Any one noticed that virtually all independent journalism has vanished from Google. Do a search, using key search word, and the only material coming up is main stream corporate news sources. Dont worry your not paranoid Google is increasingly censoring news content.

As announced on January 13th Google rolled out the first Algorithm Update of 2020. The significance of this algorithm update increases as the search engine giant confirmed that the new Google Update is a broad core algorithm update The new algorithm is based on something called BERT, or “bidirectional encoder representations from transformers.” (Yep: BERT is a lot better.) In the simplest terms I can come up with, BERT is a tool that helps optimize natural language processing by using A.I. and a massive data set to deliver better contextual results.

What that mean?

Will Google get to control what you see (a phase known in the military as information dominance). Information is power and power is money as Google knows full will.

In 2017 the European Commission fined the company $2.7 billion for manipulating search results to inappropriately direct users to its own comparison shopping service, Google Shopping.Now Google is using those methods to block users from accessing political viewpoints the company deems objectionable.

On April 25, 2017, Google announced that it had implemented changes to its search service to make it harder for users to access what it called “low-quality” information such as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.” It declared that it had “improved our evaluation methods and made algorithmic updates” in order “to surface more authoritative content.”

TOLARATIARIANISM AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FASCIST

You think only pro Trump far right news is getting blocked think again.

For example the The World Socialist Web Site has been targeted by Google’s new “evaluation methods.” While in April 2017, 422,460 visits to the WSWS originated from Google searches, the figure has dropped to an estimated 120,000 this month, a fall of more than 70 percent. In the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing “fake news,” the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly.

World Socialist Website reported; “According to Google’s webmaster tools service, the number of searches resulting in users seeing content from the World Socialist Web Site (that is, a WSWS article appeared in a Google search) fell from 467,890 a day to 138,275 over the past three months. The average position of articles in searches, meanwhile, fell from 15.9 to 37.2 over the same period”. It further report that using Alexa analytics they could demonstrate other left wing sites had experienced sharp drops in ranking include WikiLeaks, Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News and Truthout. Even prominent democratic rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International were censored. Sites in many case involved in the fight for the freedom of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, who demand for an end to online censorship and the defense of freedom of speech on the internet.

Ah thats just conspiracy theory talk? Not really.

On October 28, 2020 Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, admitted that the dominant online search company has censored the World Socialist Web Site.

A few identifiable methods used by Goolge to induce censorship and enhance corporate control over information include;

1. The autocomplete blacklist. A list of words and phrases that are excluded from the autocomplete feature in Google’s search bar.

2,The YouTube blacklist. YouTube, which is owned by Google, allows users to flag inappropriate videos, at which point Google censors weigh in and sometimes remove them as occurred when the satirical non political party post Planet key was removed for offending John Key. Google products – Gmail, Google Docs, Google+, YouTube, Google Wallet and others. If you somehow violate Google’s vague and terms of service agreement, you will join the ever-growing list of people shut out of their accounts, which means you’ll lose access to all of these interconnected products.

3.The Google News blacklist. Permits Google to selectively bans news sources as it pleases

4. The Google AdWords blacklist. The way it works is simple: Businesses worldwide bid on the right to use certain keywords in short text ads that link to their websites (those text ads are the AdWords); when people click on the links, those businesses pay Google. If a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn’t meet its moral standards, it bans you from AdWords effectively banning you from the market place and hindering the ability of the subject to make a livelihood. Effectively its a form of economic apartheid.

5. The search engine blacklist. Google’s ubiquitous search engine has indeed become the gateway to virtually all information, handling 90 percent of search in most countries. If Google conclude you have violated their “guidelines”: You either get banished to the rarely visited Netherlands of search pages beyond the first page with search ranking manipulations affecting people’s opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.

6. The quarantine list. In 2012, Google acknowledged that each and every day it adds about 9,500 new websites to its quarantine list and displays malware warnings on the answers it gives to between 12 and 14 million search queries. It won’t reveal the exact number of websites on the list, but it is certainly in the millions on any given day.

I hoped you enjoyed reading this post on extreme corporate fascism when you came across my post accidentally or heard it on Fresh FM public access radio show (The DEADLINE REPORT)*1. Because its a sure bet you didn’t find this post by Googling it.

1*Notably the target of corporate media in the past month who are now setting out to paint public access media as fringe media (as if that is somehow an insult) and attempt to establish corporate media (you know the folks who brought you weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) sources as the sole source of ‘credible’ news having already destroyed first local news paper by print increases and ended local VHF frequency TV stations ability to provide an alternative view with the introduction of digitalised ‘free to air’ technology with the support of Public Private Partnership agencies like Kordia who are owned by the government but largely run and governed by corporate lobbyist such as Tony O’brien the Sky TV executive famed for his possession of an all access parliamentary swipe card.