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Google has been found to "recommend" torrent and unauthorized streaming sites in response to search queries:
Google is an excellent search engine. The company does its best to present users with relevant information wherever it can. With a reel of popular torrent sites, for example, when users search for it. Or a handy overview of streaming sites such as Netflix, Hulu, Putlocker and Movie4k.to. Whether Hollywood will appreciate this service doubtful though.
[...] When you type in "best torrent sites" or just "torrent sites," Google.com provides a fancy reel of several high traffic indexers.
The search engine displays the names of sites such as RARBG, The Pirate Bay and 1337x as well as their logo. When you click on this link, Google brings up all results for the associated term.
While it's a thought provoking idea to think that Google employees are manually curating the list, the entire process is likely automated. Still, many casual torrent users might find it quite handy. Whether rightsholders will be equally excited is another question though.
The automated nature of this type of search result display also creates another problem. While many people know that most torrent sites offer pirated content, this is quite different with streaming portals.
This leads to a confusing situation where Google lists both legal and unauthorized streaming platforms when users search for "streaming sites."
The screenshot below shows the pirate streaming site Putlocker next to Hulu and Crackle. The same lineup also rotates various other pirate sites such as Alluc and Movie4k.to.
This has SHOCKED Express, which has loudly warned about the UK "Kodi" menace in recent months.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday July 12 2017, @12:22PM (5 children)
So, out of curiosity, I did what the link said and ran "best torrent sites" on google.
It didn't give me a list, what it gave me is search results, and the top page was from torrentfreak, its "Top 10 most popular torrent sites", which it does every year ( https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2017-170107/ [torrentfreak.com] ) , the results of which is summarised on the google search page.
Now, from what I can see, all Google did was actually parse out the list on the page and provide a partial summary, not unlike how they do with news articles etc... Google isn't recommending torrent sites, they are not listing them for you either. What they are doing is providing search results that match the keywords. If your keywords are "best torrent sites" you are going to get relevant results.
Also, the torrentfreak site is not a piracy site, it is a news outlet dealing with P2P. I don't think you can demand Google censor a news outlet (not that I don't expect the little authoritarians to try their hardest), because that will become a real slippery slope quick. torrentfreak does not condone piracy, does not facilitate it, nor does it provide links to pirated content. All they do is issue news reports about what is going on in the area.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:31PM (4 children)
I'd say it is Google. Google is copying information listed on other websites, parsing it to understand the context, and redisplaying it in a convenient form on search queries. Often this comes in the form of a sidebar biography, but the horizontal list is also prominent.
Whether it came from TF or not is irrelevant. And I don't think TorrentFreak has created a list of recommended streaming sites that includes the likes of both Putlocker and Netflix.
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(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:09PM (3 children)
Odd... I didn't get any streaming sites myself. However this being google it might be that it shows us two different results. I sure never made use of streaming sites of any kind, but have used torrents in the past.
Well, Google does it, but I doubt they have explicitly coded out a list of top pirate sites. More like Google does this everywhere, and you will get summaries of pirate sites as much as you would any other site. My point is Google isn't deliberately doing this, it is a function of how their system works (whether their system should work that way or not is a different matter IMO). Plus I really don't think the Google algo is actually understanding the context, more like using heuristics to guess at what would be the most interesting data.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:48PM (2 children)
I get that GOOG is not deliberately doing this, hence "recommending" in the sumamry.
For me the "best torrent sites" [google.com] search in the summary creates a horizontal list with 1337x, Rarbg, The Pirate Bay, Torrent Project, isoHunt, ExtraTorrent, Demonoid, YourBittorrent, EZTV, Seedpeer, KickassTorrents, Torrentz, and ArenaBG in that order. Some of these are not on TorrentFreak's Jan. 2017 top 10 list, and some of TF's list are not listed by the Google search.
The "streaming sites" [google.com] search lists Putlocker, Alluc, Hulu, Crackle, Veoh, Viewster, Popcornflix, Netflix, Amazon Video, and Movie4k.to in that order.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:40PM
funny, one of my top results on that search link is the story that google is now listing the best torrent sites.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 12 2017, @05:18PM
I get 5 "Best Torrent Sites" articles from various sources, followed mostly by refeeds of this article. Interestingly, when I refresh the page, the percentage of refeeds increases as more sites pick up the story, gradually blocking out the other content.
It's like watching a virus spread, only with the data presented in a linear format.