its funny that outright censorship has been slippery slopped all the way down to algorithmic deranking for many muh free speak people.

an optional web search engine chooses to make some news sources less prominent, but still readily available. many censorship, much oppression.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Nov 29 2017 01:57pm

Mother Russia has rights too, you know.

Free speech is and always has been the most slippery of slopes.
Google is taking manual actions to stop RT from reaching its audience. Whatever roundabout method they use, the cause and effect are the same: Censorship.

I don't think the subtly of the method used affects whether or not it's a form of censorship, so long as it was something that was done intentionally.

This post was edited by Magicman657 on Nov 29 2017 03:21pm

rather than "outright censorship" my post should say "impactful censorship". This is censorship, it's just not impactful.

If they were banning RT from being shown, that would be impactful, deranking isn't. Especially as they already employ an algorithym, it's not as if they are a censorship free enterprise currently. They streamline their own ads and partners, always have. This is a tweek to an already in use formula.

Sure, I agree that it's not on the same level as an outright ban. But exactly how impactful this particular action will be is still up for debate. I tend to think it'll be more significant than you make it out to be, purely based on the laziness of people's search habits.

with RT? i disagree.

if we assume RT really is just a propaganda machine, how long before the govt shifts gears and moves over to 20 different similar sites. then once those are shut down, 20 more. and over and over. If they want propoganda a click away for americans they need only diversify.

also who was reading RT anyways? and if they liked the source it's still on the web. plus this search would only cover broad searches, if you tag site:rt you'd still get all the hits you want.

now once this eventually gets expanded to all conservative news sources? that's when the impacts really come in. i give it 3 years

I kinda assumed that this policy would extend to any site that Google suspected of being related to RT, so if that's the case, then it could legitimately hurt them depending on how quick Google keeps up with it. Like I said, there's a lot of room for debate on just how impactful this ends up being; it could be a lot or it could be barely anything depending.

i think that cat and mouse game might prove to be one RT wins and Google loses. How much support can Google divert to that compared to a massive govt when only one's bottom line matters. Imagine internals leaking about how they spent XX million $ to chase down RT and failed, I can sense Putin's boner from here. Even forcing a US corporation to publicly go after RT is a prestige boost for Mother Russia.

@ the bold, you are correct. I am being speculative as i don't know what Google plans to do specifically. I think it's logical though.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Nov 29 2017 03:52pm