Google.com: should they censor HATE?
There is or was a huge controversy over the google.com search engine because it is listing very controversial and critical sites - even hateful - when people do searches for certain key words.
When someone puts in the term "Jew" the #1 web site that comes up is a site called Jew Watch ie. (http://www.jewwatch.com) the site is considered anti-Semitic because it has hundreds of documents on the site critical of Israel, Judaism and Jews.
The anti-defamation league (ADL) whose site is http://www.adl.org and many other powerful Jewish lobbies have asked google.com to alter its search engine in order to prevent such sites from coming up as #1 or in high ranking positions.
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Internet_75/4482_75.htm
http://adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp
A Letter from Sergey Brin
President, Technology
Google Inc.
http://www.adl.org/internet/google_letter.asp
JewWatch.com Dropped from Google.com
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9120280,00.htm
Should google.com prevent controversial and critical sites which might be consider "hateful" or inapropriate from coming up in high positions on their search engine? Or should only certain kind of political ideas be censored like racism, or "extremist" sites?
The movement to remove jewwatch.com from google.com
http://www.removejewwatch.com/
Sign the Petition to remove jewish critical sites from google.com
http://www.removejewwatch.com/
What do you guys make of all this? Should search engines censor web sites for political content? Would google lose a little bit of its integrity or respect from people if it started removing sites due to their politically incorrect nature?
Re: Google.com: should they censor HATE?
Quote:
Originally posted by FreeSpeech
When someone puts in the term "Jew" the #1 web site that comes up is a site called Jew Watch ie. (http://www.jewwatch.com) the site is considered anti-Semitic because it has hundreds of documents on the site critical of Israel, Judaism and Jews.
The anti-defamation league (ADL) whose site is http://www.adl.org and many other powerful Jewish lobbies have asked google.com to alter its search engine in order to prevent such sites from coming up as #1 or in high ranking positions.
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Internet_75/4482_75.htm
http://adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp
A Letter from Sergey Brin
President, Technology
Google Inc.
http://www.adl.org/internet/google_letter.asp
JewWatch.com Dropped from Google.com
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9120280,00.htm
Should google.com prevent controversial and critical sites which might be consider "hateful" or inapropriate from coming up in high positions on their search engine? Or should only certain kind of political ideas be censored like racism, or "extremist" sites?
What do you guys make of all this? Should search engines censor web sites for political content? Would google lose a little bit of its integrity or respect from people if it started removing sites due to their politically incorrect nature?
this is dumb...
i didnt see anything bad on that jewwatch site
adl doesnt even come up, apparently they need better hosting
is this all someone needs to do to get a better ranking
google has really gone over board too many times
i wonder how much they paid google.
hmmm, i didnt know sandra bullock was jewish...
Re: Re: Google.com: should they censor HATE?
Quote:
Originally posted by LaurenStephens
s this all someone needs to do to get a better ranking
google has really gone over board too many times
i wonder how much they paid google.
Not sure what you're getting at with that first sentence (what it is that "someone" has done to get a better ranking), but... it's pretty clear why the site is ranked number one. In large part it's because of this controversy -- which is now a few months old -- and the number of other sites that link to it because of that. Another factor is that most "legitimate" sites on related topics will use words like "Jewish" or "Judaism," and so not rank well for "Jew."
So, I don't see how Google is going overboard, or who may have paid them. They're ranking sites for that query using the same algorithmic approach that they use for every other query as well; the site legitimately ranks first for it (that is, for a search that practically no one doing research on Judaism would use).
And, Google has added an editorial comment on the top of the listings to explain what's going on. To me, it seems like they're handling it in a pretty fair way -- ranking sites naturally, and commenting that they don't agree with the opinions expressed.
Google's an index, not a publisher. They shouldn't censor results, and they don't seem to be doing so. The site dropped out of the index for a while (and is now back), reportedly because it was down and was later moved to a different host. Anyone who's worked on search engine positioning at all knows how common it is for those situations to cause a site to be dropped until the next update.