebook.
The danger here is that any level of US government thinks it is OK to misuse its legal monopoly on the use of force to threaten Google. That is totalitarian thinking, and the issuers of such threats need to be identified by their communities and systematically removed from their offices.
If you run your own blog, own your domainname (don’t rent it from GoDaddy) and host it offshore.
Example: www.ccihosting.com/
You're quite the PHD indeed.
It's too bad you didn't get the memo last year:
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For the longest time, our primary focus has been on looking at what the media presents and investigating it or discussing it. We have been missing something, YOU!
Jim has created a new news category, “FReeper Editorial” (freepered) for you to post your investigative reports. We are working on getting this promoted to a sidebar and other ways to promote your work but here are the basics.
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Nutjob conspiracy pingable?
Oh yeah. I watched in mounting horror as google systematically and deliberately "disappeared" over half a million hits on image searches for "obama birth certificate" in mid-July 2008.
Had they not censored anything questioning obama during the 2008 campaign, perhaps they wouldn't be quite so worried about their hero imposing censorship on them today, eh?
Payback's a cast iron bitch, ain't it?
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
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