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Google has censored the term "Kodi" from its search engine's autocomplete feature, despite it being completely legal open source software:
Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine. This means that the popular software and related suggestions won't appear unless users type out the full term. Google has previously taken similar measures against "pirate" related terms and confirms that Kodi is targeted because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement."
[...] The company demotes results from domain names for which it receives many DMCA takedown notices, for example, and it has also removed several piracy-related terms from its autocomplete feature. The latter means that when one types "pirate ba" it won't suggest pirate bay. Instead, people see "pirate bays" or "pirate books" as suggestions. Whether that's very effective is up for debate, but it's intentional.
[...] The Kodi team, operated by the XBMC Foundation, is disappointed with the decision and points out that their software does not cross any lines. "We are surprised and disappointed to discover Kodi has been removed from autocomplete, as Kodi is perfectly legal open source software," XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen told us.
The Kodi team has been actively trying to distance itself from pirate elements. They enforce their trademark against sellers of pirate boxes and are in good contact with Hollywood's industry group, the MPAA.
Related: MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
Kodi Media Player Addon Developers Under Pressure from ACE, Dish Network
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Friday March 30 2018, @04:27AM (2 children)
more or less, there are a handful of search engines. they control a LOT of power.
if they decide to block X or Y or write 'special code' that cases things differently because .. politics .. then there's all the proof you need that they are being bought/bribed/threatened and are totally off the 'do no evil' course.
concentration of power to only a few does this.
and we all saw it happen, too. not that we could do a thing to stop it, but its a trainwreck happening right before our eyes. if you have been around from the early days (when NNTP was the 'thing' and the web was not), you may remember that there was not one single control point for info flow. now, pretty much, the few are the gatekeepers and they control what we are allowed to see, read and ultimately, think.
I'm betting the next generation will have an 'internet' that is nothing like what we now have. ie, it will suck so badly, it will be like TV is now. utter trash, controlled by the few, with an agenda.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 30 2018, @07:16AM
Butbutbutbut I thought FREELY-ENTERED CONTRACTS would PREVENT such a thing!!!1111eleventy! After all, the AC who keeps changing his subject line said as much, and he's so confident and so consistent that he MUST be correct!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:54AM
Yes, they have the power to prevent people who type "kod" from autocompleting to "kodi". The horror!
You do realize that the Internet predates search engines? You're free to stop using search engines, it's not like URLs and hyperlinks stop working if you don't use a search engine.
Also, there are a lot of search engines (Wikipedia has a list). I fail to see how anyone can hold a search engine monopoly; it's not like if Google gets 99% of the traffic all other search engines get blocked from the Internet. You can use both Google and Gigablast. Heck, even at the same time, to search for the same terms! (I'm embarrassed to even suggest such an obscene act; using two search engines at the same time? Two! At the same time! One more and you get an orgy!)
The ISPs are a much bigger threat than Google. Google cannot censor anything. ISPs can censor everything.
How such a poorly written FUD post is at 5 Insightful is beyond me.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 30 2018, @04:50AM (17 children)
Link to its website. The text of your link should be relevant terms
It's even better if you deep link to pages that are in its site rather than just its homepage
That makes the whole site more robust against fluctuations in popularity of particular words
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Friday March 30 2018, @06:11AM (16 children)
You aren't paying attention. This is deliberate manual intervention in the results, not normal SEO nonsense. Google is Evil. They have been for some time now, they censor a lot of stuff on their search, news and Youtube properties. They aren't YET doing like Microsoft and searching for crimethink in Google Docs and personal emails but they will.
Cut. The. Cord.
Most people can't entirely sever Google from their devices, but you can switch to a search engine that doesn't censor, move you email and begin consciously making the effort to minimize Google's impact on your daily life and minimize how much of your personal information they suck up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @06:38AM (4 children)
a search engine that doesn't censor
Should I google for that? I haven't found one yet. YaCy is the closest, but it doesn't really work that well.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @06:59AM (3 children)
DuckDuckGo is pretty good. But yeah we all need to "cut the cord". We need to except that we alone control what we do with our personal info and that if we ultimately don't like what is done with it or don't like the service that we are given in exange for it that we can choose to find another one. I cut all ties to google three years back. Deleted my account, started using other services, and installed a custom ROM on my phone that didn't include Gapps. I'm happy I did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @06:43PM (2 children)
DDG is just a search engine aggregator that claims to remove 'personal' info. It is still 'powered' by the big boys. I wouldn't trust them any more than anybody else. Why, you might ask? Lo and behold, a cookie, and no milk! What could be more cruel? Sorry, the whole idea of trust is out the window. I like the idea of running my own crawler that I can choose to share or not. Thing is I need to run the crawler very discreetly to avoid looking like an attack. Kinda means I need my own local DNS too :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
What about using ddg + tor or similar?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:59AM
http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ [3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion]
Don't blame me if the heavy bootheels of Justice kick in your door.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 30 2018, @07:12AM
Google can't manually interfere with everything.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 30 2018, @07:14AM (9 children)
I'll be happy to use DuckDuckGo all the time when the day comes that I don't have to switch from DuckDuckGo to Google because I can't find something important by praying to The Duck.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Friday March 30 2018, @01:10PM (2 children)
Has Duck started it's own search system? It was an aggregator when I first looked, so censoring will affect them too.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 30 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
Censoring autocomplete is different from censoring results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kodi [google.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:20PM
Your point is good and valid... and the other comments are reacting to implicit threats, and taken in that sense also valid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday March 30 2018, @06:13PM (4 children)
That happened to me for a week and then I decided to use https://www.startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:22PM (3 children)
Why? What does it do? The link looks just like a base google page with a pretty background.
If I want to link to sites I frequently go to, I already don't use google. I've got a panel of bookmarks that's a lot more convenient.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday March 30 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)
It gives better results than duckduckgo.
https://www.startpage.com/uk/protect-privacy.html [startpage.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @10:22PM (1 child)
How is it different from just using Google?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by toddestan on Friday March 30 2018, @10:41PM
It's more of an anti-tracking thing. You type your query into Startpage, Startpage goes and searches Google and gives you the results back, so (at least in theory) the big G doesn't know what you searched for. But other than that, it's just Google search.
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Friday March 30 2018, @10:52PM
I've been using DuckDuckGo for a long time now, it's been a good while since I've had any luck finding something on Google when the Duck comes up empty. If I can't find something on DuckDuckGo, I've found the only thing Google seems to be good at is wasting my time with endless pages of garbage search results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @06:28AM
kodi.tv is still the top hit for: open source home theatre software and opensource media center software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:04AM (2 children)
Normies don't deserve anything besides staying in a corporate feedlot, it is both for their protection and as well as anyone outside the normiesphere. They have incompatible values and should never be allowed to interact. Doing so merely brings conflict, nothing good comes of it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 30 2018, @07:18AM (1 child)
We were all newbies if not normies once. Why not attempt to educate the more tractable ones?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:51AM
How about no, let them explore and come to their own conclusions. Let the wild parts of the internet stay wild for people with fortitude, the others can live in the "civilized" part of the internet.
Its the internet, not a border dispute, there is no limited physical space to fight over.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday March 30 2018, @08:23AM (3 children)
4503599627370495 to go.
(Maths joke).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @10:22AM
pFFFFFFFFFFFFFt
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday March 30 2018, @02:53PM (1 child)
I'm fairly mathy, but I fail to see the humor in that number. Is there something funny about 52 as a power that I'm not getting?
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday April 09 2018, @06:50PM
been travelling. typo. [2^32-1].
Better?
(Score: 1) by ealbers on Friday March 30 2018, @10:18AM (1 child)
You should use ddg.gg or duckduckgo.com to search, do NOT use anything related to google.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @03:57PM
it's a shame ddg sucks so damn bad.