Censorship by Filter
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2 March 2021
Last week one of the libertarian conservatives I follow sent out an email entitled "More proof COVID realists aren't being paranoid about Big Tech" and I really hoped it was alarmist. Tom Woods can be a bit polemic and I hoped this was rhetoric, because while I know how hard Facebook is trying to manipulate me I still think Google's motto of "don't be evil" prevails there. Yes, I know they dropped it three years ago. For the record, the query Woods references is "Reopen NH", the name of a libertarian political group in New Hampshire arguing against Covid-19 rules. And he says that Google is supporting statist propaganda rather than providing links to the organization. I wish I could say he was wrong. Compare these screenshots from a week ago:
Duck Duck Go (searched on Firefox)
I took the screenshots because I thought such an overstep by Google would be quickly corrected with a little press. But it hasn't. The organizations that allowed QAnon to blossom and grow are overcorrecting by stifling legitimate political dissent. Google is reframing the question rather than providing the most relevant links. Not only do I find this "evil", but I think it's bad for business. The reason that I stopped using Metacrwaler in the late nineties was because Google consistently provided more relevant results to obscure search queries. They weren't actively trying to prevent kooks from finding eachother. So today I tried a really ridiculous query: "nh governer is an alien". Nothing like a good misspelling to indicate my intelligence level. Google gives me pictures and Wikipedia articles about the Sununus, whose blatant nepotism has led them to play a dominant role in the politics of the state for a century. Nothing about aliens though, unless you count illegal aliens which is clearly not what I'm interested in. Duck Duck Go gives me a speech from a 1970's New Hampshire politician where he uses the word alien and stories of alien abductions in the state. Which is more relevant?
We have have entered an age of memetic warfare and I don't think most of us are at all ready for it. Isn't Google just trying to protect us? Probably, but censorship can be slippery slope. Before she died my mother-in-law led a group called "The Foundation for Paranormal Research" and my ex-wife ran their website. The website is still out there (scrubbed of all references to my ex after her mother Bev died), but Google won't help you find it. Duck Duck Go, however, has it at the top of their search results. Maybe Google is saving the next generation of son-in-laws from explaining how the light from a flash can backscatter off of dust and no those orbs are not ghosts. Maybe it's preventing the next group of armed militants from storming the US capitol building. Maybe it's keeping people in Turkey from knowing about their government's latest massacre of Kurds. Maybe it's preventing flat earthers from holding their next conference. Maybe it's preventing a political movement from forming against the government of New Hampshire. That's the thing about censorship.
