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Google has banned items containing the string "gun" in the name on its e-commerce search platform, accidentally targeting many innocuous items:
Google Shopping, which allows users to compare product prices from thousands of online retailers, has removed all 'gun' search results - even if the product is not gun-related.
Online shoppers have complained about being unable to browse dozens of products such as Burgundy wine, water guns and music by American rock band Guns N' Roses. Searches for products including nail guns, glue guns and Arsenal Football Club's Gunnersaurus dinosaur mascot also returns the message: "Your search did not match any shopping results."
Google has banned weapons listings since 2012, however online shoppers have highlighted certain product unavailability since the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day which left 17 dead.
The block could be circumvented using alternate terms such as "handgnu" or "fully automatic firearm".
Also at Engadget.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:03AM (4 children)
They are now. It is called the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence, as an institution bends towards the goals of social justice it loses the ability to carry out its original function. Connect the dots. It isn't just this incident. They are swinging the banhammer with wild abandon now, and when they nuke a YouTube channel they take out your gmail box in a fit of pure spite. They aren't nuking random nobody types either, they are going after 1M+ subscriber accounts now They even nuked Alex "Effing Crazy" Jones and his Infowars people but had to retreat from that one. For now. How long until the terror of that possibility cause a mass exodus? Apparently there is nobody left smart enough to figure out something that obvious. Damore isn't the only spergy white/asian guy they have lost, anyone with actual "mad skillz" is either already cashed out and off to a fresh new startup opportunity or looking for one. Alphabet is now too big to fail but in a decade they will be like Yahoo!, still there but nobody will be able to figure out why.
Competing with Google was considered impossible, especially YouTube, so nobody would have bothered trying. But need is driving people to try and it is now pretty much a certainty that enough effort is being expended that success is all but assured. It might not look the same, it might have to be BitChute as the YouTube replacement. But the Internet has now detected Google as censorship and is busily routing around it. Alt-Tech is a thing now, past the point where it could be squashed. And since it is inclusive (like Google, Twitter, etc. promised in the beginning) it is only a matter of time before it replaces the old politically tainted stuff. And if Gab succeeds with their Exodus Protocol project censorship won't even be a possibility in the Alt-Tech future. If you have skills and want to work on rebuilding the Internet we were all promised, the one that was free, open and immune to censorship, pick a project and join the fun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @02:25AM (3 children)
You so funny, jmorris! Alt-tech must be like "alternative medicine". You know what they call "alternative medicine" that actually works? "Medicine". "If Gab succeeds . . . " Ha, ha, ha! Really, you're just too funny, jmorris! Ha!
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday March 03 2018, @02:30AM (2 children)
Exactly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:16AM (1 child)
I really hate to have draw the analogy for you like this, jmorris, I am afraid I may be insulting your intelligence. But then I remember most of your posts, and I realize there is no danger of that. OK! So what do they call alt-tech? Right, tech that does not work. The Alt-right web is a technical fiasco, a den of scum and villiany and bad coding! Gab sucks, and could not even load unicode, because, you know, it's not white.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday March 03 2018, @06:59AM
How long has it been since you looked at gab? I have used the occasional unicode there for a year now. They have a growing user base of Europeans who need a way to speak freely as their countries drop the ban hammer. Not having offices outside the US allows them to tell the EU to go perform an improbable act of self procreation when they try their hate speech crap. Just use a solid VPN and never ID yourself because they come to your door now for political dissent over there.
Most of the Alt-Tech world is in furious development, trying to outrun the explosive growth happening as people come flooding in after each round of account banning at the legacy sites. At the same time trying to discover new funding models to pay for the rapid growth since neither of the normal ones are open to us. No venture capital or funding operations through stock appreciation and no advertising. It is going to be a very different Internet.