(1) Google to rig Search results, to combat fake news; appoints Snopes & FactCheck as Gatekeepers (2) Google says its rigged Searches will be more authoritative (3) Google imposes CIA line, state censorship (4) Google to divert Searches from "unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories" (5) Alternative News sites suffer decline of traffic generated by Google searches (6) Facebook to counter fake news; imposes review by Fact Checking sites (7) Facebook establishes new censorship centre in Germany (1) Google to rig Search results, to combat fake news; appoints Snopes & FactCheck as Gatekeepers http://technewsblogs.com/news/google-to-combat-fake-news-with-significant-search-ranking-updates-feedback-tools-more/ Google to combat fake news with significant Search ranking updates, feedback tools & more By Hisfore Posted on April 26, 2017 The phenomenon that started off as gaming the system with low-quality content has now become a nightmare for Internet giants. It has taken the shape of false and misleading content and is defined by its very own term — fake news. Google and Facebook are two of the most prominent names who were called out for propagating false news stories during the U.S presidential elections. With regards to the same, Google is bearing responsibility and has today announced some structural changes to its renowned search engine. The changes being implemented today onwards would enable the search giant to weed out content which has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information. The Mountain View-based search giant has always implemented new, updated algorithms to grapple with individuals looking to toy with the search results to rank higher. The problem has changed its shape a little but Google is still committed towards its long-term efforts of improving upon the info displayed in any user’s search results. Speaking of the quirks in an official blog post, Ben Gomes, Google’s VP of Engineering for Search said, While we may not always get it right, we’re making good progress in tackling the problem. But in order to have long-term and impactful changes, more structural changes in Search are needed. Now, this is being made possible by making definitive changes to the underlying search ranking algorithm – but that’s not everything. Google is also providing users with a set of handy tools that’ll enable them to provide feedback about the info and results displayed. It is now looking to maximize participation of the community to enhance the overall experience and kicking out those trying to spread malice through wrongful means — here, the content or ads. Related with Windows 10 has more than 10 million beta testers now As you might already be aware, Google has indexed more than hundreds of billions of pages currently live on the interwebs. Thus, it has discovered that some of their daily search traffic (about 0.25 percent) does surface offensive or clearly misleading content. The search giant has acknowledged that it surely is a significantly huge number and it isn’t the content users have made their way to the platform in search of. Thus, the first and foremost change involves improvements to the search ranking algorithms. Google is adopting a process similar to what Facebook has tried earlier to curate the news sources being surfaced in the ‘Trending’ column on the right. Proposing updates to its Search Quality Rater guidelines, the search giant is now employing human editors to assess the quality of content being surfaced to the users searching on the platform. It doesn’t want to be caught in another hubbub surrounding the content being displayed in the results. These individuals provide Google with feedback about the various experiments it conducts to better search quality. They work with a subset of problematic queries to determine the areas where search results need improvement — do not directly affect page rankings. It has recently also updated the guidelines to help editors weed out (or flag) more low-quality content which includes any misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories. Such low-quality content will be demoted. Google Autocomplete Feedback Form Further, for those unaware, Google (as well as YouTube) had recently been caught in hullaballoo surrounding the search results that were surfaced with regards to the World War Two holocaust. The top results surfaced by the search engine were misleading and only questioned the events that define history. It was from a neo-Nazi website called Stormfront, spotted back in December last year. Related with 2017 Mazda CX-5 First Drive: Obsession pays off Thus, the second iteration is being made to the search ranking signals — the inputs which define how and what results will be shown for particular queries. These signals have now been adjusted (not explained how?) but Google mentions that it’ll now enable them to surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content. It will not only help them maintain the freshness of the content but also improve upon the number of times your search queries appear on the page. These under the hood changes to the search engine are being complemented with some feature introductions on the surface as well. Google has now decided to bring you in the loop and offer feedback about the content being surfaced algorithmically on the website. It has added feedback forms to the Autocomplete and Featured Snippets section — to gather info on false and inappropriate content appearing in any of these results. Thus, this will enable them to fix the algorithms and the blog post further adds, Starting today, we’re making it much easier for people to directly flag content that appears in both Autocomplete predictions and Featured Snippets. These new feedback mechanisms include clearly labeled categories so you can inform us directly if you find sensitive or unhelpful content. (2) Google says its rigged Searches will be more authoritative https://www.blog.google/products/search/our-latest-quality-improvements-search/ SEARCH APR 25, 2017 Our latest quality improvements for Search Ben Gomes VP, ENGINEERING Search can always be improved. We knew it when I started working on Search in 1999, and it’s still true today. Back then, the Internet was expanding at an incredible rate. We had to make sense of this explosion of information, organize it, and present it in a way so that people could find what they were looking for, right on the Google results page. The work then was around PageRank, the core algorithm used to measure the importance of webpages so they could be ranked in results. In addition to trying to organize information, our algorithms have always had to grapple with individuals or systems seeking to "game" our systems in order to appear higher in search results—using low-quality "content farms," hidden text and other deceptive practices. We've tackled these problems, and others over the years, by making regular updates to our algorithms and introducing other features that prevent people from gaming the system. Today, in a world where tens of thousands of pages are coming online every minute of every day, there are new ways that people try to game the system. The most high profile of these issues is the phenomenon of "fake news," where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information. While this problem is different from issues in the past, our goal remains the same—to provide people with access to relevant information from the most reliable sources available. And while we may not always get it right, we’re making good progress in tackling the problem. But in order to have long-term and impactful changes, more structural changes in Search are needed. With that longer-term effort in mind, today we’re taking the next step toward continuing to surface more high-quality content from the web. This includes improvements in Search ranking, easier ways for people to provide direct feedback, and greater transparency around how Search works. Search ranking Our algorithms help identify reliable sources from the hundreds of billions of pages in our index. However, it’s become very apparent that a small set of queries in our daily traffic (around 0.25 percent), have been returning offensive or clearly misleading content, which is not what people are looking for. To help prevent the spread of such content for this subset of queries, we’ve improved our evaluation methods and made algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content. New Search Quality Rater guidelines: Developing changes to Search involves a process of experimentation. As part of that process, we have evaluators—real people who assess the quality of Google’s search results—give us feedback on our experiments. These ratings don’t determine individual page rankings, but are used to help us gather data on the quality of our results and identify areas where we need to improve. Last month, we updated our Search Quality Rater Guidelines to provide more detailed examples of low-quality webpages for raters to appropriately flag, which can include misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories. These guidelines will begin to help our algorithms in demoting such low-quality content and help us to make additional improvements over time. Ranking changes: We combine hundreds of signals to determine which results we show for a given query—from the freshness of the content, to the number of times your search queries appear on the page. We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content, so that issues similar to the Holocaust denial results that we saw back in December are less likely to appear. Direct feedback tools When you visit Google, we aim to speed up your experience with features like Autocomplete, which helps predict the searches you might be typing to quickly get to the info you need, and Featured Snippets, which shows a highlight of the information relevant to what you’re looking for at the top of your search results. The content that appears in these features is generated algorithmically and is a reflection of what people are searching for and what’s available on the web. This can sometimes lead to results that are unexpected, inaccurate or offensive. Starting today, we’re making it much easier for people to directly flag content that appears in both Autocomplete predictions and Featured Snippets. These new feedback mechanisms include clearly labeled categories so you can inform us directly if you find sensitive or unhelpful content. We plan to use this feedback to help improve our algorithms. ac New feedback link for Autocomplete fs Updated feedback link for Featured Snippets Greater transparency about our products Over the last few months, we’ve been asked tough questions about why shocking or offensive predictions were appearing in Autocomplete. Based on this, we evaluated where we can improve our content policies and updated them appropriately. Now we’re publishing this policy to the Help Center so anyone can learn more about Autocomplete and our approach to removals. For those looking to delve a little deeper, we recently updated our How Search Works site to provide more information to users and website owners about the technology behind Search. The site includes a description of how Google ranking systems sort through hundreds of billions of pages to return your results, as well as an overview of our user testing process. There are trillions of searches on Google every year. In fact, 15 percent of searches we see every day are new—which means there’s always more work for us to do to present people with the best answers to their queries from a wide variety of legitimate sources. While our search results will never be perfect, we’re as committed as always to preserving your trust and to ensuring our products continue to be useful for everyone. (3) Google imposes CIA line, state censorship http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/31/goog-j31.html Google’s chief search engineer legitimizes new censorship algorithm By Andre Damon 31 July 2017 Between April and June, Google completed a major revision of its search engine that sharply curtails public access to Internet web sites that operate independently of the corporate and state-controlled media. Since the implementation of the changes, many left wing, anti-war and progressive web sites have experienced a sharp fall in traffic generated by Google searches. The World Socialist Web Site has seen, within just one month, a 70 percent drop in traffic from Google. In a blog post published on April 25, Ben Gomes, Google’s chief search engineer, rolled out the new censorship program in a statement bearing the Orwellian title, "Our latest quality improvements for search." This statement has been virtually buried by the corporate media. Neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal has reported the statement. The Washington Post limited its coverage of the statement to a single blog post. Framed as a mere change to technical procedures, Gomes’s statement legitimizes Internet censorship as a necessary response to "the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information." The "phenomenon of ‘fake news’" is, itself, the principal "fake news" story of 2017. In its origins and propagation, it has all the well-known characteristics of what used to be called CIA "misinformation" campaigns, aimed at discrediting left-wing opponents of state and corporate interests. Significantly, Gomes does not provide any clear definition, let alone concrete examples, of any of these loaded terms ("fake news," "blatantly misleading," "low quality, "offensive," and "down right false information.") The focus of Google’s new censorship algorithm is political news and opinion sites that challenge official government and corporate narratives. Gomes writes: "[I]t’s become very apparent that a small set of queries in our daily traffic (around 0.25 percent), have been returning offensive or clearly misleading content, which is not what people are looking for." Gomes revealed that Google has recruited some 10,000 "evaluators" to judge the "quality" of various web domains. The company has "evaluators—real people who assess the quality of Google’s search results—give us feedback on our experiments." The chief search engineer does not identify these "evaluators" nor explain the criteria that are used in their selection. However, using the latest developments in programming, Google can teach its search engines to "think" like the evaluators, i.e., translate their political preferences, prejudices, and dislikes into state and corporate sanctioned results. Gomes asserts that these "evaluators" are to abide by the company’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which "provide more detailed examples of low-quality webpages for raters to appropriately flag, which can include misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories." Once again, Gomes employs inflammatory rhetoric without explaining the objective basis upon which negative evaluations of web sites are based. Using the input of these "evaluators," Gomes declares that Google has "improved our evaluation methods and made algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content." He again asserts, further down, "We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content." What this means, concretely, is that Google decides not only what political views it wants censored, but also what sites are to be favored. ... (4) Google to divert Searches from "unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories" http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/28/pers-j28.html Google rigs searches to block access to World Socialist Web Site WSWS Editorial Board 28 July 2017 An examination of web traffic data clearly shows that Internet giant Google is manipulating search results to block access to the World Socialist Web Site. In April, under the guise of combatting "fake news," Google introduced new procedures that give extraordinary powers to unnamed "evaluators" to demote web pages and websites. These procedures have been used to exclude the WSWS and other anti-war and oppositional sites. Over the past three months, traffic originating from Google to the WSWS has fallen by approximately 70 percent. In key searches relevant to a wide range of topics the WSWS regularly covers—including US military operations and the threat of war, social conditions, inequality, and even socialism—the number of search impressions referencing the World Socialist Web Site has fallen drastically. An "impression" is a technical term referring to a link shown by Google in response to a search result. If a search for "socialism" leads a user’s computer to show one link to the WSWS, that counts as an impression. By manipulating the "search ranking" assigned to the pages of the WSWS, Google can drive its content lower down on the list of results. This reduces the total number of impressions, which, in turn, leads to a very low number of "clicks," or visits to the site. According to Google’s Webmaster Tools Service, the number of daily impressions for the World Socialist Web Site fell from 467,890 to 138,275 over the past three months. The WSWS has analyzed data related to the results of specific searches between May and July, that is, the period after Google implemented its new website exclusion policies. During the month of May, Google searches including the word "war" produced 61,795 WSWS impressions. In July, WSWS impressions fell by approximately 90 percent, to 6,613. Searches for the term "Korean war" produced 20,392 impressions in May. In July, searches using the same words produced zero WSWS impressions. Searches for "North Korea war" produced 4,626 impressions in May. In July, the result of the same search produced zero WSWS impressions. "India Pakistan war" produced 4,394 impressions in May. In July, the result, again, was zero. And "Nuclear war 2017" produced 2,319 impressions in May, and zero in July. To cite some other searches: "WikiLeaks," fell from 6,576 impressions to zero, "Julian Assange" fell from 3,701 impressions to zero, and "Laura Poitras" fell from 4,499 impressions to zero. A search for "Michael Hastings"—the reporter who died in 2013 under suspicious circumstances—produced 33,464 impressions in May, but only 5,227 impressions in July. In addition to geopolitics, the WSWS regularly covers a broad range of social issues, many of which have seen precipitous drops in search results. Searches for "food stamps," "Ford layoffs," "Amazon warehouse," and "secretary of education" all went down from more than 5,000 impressions in May to zero impressions in July. The number of search impressions for WSWS articles in searches including the term "strike" fell by 85 percent between May and July, from 19,395 to 2,964. Many people who conduct Google searches for these terms do so because they are critical of establishment politics and would be interested in hearing what socialists have to say. However, as a result of Google’s actions, they will not find material published by the World Socialist Web Site. But what about those directly looking for socialist politics? In May, the search term "socialism" generated 31,696 impressions, and the WSWS was ranked between 5th and 6th in search results. In June, the WSWS was removed from the top 100 search results for the term. Thus searches for "socialism" produced zero impressions for the World Socialist Web Site, the most widely read online socialist publication. What about those who are already committed socialists, and want to find out more about Leon Trotsky? Here, too, the WSWS, published by the Trotskyist movement, is being blocked. While a query for "Leon Trotsky" resulted in 5,893 impressions in May, that number fell to zero in July. When the WSWS contacted Robert Epstein with our findings, the noted psychologist and Google critic concluded, "I have little doubt that Google demoted you." Epstein said research that he and his colleagues conducted showed "the evidence is rock solid" that "Google is manipulating people through search suggestions." The policy guiding these actions is made absolutely clear in the April 25, 2017 blog post by Google’s Vice President for Engineering, Ben Gomes, and the updated "Search Quality Rater Guidelines" published at the same time. The post refers to the need to flag and demote "unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and conspiracy theories"—broad and amorphous language used to exclude any oppositional content. The rater guidelines are even more explicit. The unnamed "evaluators" are instructed to flag as the "lowest" rating sites that have "factually inaccurate information to manipulate users in order to benefit a person, business, government, or other organization politically, monetarily, or otherwise." The "lowest" rating is also to be given to a website that "presents unsubstantiated conspiracy theories or hoaxes as if the information were factual." It is impossible to formulate a more explicit policy of suppression of free speech. These guidelines are written in a way to allow Google to demote or block a massive array of websites that are critical of the government and expose its lies. Who precisely is to determine what is "factually inaccurate information" or what constitutes an "unsubstantiated conspiracy theory"? It in effect bars all expression of opinions, other than those that are acceptable to Google and its allies in the state, particularly the Democratic Party. There is not a publication or journal worth reading that would not fall afoul of these "guidelines." Adding to the cynicism of the new procedures is the fact that numerous sources have documented Google’s active involvement in supporting political candidates, specifically Hillary Clinton, by manipulating search results. In his recently published book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon cornered culture and undermined democracy, Jonathan Taplin documents the role of Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, in founding a firm called The Groundwork to directly assist the Clinton campaign. Moreover, earlier this year, the European Commission exposed Google’s widespread, deliberate, and criminal manipulation of its search results to promote its own comparison shopping service to the detriment of its competitors. The company was fined $2.7 billion. In the name of combating "fake news," Google is providing fake searches. It has been transformed from a search engine into an instrument of censorship. The WSWS will continue to expose Google’s unconstitutional attack on democratic rights. We demand that Google give a full accounting of its procedures, and that it identify who has been given the power to "evaluate" websites. All of Google’s algorithms must be placed in the public domain. Ultimately, the actions of Google provide yet another demonstration of the need to take the dissemination of information out of private control. Powerful search engines cannot be run by monopolies controlled by billionaire oligarchs. They must be placed under democratic control by the working population of the world. There is no question that Google’s action has blocked tens of thousands of people that normally would have found the WSWS from accessing the site. This is the aim. However, a very substantial portion of WSWS readers access the site directly, via social media, or through other search engines, which at least up to this point have not implemented rules that go as far as Google. The WSWS has a loyal and large base of readers and continues to record hundreds of thousands of individual visits a month. We will oppose Google’s political censorship, but we need your support. We are calling on our readers to become actively involved, to fight for the WSWS. Assist the distribution of WSWS articles. Post our content on social media. Email our articles to your friends and co-workers. Make Google’s actions as widely known as possible. Send us your email address so that you can receive daily updates of material from the WSWS. Leave a statement of opposition to the actions of Google. Finally, we are fighting one of the most powerful corporations, with the closest links to the government and vast resources. We need financial support to continue and expand our counteroffensive against censorship and the suppression of free speech. (5) Alternative News sites suffer decline of traffic generated by Google searches http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/pers-a02.html Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war web sites Andre Damon and David North 2 August 2017 New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches. The drop followed the implementation of changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols. In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to "offensive" sites, while working to surface more "authoritative content." 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 ... (6) Facebook to counter fake news; imposes review by Fact Checking sites http://www.ibtimes.com/fake-news-sites-facebook-rolls-out-related-links-combat-problem-2574093 AUG 03, 5:18 PM EDT Fake News Sites: Facebook Rolls Out Related Links To Combat Problem BY KEN MANBERT SALCEDO ON 08/03/17 AT 12:54 PM Facebook announced it is broadly rolling out its Related Articles feature on the News Feed to counter fake news. Related Articles will now appear underneath news links that are getting a lot of attention, or are suspected of providing false news. "We will start using updated machine learning to detect more potential hoaxes to send to third-party fact checkers. If an article has been reviewed by fact checkers, we may show the fact checking stories below the original post," Facebook News Feed product manager Sara Su said. "In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share. We will continue testing updates to Related Articles and other ongoing News Feed efforts to show less false news on Facebook and provide people context if they see false news," Su said. Moving forward, Facebook plans to improve its machine learning algorithms that identify potential false news by also taking to account user comments and reports. These stories will then be sent to fact checkers, according to Engadget. Facebook’s strategy here is more on providing users with different angles on news stories. It could drastically change how people read and share news stories on Facebook. If a suspicious or outright fake news article is accompanied by Related Articles, even before they’ve clicked on them, it would discourage people from spreading false information. Facebook’s Related Articles strategy could also help people to stay informed without worrying that they’re reading false news. Related Articles would be able to provide them with differing views, making the spread of news a little more balanced on the social network. Most importantly, Related Articles on the News Feed would provide users with more context on the topic of a news that they’re reading. This should help users make up their minds about a topic. Related Articles was actually first made available on Facebook way back in 2014. At the time, it was more on providing users more information after they’ve clicked on a news story, rather than combating fake news. Facebook actually began testing this new version of Related Articles with machine learning technology and fact checking back in April 2017. This version of Related Articles is now rolling out in the U.S., Germany, France and the Netherlands, according to TechCrunch. These countries will be getting it first because Facebook has already established fact checking partnerships in those regions. "We don’t want to be and are not the arbiters of the truth. The fact checkers can give the signal of whether a story is true or false," Facebook News Feed integrity product manager Tessa Lyons said. READ: Facebook Reportedly Working On A Video Chat Device With Touchscreen Display? Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news began shortly after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. It prompted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to start improving how information is shared on the News Feed. "Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news," Zuckerberg said back in November. "We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further." In addition to Related Artices, Facebook has also implemented various changes to improve the News Feed over the last few month. These includes tagging disputed articles, reducing clickbait headlines and, most recently, showing fewer links that slowly opens websites. (7) Facebook establishes new censorship centre in Germany http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/11/face-a11.html By Christoph Vandreier 11 August 2017 Facebook announced Wednesday that it would open a new control centre in Essen with 500 employees. The number of workers responsible for censoring and checking content in Germany will almost double as a result. The company has thus far only one such centre in Berlin. Facebook has gone to great lengths to cover up the work of the control centres. While the training documents and internal guidelines for the workers have been kept strictly secret, the company organised a tour of the Berlin centre for selected media outlets a month ago. The public broadcaster WDR, Die Zeit and Spiegel Online were permitted to look at locked screens and ask questions of workers specially primed for the occasion in the offices of Arvato, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, which carries out the deletions for Facebook. All three media outlets focused their subsequent reports on the difficult working conditions of the employees and presented them as being responsible merely for deleting videos of brutal beheadings and child pornography. In fact, millions of Internet users are being systematically censored in the hermetically sealed-off offices. Reports about the deletion of critical posts and the blocking of left-wing and progressive authors have risen rapidly in recent months. Last December, for example, a post by the satirist Leo Fischer was deleted. Fischer placed the xenophobic headline of the right-wing Bild newspaper, "The great debate about refugees’ perceptions of women," alongside the same newspaper’s regular pictures of women in bikinis and took a picture of it. It was not only attacked by numerous right-wing extremists, but also deleted by Facebook, because the post allegedly breached the community’s regulations. With the same justification, Facebook blocked Austrian author Stephanie Sargnagel for 30 days. Her profile had been flagged by numerous right-wing and far-right users in a concerted campaign. Sargnagel had posted satirical comments against xenophobia and racism, and therefore ended up in the crosshairs of the far right and the Internet company. Berlin-based blogger Jörg Kantel also reported that some of his posts were deleted. After the Bild seized on the violence surrounding the G-20 summit in Hamburg to publish unpixelated pictures of alleged rioters from Hamburg, Kantel wrote, among other comments, "Germany, a land of denunciators and surveillance. At least since 1933!" According to the blogger, Facebook deleted the post. The list of censored authors could be extended at will. In addition, there are those who go unnoticed because they lack the prominence of the individuals involved in the cases discussed. The Guardian revealed on May 21 that Facebook was carrying out this work systematically. The newspaper obtained 100 training documents for the workers at the control centres and came to the conclusion that they were alarming for advocates of free speech. While posts advocating extreme violence and brutal murder or containing insults were deemed unproblematic, the employees were ordered to immediately delete posts like "Someone shoot Trump," because as a head of government, Trump was part of a "protected category." Freedom of speech therefore only applies at Facebook so long as the government, which is considered worthy of protection, is not attacked. This is an obvious violation of freedom of speech, which above all protects the population’s right to criticise the government. The close connections between the government and the major corporation’s censorship apparatus is especially clear in Germany. Even though on July 1 only 1.5 percent of Facebook users came from Germany, 16 percent of Facebook’s 7,500 censors will work in Germany by the end of the year when the new facility is up and running. At the end of June, the federal parliament passed the so-called Network Enforcement Law, which compels companies like Facebook to fulfill the responsibilities of a censor. Without any judicial ruling, the company must delete "obviously unlawful content" within 24 hours or face a fine of up to €50 million [$US 59 million]. The major companies are left to determine what "obviously unlawful" is. The censoring of the Internet by the government and corporations is by no means restricted to Facebook. Google, the search engine monopoly, has disappeared entire websites from its search results, making them inaccessible to millions of readers. This operation was also implemented in close consultation with German government circles. On April 25, Google’s chief engineer of search, Ben Gomes, announced that Google would downgrade "low-quality" information such as "conspiracy theories" and "fake news." Just three weeks earlier, Gomes met with representatives of all German state governments to discuss the functionality of search engines. Google’s censorship measures resulted in numerous anti-war websites and left-wing publications being massively downgraded. The World Socialist Web Site was targeted in particular, with its search traffic from Google declining by 67 percent. The resort to such aggressive censorship by the government and major corporations can only be explained by mounting social conflicts. Policies of militarism and social attacks are being met with opposition from the vast majority of the working population. War and capitalism are incompatible with basic democratic rights. This is why all of the parties represented in the German parliament are calling in their election programmes for the strengthening of the state apparatus and the censoring of the Internet. Concepts such as "fake news" or "hate speech" serve in this context to justify state repression. The lies of the major media outlets and agitation by all parties against refugees, by contrast, are being spread without hindrance. In its programme, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) describes "fake news" as "a great danger for peaceful coexistence and for a free and democratic society." Therefore, it calls for the "better training and equipping of police authorities and judicial system in this area." The SPD intends to retain the Network Enforcement Law and cut the "reaction times" even more. "Anybody failing to abide by the provisions will be punished with painful financial penalties." The Left Party also calls for more police and for action to be taken against "verbal attacks" online. "We want to protect the security of citizens in public spaces with more personnel," their election programme states. "On social networks, as in public spaces in general, protection against verbal attacks, hate speech and character assassination must be enforced." It is no coincidence that this choice of words recalls the campaign of leading media outlets against the World Socialist Web Site and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality. Because they criticised right-wing extremist statements, which were subsequently confirmed as such by a court, from Humboldt University Professor Jörg Baberowski, accusations of "bullying" and "character assassination" were directed against them. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung complained shortly prior to Gomes’ visit to Berlin about "how impactful the Trotskyist splinter group is," and demanded the WSWS be censored—a demand that Google has since fulfilled. -- Peter Myers website: http://mailstar.net/index.html |
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