Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites
As the wsws.org report notes, freedom of speech is by no means guaranteed. It is not an abstract "right" which, once enshrined in the US Constitution, affords automatic protection to the unimpeded exchange of information. Huge players invested in this grotesquely unequal and dangerous status quo have the tools and the power to render that constitutional guarantee an illusion, precisely at a point when the very fate of this planet is being decided. In this context, it is clear that the warning by Damon and North requires energetic thought and action:
The central and sinister role of Google in this process demonstrates that freedom of speech and thought is incompatible with corporate control of the Internet.
Exactly. As long as the Internet is dominated by corporate entities (no point is worrying about the mainstream media, virtual "stenographers to power" which, given their pervasive prostitution, are these days worse than useless) there is no guarantee that truth will have a fair chance to prevail against the daily tsunami of disinformation. That is the reason we keep reminding readers that in this desperate battle of communications against a criminal corporate system the fate of free and vital information is literally in their hands. They must learn to be creative, energetic, and proactive in defending the sites that generate and distribute anti-imperialist/antiwar/anti-neoliberal information; sites that fight for world peace, true democracy, egalitarianism, socialism, and love and respect for nature and our fellow species. That begins by passing on our articles to as many people as they can. Friends, kin, and colleagues must be recruited for this effort.
We fully realise this is not easy. Even in family circles, while one member may have become radicalised, the rest may remain indifferent or even hostile to materials that question their firmly rooted brainwash and adherence to comfortable business as usual routines. As far as I can tell these people, so dear to us and so frustratingly close, are simply infected with the "centrist/liberaloid" virus, an insidious cognitive/temperamental disease with difficult prognosis. In the United States, the most self-consciously propagandised nation on earth, virtually everyone is inoculated with this politically disabling disease at birth.
In a recent essay, tackling this problem, Caitlin Johnstone, with characteristic vigor and insight had this to say: “Do these people have any idea just how pervasively indoctrinated consumers of mainstream media are? Do they have any idea how big an ideological gap there is between anti-war socialism and the neoliberal neoconservative omnicidal death cult known as centrism?”
Tragically, she is absolutely right. That emotional and intellectual blockage remains one of our biggest challenges in this struggle. But struggle we must. The unimpeded circulation of truth is vital at this point. Everyone must become a soldier in this battle of communications and do what needs to be done.—PG.
Indian-American Sundar Pichai, Google's current CEO, represents the perfect integration of the global bourgeoisie with US transnational power. His personal fortune is put between $650MM and 1 bn.
By Andre Damon and David North, senior editors, wsws.org
Dateline: 2 August 2017
New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches.
The drop followed the implementation of changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols. In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content.”
The World Socialist Web Site has obtained statistical data from SEMrush estimating the decline of traffic generated by Google searches for 13 sites with substantial readerships. The results are as follows:
* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent
Of the 13 web sites on the list, the World Socialist Web Site has been the most heavily affected. Its traffic from Google searches has fallen by two thirds.
The new statistics demonstrate that the WSWS is a central target of Google’s censorship campaign. In the twelve months preceding the implementation of the new Google protocols, the WSWS had experienced a substantial increase in readership. A significant component of this increase was the product of Google search results. The rapid rise in search traffic reflected the well-documented growth in popular interest in socialist politics during 2016. The rate of growth accelerated following the November election, which led to large protests against the election of Trump.
Search traffic to the WSWS peaked in April 2017, precisely at the point when Google began the implementation of its censorship protocols.
Another site affected by Google’s action has provided information that confirms the findings of the WSWS.
“In late May, changes to Google’s algorithm negatively impacted the volume of traffic to the Common Dreams website from organic Google searches,” said Aaron Kaufman, Director of Development at progressive news outlet Common Dreams. “Since May, traffic from Google Search as a percentage of total traffic to the Common Dreams website has decreased nearly 50 percent.”
The extent and impact of Google’s actions proves that a combination of techniques is being employed to block access to targeted sites. These involve the direct flagging and blackballing of the WSWS and the other 12 sites listed above by Google evaluators. These sites are assigned a highly negative rating that assures that their articles will be either demoted or entirely by-passed. In addition, new programming technology teaches the computers to think like the evaluators, that is, to emulate their preferences and prejudices.
Finally, the precision of this operation strongly suggests that there is an additional range of exclusion techniques involving the selection of terms, words, phrases and topics that are associated with socialist and left-wing websites.
This would explain why the World Socialist Web Site, which focuses on issues such as war, geopolitics, social inequality and working-class struggles has experienced such a dramatic fall in Google-generated searches on these very topics. We have seen that the very terms and phrases that would under normal circumstances be most likely to generate the highest level of hits—such as “socialism,” “Marxism” and “Trotskyism”—produce the lowest results.
This is an ongoing process in which one can expect that Google evaluators are continuously adding suspect terms to make their algorithm ever more precise with the eventual goal of eliminating traffic to the WSWS and other targeted sites.
The information that has been gathered and published by the WSWS during the past week exposes that Google is at the center of a corporate-state conspiracy to drastically curtail democratic rights. The attack on free speech and uncensored access to information is aimed at crippling popular opposition to social inequality, war and authoritarianism.
The central and sinister role of Google in this process demonstrates that freedom of speech and thought is incompatible with corporate control of the Internet.
As we continue our exposure of Google’s assault on democratic rights, we demand that it immediately and unequivocally halt and revoke its censorship program.
It is critical that a coordinated campaign be organized within the United States and internationally against Google’s censorship of the Internet. We intend to do everything in our power to develop and contribute to a counter-offensive against its efforts to suppress freedom of speech and thought.
The fight against corporate-state censorship of the Internet is central to the defense of democratic rights, and there must be a broad-based collaboration among socialist, left and progressive websites to alert the public and the widest sections of the working class.
The central and sinister role of Google in this process demonstrates that freedom of speech and thought is incompatible with corporate control of the Internet.
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report