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Evidence of Google's Blacklisting of Left, Progressive, and Anti-War Sites Mounts

Rejected submission by -- OriginalOwner_ http://tinyurl.com/OriginalOwner at 2017-08-09 11:32:56 from the censorship dept.
Digital Liberty

The World Socialist Web Site reports [wsws.org]

A growing number of leading left-wing websites have confirmed that their search traffic from Google has plunged in recent months, adding to evidence that Google, under the cover of a fraudulent campaign against fake news, is implementing a program of systematic and widespread censorship.

Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April. The Real News, a nonprofit video news and documentary service, has had its search traffic fall by 37 percent. Another site, Common Dreams, last week told the WSWS that its search traffic had fallen by up to 50 percent.

As extreme as these sudden drops in search traffic are, they do not equal the nearly 70 percent drop in traffic from Google seen by the WSWS.

[...]Richard Stallman, the world-renowned technology pioneer and a leader of the free software movement, said he had read the WSWS's coverage on Google's censorship of left-wing sites. He warned about the immense control exercised by Google over the Internet, saying, "For people's main way of finding articles about a topic to be run by a giant corporation creates an obvious potential for abuse."

According to data from the search optimization tool SEMRush, search traffic to Mr. Stallman's personal website, Stallman.org, fell by 24 percent, while traffic to gnu.org, operated by the Free Software Foundation, fell 19 percent.

[...]Eric Maas, a search engine optimization consultant working in the San Francisco Bay area, said his team has surveyed a wide range of alternative news sites affected by changes in Google's algorithms since April. "While the update may be targeting specific site functions, there is evidence that this update is promoting only large mainstream news organizations. What I find problematic with this is that it appears that some sites have been targeted and others have not."

From earlier this month:
Google blocked every one of the WSWS's 45 top search terms [wsws.org]

The WSWS has analyzed tens of thousands of search terms, and identified those key phrases and words that had been most likely to place the WSWS on the first or second page of search results. The top 45 search terms previously included "socialism", "Russian revolution", "Flint Michigan", "proletariat", and "UAW [United Auto Workers]". The top 150 results included the terms "UAW contract", "rendition", and "Bolshevik revolution". All of these terms are now blocked.

In a set of guidelines issued to Google evaluators in March, elaborated in April by Google VP of Engineering Ben Gomes, the company instructed its search evaluators to flag pages returning "conspiracy theories" or "upsetting" content unless "the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint". The changes to the search rankings of WSWS content are consistent with such a mechanism.

Google's new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites [wsws.org]

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

Speculation from the August 4 article:

Google is blocking content from the WSWS precisely because it is "what people are looking for", and what Google, working with the highest levels of the state intelligence apparatus, does not want them to find.


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