Are certain blogs being quietly blacklisted? And if so, is this blacklisting being tied to content?
Robert Spencer posed the question a few weeks back when he found out that JihadWatch was being blocked in places where CAIR or the Arab News, for instance, were not.
Today, Pam at Atlas Shrugs is having similar issues.
It is unlikely, I think, that we’ll see a return of The Fairness Doctrine. For one thing, the reintroduction of such legislation would be too overt a move toward regulating market principles, and it would likely cause a great outcry from many civil libertarians, in addition to the conservative talk radio markets it would target (with the help, even, of some conservatives — who would prefer not to be held up to any public scrutiny, if it means the legislation they favor is undermined by grass roots activism; see, for instance, Lott, Trent). And it could not, I don’t think, pass a court challenge (though I’ll admit I thought the same thing about McCain/Feingold).
But so far as I know — and it’s not much in the arena, so please correct me if I’m wrong — “hate speech” on the web can only be policed, in any rapid way, without recourse to authorial intent, meaning that crawlers and filtering software would simply begin looking for certain linking patterns, words, etc. Or, to put it in a way you’ll be familiar with, have you followed my previous discussions on interpretation — filtering software and policing web crawlers would be looking for certain signifiers and patterns of signifiers, and flagging or filtering sites based upon the identification of certain signifiers someone else (the “author” of the filtering software, the head of a company who deploys such software, if it is modifiable and customizable, etc.) has decided needs to be policed.
Companies, of course, should be free to determine what their employees can look at on company time, using company computers and company bandwidth. But where the trouble lies is when we begin to see such decisions made about the web itself by such powerful forces as the companies who run search engines, or provide content.
Because if those things become politicized — and there is good reason to believe they will, in the current climate of “activism” — then the information revolution will have been effectively manipulated, and in a way that it will take considerable time to sort out and rectify.
A government committed to free speech cannot, in principle, allow those with effective monopolies over the providing of content decide what information is allowed to be indexed and accessed.
If information is power, it follows that those who control information control power. For years, the mainstream press — tilting ever leftward, though pretending toward “objectivity” — was able to shape particular narratives.
But what we are (potentially) seeing here is a nascent attempt to control information on a much larger (macro) scale — with the manipulation of something so seemingly amorphous and open as the web by way of habitual means of navigation (and those who make the decisions concerning what gets filtered and how).
In theory, in an open marketplace, this would mean that new content providers would eventually supplant those who are found to be censoring material (deliberately or not) that consumers are demanding; but in practice, its not clear that such a market correction would take place in such time that a deliberate correction is not necessary.
The problem is, when many in the government — regardless of party — would be happy to see the internet “controlled” (each for their own reasons), how can we prevent a silent purge of ideas of the kind that has, for years, been going on in academia, and is now threatening to spread to the new pamphleteers of the information revolution?
To be clear, I’m not sure that there is anything necessarily unseemly going on just now; I will, of course, be following the Atlas Shrugs / Jihad Watch / Hot Air story closely, but I am not making any allegations.
And though I’ve been noticing some problems with my own site as indexed by Google, for the time being, I’m raising these questions as hypotheticals.
How should we fight such potential (and potentially paradigm-shifting) abuses? Will it take governmental intervention (which seems counterintuitive, where unfettered access to speech is involved)? Or is there a way to assure that market forces provide quick corrections to such potential manipulations — by, say, having content providers and search engines that are defined by their adherence to a particular political philosophy?
As a news consumer, I would gladly use a “conservative” search engine — but only were I convinced that it was (again, perhaps counterintuitively) allowing through all political perspectives. Because I believe in the marketplace of ideas, and the power of persuasion.
And such a setup could — ironically — force what are subsequently labeled “liberal” search engines or content providers to lessen their restrictions on what gets through, as well, should they wish to compete in a marketplace that favors choice.
Which is to say, real “objectivity” (in a macro sense of competing narratives balancing out how we accumulate and process data to arrive at informed opinions) may, ironically, best be served by an intentional move away from the outward profession of objectivity.
Because in its wake, transparency and disclosure will prevent the kinds of sub rosa manipulations that some are beginning to suspect are taking shape beneath the so-called new media.
Great piece, Jeff.
I agree with Dan. Is there anyway to check with the Google folks to see if they are indexing differently (I must confess complete lack of experience or knowledge on this subject)?
I oppose all political censorship and what you describe is very troubling. It is no surprise the Chi Coms censor; they’re bastards and it is sad that corporations do the same things based pn broad definitions (I can see narrow filtering to keep out the KKK, for instance, as that could allow the creation of liability. As much as disagree with some of the political opinions expressed here, I don’t see they are offensive or create a hostile work environment).
Please do keep us advised, ’cause if the search engines are screwing people for political content, then I need to contacting certain large corporations telling them that I will not be using their program.
Their response will almost certainly be “Share and enjoy.”
“If information is power, it follows that those who control information control power.”
Uh-oh, Paco. He’s on to us…
I don’t want my search engine to have a point of view. I want it all seeing and yet blind as a bat. Just give me the hits, and keep your opinion out of it.
Meanwhile, Gates of Vienna has been paralyzed by Blogger having been identified as spam. WTF?
Eric at Classical Values points out that Blogger, which the Gates of Vienna blog is having problems with, makes it easy for motivated mobs to block speech, merely by flagging infidel sites as “spam.”
Look what has happened on YouTube.
Jihadists are not stupid..they’ve embraced the ‘net and are adept at propaganda and how to frustrate and shutdown sites they oppose. Ditto their apologists.
Based on what I know of how these things work, it’s probably deliberate but not targeted, if that makes any sense. Companies normally try to limit web access for a couple of reasons: productivity, i.e. employees should mostly be working, not surfing; and to conform with various HR policies, i.e. employees shouldn’t be surfing porn at work because someone easily offended might make off with large sums of the company’s money.
Because controlling what employees can get to on the internet in any intelligent way is an administrative burden that few companies would be willing to staff for, they use appliances or software that filter based on exactly what you mentioned: signifiers.
If a company decides that guns are evil, they just have the vendor set it up so that pretty much any gun-related site gets nixed. The vendor typically decides what’s “gun-related” and puts it on the list. This was the case at my previous employer, for example. I could get to the Communist Party USA website (Bostonians love them some commies, apparently) but not to Browning’s website to download a manual for my shotgun (Bostonians DON’T love them some shotguns, I guess).
Some of the companies that run such services are at the very least receptive to manipulation, so if CAIR were to complain that Atlas Juggs was engaging in hate speech on her site, they might be able to get her blacklisted. Websense comes to mind as one that’s easily manipulated, if I remember correctly.
My former employer (a company so large that it owns all of the IP addresses that begin with a low, single-digit number) blocked content as well. Most of it was time-wasters such as crossword puzzles and game sites, but it also blocked some blogs, probably on the basis of NSFW content.
For example, dKos was blocked but not LGF, Ace of Spades was blocked but not Protein Wisdom, Fark was blocked but not Instapundit, etc. I was unable to see any kind of political bias at work, fortunately, so I assume the filters were not looking for political signifiers.
But when it comes to content filters that rely on user feedback, such as Digg, YouTube, etc., you’re going to get mob rule. And as far as Google’s news aggregators, well, ask Charles Johnson about their double standard. Apparently, “Don’t Be Evil” means “Don’t Judge Anything As Evil (unless it’s, you know, conservative).” Charles being the uptight, moralistic, godbotherer that he is.
C. M. Kornbluth called them “The Marching Morons”.
I think I can hear the hobnailed boots of the reactionary left off in the distance.
O.K., but just what can the tiny, uneducated, ungeeky surfer do? I’ll write Google, but they won’t listen and the MSMers are deaf, dumb and blind as well as old! What can be done? and by whom?
I have been blocked from this site from time to time over the last few weeks with such flags as “criminal related”, “porn”, “obscene or tastless”. I have yet to see “hate speech” but it is troubling anyway. I dont know what the post is after this one but it has been blocked due to “criminal content”.
Welcome to the Websense Tango, y’all…
Eric at Classical Values points out that Blogger, which the Gates of Vienna blog is having problems with, makes it easy for motivated mobs to block speech, merely by flagging infidel sites as “spam.â€Â
This is one of the reasons I’m a bear on a lot of this “Web 2.0” nonsense. There is wisdom in crowds, true, but not when you give the crowds the ability to manipulate the outcome. Thousands of self-selected “editors” will never be as good as a single editor. Slashdot’s only been doing this for some 8 years or so, and it’s primarily an example of enforced groupthink.
So big daddy Google bans stuff from its db? Somewhere else a search engine will advertise carrying everything big daddy bans. “Find more here now!”
The free market will find a way. The internet will find a way, just as mainland Chinese can use IP spoofs to retrieve stuff their government tries to hide.
Paging Velvet Jones: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10452364
I, too, would suspect most of the selectivity is user driven. [Most blocking I have seen is high bandwidth using stuff, pr0n or the like]. However, I just don’t see ruthless mobs of wingnuts demanding their corporate masters block sites for being “unpatriotic” and getting much more than a “who farted?” look from the IT people. Say the magic word like “racist” and you’d get panic sweat rolling off the brow as the tech races to the terminal to block the target site.
For myself I just stopped using Google a while back and went with another search engine.
John–
The post after this one labeled “criminal content” is ““US: Top al-Qaida in Iraq Figure Capturedâ€Â
The post before this one is about Michael Vick being indicted.
Legitimate news stories blocked by filtering software.
“obscene or tastlessâ€Â
Sorry, Jeff.
TW: that Westphalia
How about that Westphalia, though, huh?
No one else seems to have cared when I was banned from RedState (after posting ~75 entries) or when I’ve had my legitimate comments deleted from CaptainsQuarters, WashingtonMonthly, and a dozen or more other sites. Despite that, I’ll try to care in this case. I’ll point out that searching for atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com or site:atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com in google both bring up thousands of entries and that google occasionally changes their indexes. For instance, a picture that got some hits for me suddenly disappeared and then reappeared in images.google.com. There are even forums where people actually sit around waiting for Google’s next update. The phrase she mentions (“muslims and commies”) brings her up as the first hit. A search for atlas shrugs has her first. And, google has even already indexed the post this site links to.
And, of course, hosting a blog at someone else’s site is asking for trouble.
TLB–were you told why you were banned from the sites you mention?
…um, getting banned from making comments at sites is not the same thing as having a blog blanked by Google.
There is no right to comment; comments are always at the whim of the site owner. Anyone who doesn’t understand that needs to step away from the keyboard.
In addition to what I wrote above, I once got tens of thousands of hits in one day – from Yahoo even – because of a suddenly famous non-celeb. I still get the occasional hit, but what happened is that higher-ranked sites eventually covered the same non-celeb, forcing me down in the search results. If her search placement is dropping, perhaps it’s for that reason.
Another possibility is that google has several machines, and they may not all have the same index at the same time.
There really are people out there who deal with these issues day after day, so I’d suggest contacting them for advice rather than taking what appears to be an amateur’s analysis as provided at the chat session.
22: Thanks for putting up that giant strawman; I never claimed that a site owner has to display my comments.
20: Generally speaking, no. You can read about RedState here, including a link to the post that caused me to be banned:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/004786.html
Note especially that despite having banned me they’re still displaying my content on their site – content that they obtained in a transfer from redstate.org – despite them having AFAIK no legal right to continue to display my copyrighted content. After the banning it took a long time for them to finally respond to an email; the only thing they could come up with was a claim based on semantics: “illegal aliens” after being legalized would no longer be illegal aliens. After I pointed out that their claim was bogus and required a Clintonian level of parsing, they stopped replying to my emails.
And, CaptainEd (he’s since deleted both mine and his comments from that thread and also didn’t reply to an email):
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/006400.html
And, WashingtonMonthly:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/006452.html
Squashing the individual! But yes something is afoot. I received 4,000 hits a day from google search. It built slowly. For well over 18 months. This is not about some celeb, or ranking – this is about content. OVERNIGHT, my stuff disappeared from search result.ALL OF MY IMAGES. The only images for Atlas are other bloggers that cribbed my pics or leftards that photoshop my inages. I snagged an exclsuive interview with Bay Yeor – go find it. This is suppression. Internet inve stigators are working on it as we speak and I will report back. This ain’t no ranking rejiggling.
I’m sorry; I had interpreted this:
as a complaint.
Apparently 25 has an inability to read simple declarative sentences, and figure out what my “complaint” could be about.
24: Post a request to one or two SEO forums and see what they say. What you’re complaining about it is nothing new to others. Here are lots of posts from webmasterworld.com: tinyurl.com/yvumv7
You can also ask at forums.seochat.com or forums.digitalpoint.com. If worse comes to worse, ask Daniel Brandt.
Google is a monster, and has the potential to play ‘Kingmaker’ or ‘Executioner’ at will, and we know their political sympathies. Even with a small blog, I can see trends; a ‘switch’ was flipped July 1 or thereabouts that changed traffic patterns for me. Google Images hits compeltely disapperared. Then, there was a visit from a prominent legal firm in St. Louis, immediately followed by a visit from Google in Mountain View, California.
Both hits came on the same old (in internet terms, ancient) web page, and then…nothing else. Maybe I crossed the Photochop line?
Hmmmph. That’s all I need; a lawsuit from Paris Hilton…
TLB, try simple declarative English sentences, they work for most people.
So your complaint really was that no one sympathized when you got booted from sites?
Or you could take Robin’s advice and try to be clearer.
There is at least one search engine that has moved away from the profession of objectivity. Its Scirus, for scientific/technical topics. It’s reasonably effective in filtering out non-technical links (newspaper stories, tort lawyer trolling). Not 100%, but way better than ‘gargle’ if I want genuine technical information.
Wonder if there are others with a different focus?
Jeff – indeed, incredible clumsiness seems to be part of the problem too. “Criminal content” would nix every single newspaper site known!