Megalomaniac Google? … Internet Behemoth Now Fancying Itself As The Ultimate Gatekeeper Of The Truth

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.   – 1 Corinthians 3:18

A wave of commotion has just been unleashed by the very recent FOX News report on Google’s contemplating of changing the way it ranks website pages with its famous search engine. Also read here.

Google Truth

Towering arrogance from speech-rights midgets? The self-appointed gate-keepers of the Truth: Image cropped here.

Rather than ranking websites on their popularity, a Google research group is looking into ranking websites based on how “factual” they are. If implemented, it would literally mean Google taking on the gatekeeper role of who deciding fact from fiction. Google has already created a “knowledge vault” containing “commonly believed facts”. In summary sites found to deviate from what Google considers facts, would be automatically down-ranked in searches. Result: dissident opinions would surely get buried.

Though the system may have some merits, it is chock-full of pitfalls and it risks the establishment of an information dictatorship – a so-called Orwellian Ministry Of Truth. In other countries such information control programs are the sort of things one associates with tyrannies and dictatorships, like Iran, North Korea, Red China, Russia, Venezuela or Islamic fundamentalist states. Note in all these states, leaders are convinced it’s for the overall good of the people.

“That is very troubling,” writes Jim Lakely, Director of Communications of the Chicago-based think-tank The Heartland Institute in an e-mail. He thinks there is no doubt that the ‘facts’ of politicized sites who clearly have a defined agenda will get favorable treatment in Google’s ‘knowledge vault’ while dissident sites will be locked out.

“I worry about this issue greatly… My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google,” Anthony Watts told FoxNews.com. “It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there’s no arguing with a machine,” he added.

While Google maintains this project is only in the development phase, others are not so sure. One climate science dissident, who wishes to remain anonymous for the time being, believes that Google is already “heavily biased and directing traffic away” from climate science skeptic sites.

When it comes to science, the move reveals that Google seems oblivious to how the discipline works. It that is so, it makes the omnipotent company all the more dangerous. Science is always hotly disputed. For example is used to be a universal “fact” that saturated fats were bad for human health – before dissidents forced a rethinking. With Google’s new proposed policy, dissident voices would never see the light of day and progress would be stunted as a result. Dissidence is the life blood of science itself. By removing dissidence, as Google unwisely moves to do, science itself would de facto get starved and be catapulted back to the Dark Ages and the times of the Inquisition.

Global warming alarmists have long been working to get Google to suppress dissident voices on the subject of climate change. In 2009 conservative news site Newsbusters here wrote:

Former Vice President Al Gore a few years ago advised Internet behemoth Google about “aspects of search quality.”Such was reported by the New Yorker in its October 12 issue (subscription required). […] given the ongoing concerns about Google’s political leanings and how its search algorithms might be manipulated to favor liberal news outlets over conservative points of view, the very idea that Gore might have had any input to this process is worrisome to say the least.”

Thus we see that the Google project has long been in the works, and so the preparation appears to be grand and fundamental in scale. It cannot be that an organization with the power and might of Google would take it upon itself to police the world’s body of knowledge and to decide who is trustworthy and who isn’t. This borders on dangerous megalomania.

Censorship can be fought

The irresponsible and arguably arrogant deeming of “unreliable sources” is not something that Google alone is contemplating, but was already once reality among some powerful government institutions worldwide just months ago. For example Germany’s Federal Ministry of Environment issued a 123-page publication that singled out German and American journalists and scientists who it claimed were responsible for “spreading doubt and false information“ on climate change. Among them: Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Frederick Seitz, Joe Barton, Pat Michaels, John Christy and Ross McKitrick.

Fortunately the German journalists and scientists who were targeted did not take the state-sponsored attack lying down. The brochure is no longer available. A small victory for the freedom of scientific dissent.

So will Google and its many backstage operators be successful?

If anything, the move confirms yet again that the globalist alarmists have lost the argument and that the public debate has become unwinnable for them. This is the reason for the “state-of-emergency” scale move. Despite their huge advantages in the media and state funding, they are unable to explain the harsh winters, the models’s failure, the sea ice growth and the many other warmer Holocene periods. Now they are forced to shut down dissidents, a-la-Inquisition.

But it will never work. Every lie has a short shelf-life and can be propped up only for so long. Eventually it gets stale, and no one is left to swallow it.

Google’s move, however, is indeed extremely worrisome and very serious. The new US Congress needs to move swiftly and forcefully, and to put these obviously out-of-control Google executives on the hot seat for a serious grilling or two and a little schooling on the virtues of un-monopolized dissent. The human right to be heard, and to not be silenced, is at stake here. Sympathetic lawmakers need to be contacted.

Kennedy aptly concludes: “Whoever controls the Truth, controls the world“.

The power to determine the truth belongs to the people, and not to Google.

 

48 responses to “Megalomaniac Google? … Internet Behemoth Now Fancying Itself As The Ultimate Gatekeeper Of The Truth”

  1. DirkH

    “Fortunately the German journalists and scientists who were targeted did not take the state-sponsored attack lying down. The brochure is no longer available.”

    The German state apparatus is currently a weird mix of loyalist forces and constitutionalist resistance cells. Or so it seems. Even the Transatlantic Young Leaders are not free to run roughshod over the constitution. (Otherwise we would have war with Russia already)

    To me it looks like the loyalists get kicked in the nuts, hard, and repeatedly.

  2. Pops

    Does anyone still use google? There are plenty of other search options out there. Use google; you’ll soon find them… no, wait.

  3. CraigM350

    Google already default to this position. Anything climate related comes up with SkS, Desmog or the Guardian. It takes 3-4 pages before reasonable links come up and where the average Joe will not persevere (mission accomplished). It is not popularity based as e.g. WUWT for traffic smashes the others. Nor is the Guardian something that should come up first nearly every time. I look on other subjects and the results are far more balanced…and I am a long time web user. I know how to search but the climate arena is ridiculously skewed – I’ve logged in anonymously, new IPs and from public machines etc, the Google assumption is always that Cook and his band of propagandists fraudsters are the authority. It’s illuminating how when you search an individual the first thing that comes up are SkS and Desmog ad hominems and smears.
    All Google are doing or trying to do is formalise what they already do. They have made their position clear and cannot be trusted. Hopefully they’ll fall off the radar of history themselves.

    1. Elaine Supkis

      Absolutely!

      I tested this today by seeking ‘global warming scam’ and what popped up first?

      The Guardian, BBC and the jerks at Skeptical Science! Not What’s Up With That or Climate Science or other popular web sites that use that word often.

    2. AndyG55

      Google is ok to search for trivia.

      Science.. not so much !!

  4. Roald J. Larsen

    It’s only a matter of time before Google is sent down the list of search engines if they mess up. I am already thinking about changing, it’s not hard to do either ..

    1. John Silver
      1. chris moffatt

        Yeah, I’ve been using ixquick for a long time. Works fine, they don’t log your searches and being based in NL can’t be forced to hand over their records to the fascists without a dutch court order. Works better than google AFAIAC and no registration and none of that other google crap. They started up their email service a few months back – startmail if you’re interested in encrypting your mail and protecting it from NSA and illegal searches

  5. Mike

    I used Firefox for years, but the intolerance of Mozilla for people with different views, even it’s own CEO, forced me to wipe it off all my PCs and laptops. I have avoided Google for as long as possible but ended up with it. I realise the same issue probably exists, and it is probably more dangerous in the long run. I cannot tolerate their intolerance and they cannot tolerate anyone else’s intolerance – that is where we are today.

    The question in the article here is really about tolerance. Can dissenting voices be allowed?

    When the BBC holds a climate debate, it convinces the audience that it is balanced by having opposing views, not on the science but on how to spend climate change funds. Dissent about money is acceptable, dissent about politics is possible, but dissent about science is not. This is because science is not meant to be about opinions but about facts and most people think this is how it works.

    Anthony Watts does a great job with his blog, but he doesn’t allow much dissent either unless he thinks it is relevant to climate science the way he sees it, so I don’t blog there any more. He is also an arbiter of truth and cannot tolerate comments he (or his helpers) deem to be lets say political, religious, etc.

    Fabulous that you quoted 1 Corinthians 3:18 – “let him become a fool” is from the Greek root word where we get the english word “moron”. It seems odd at first that Paul would say this, that to become wise one must first become a fool, but it is precisely in this way that the true wise person, and true spiritual person grows, through recognition of their own foolishness, and seeing the truth of their own humility.

    Is is a most appropriate Bible verse you chose for this article.

  6. Henning Nielsen

    Heaven forbid that in the future I may have to write “No” and not just “N” to get to this website 🙂

  7. DirkH

    Ah, watched the video from Fox now. Nomi Konst looks like a liberal cardboard cutout feminist. Google’s accountability project works with their “vault of knowledge”; anyone remembering their crapshot KNOL which couldn’t even compete with the entirely corrupt wikipedia? Looks like this is KNOL all over again.

    1. Jeff

      Looks like Marie Harf with undyed hair. Cookie-cutter commie critters – where do they all come from?

      Google’s gatekeeping coupled with the sad, slow demise of the printed word is making truth more and more obscure.
      With only “i-Things” and e-media to use, the truth can
      be, erm, changed in a matter of nanoseconds…

      Orwell was just a few years early, methinks.

      “Vault of Knowledge” – with any luck, it’ll work like
      Get Smart’s “Cone of Silence”…

      1. DirkH

        Jeff 9. March 2015 at 14:50 | Permalink | Reply
        “Google’s gatekeeping coupled with the sad, slow demise of the printed word is making truth more and more obscure.”

        Well, I disagree. Remember Hearst or the NYT’s Duranty during the Holodomor. Since the invention of mass media (in other words since BEFORE Gutenberg) most of it was lies.

    2. Jeff

      Looks like Marie Harf with undyed hair.
      Cookie-cutter commie critters – where do they all come from?

      Google’s gatekeeping coupled with the sad, slow demise of the printed word is making truth more and more obscure.

      With only “i-Things” and e-media to use, the truth can
      be, erm, changed in a matter of nanoseconds…

      Orwell was just a few years early, methinks.

      “Vault of Knowledge” – with any luck, it’ll work like
      Get Smart’s “Cone of Silence”…

  8. John F. Hultquist

    I use Google Earth and its Street View.
    For Search, I’ve been using Bing.

    For sod:
    My freezer needs power all the time; roughly 8,760 hours each year. Some space within is used for ice. Thus, frozen stuff stays frozen if someone hits a power pole and the lines go down. The maximum off-time has been about 4 hours in 25 years. Neither wind nor solar can do that. Maybe you don’t use a freezer?

    1. sod

      ” Maybe you don’t use a freezer?”

      surprise surprise, i do!

      Germany got 8.9% of its electricity from wind power in 2013 and my freezer did work all the time.

      I can not remember a time with 4h without power.

      It is rather easy to plan wind and solar in advance. The difference to fossil plants is rather tiny!

      http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/data-nivc-/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-2014.pdf
      (page 47++)

      1. AndyG55

        “I can not remember a time with 4h without power. ”

        Then wait until you go full solar and wind.

        Do you dare.. Nope, you don’t.

        1. sod

          “Then wait until you go full solar and wind.”

          Can you show any place that is planning to go 100% wind?

          Why are people who oppose wind and solar constantly bringing up a 100% wind/solar scenario?

          Most countries will reach 20-25% alternative power fast and without any problem.

          Then many will reach for 40% to 50%, which will take some effort. But all of this is a real and massive reduction for the use of fossil fuels, especially in the future (coal plants that do not get build do not cause coal demand in the future).

          1. AndyG55

            Can you show a developed place (except a tiny out of the way recluse) that can exist without COAL fired electricity?

            I can show you MANY places that have THRIVED without any wind or solar.

            Wind and solar are TOYS.. for children.

      2. DirkH

        sod 8. March 2015 at 10:43 | Permalink | Reply
        “It is rather easy to plan wind and solar in advance. The difference to fossil plants is rather tiny!”

        Oh that’s great to hear. So let’s just plan a continuous 60 GW output round the clock from wind and solar for the foreseeable future, switch off all other power plants and we should be done.

        1. sod

          ” So let’s just plan a continuous 60 GW output round the clock from wind and solar for the foreseeable future, switch off all other power plants and we should be done.”

          So how is your japanes 100% nuclear power based fridge doing these days?

          What do you think of 100% gas power for Ukraine?

          —————-

          It is getting a little bit repetitive, but NOBODY is asking for 100% wind power tomorrow!

          25% wind + solar will save 25% fossil fuels.

          1. David Johnson

            Only in your world pal

          2. AndyG55

            So, you admit that you are totally reliant on coal-fire electricity.

            We can turn off the wind and solar anytime with zero effect.. heck that happens anyway.

            Now try turning of the coal, see what happens to society.

      3. Moose
  9. Ken Macdonald

    Funny how all those ” tyrannies and dictatorships, like Iran, North Korea, Red China, Russia, Venezuela or Islamic fundamentalist states.” seem to be states that aren’t buying the USA lies and B.S. anymore(or USA hegemony anyway). Except for those funny head-chopping
    fundy Islamist states like Saudi, and ISIL who love to support the USA, and vice-a-verso. Lets hope we can head off Big Brother Google from their plan to save us from ourselves.

  10. Mervyn

    Everybody, please apply people power. Switch to Google’s competition. Google will then learn a lesson.

  11. sod

    Florida oficials are also censoring important words. I am sure you are angry about this case as well!

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/08/3631198/florida-dep-bans-climate-change-investigation/

    1. DirkH

      sod, an internal instruction in an organization is not “censorship”.

      Once you have your first job in a company, you will also be forbidden from using certain words, like calling the customers arseholes.

      I know, the world is such a terrible place.

    2. AndyG55

      Gees, how sensible is Florida !!

      More of it please. !

  12. Dick Cobus

    So much for freedom of speech!

  13. Dave Graham

    For SOD
    If you have the time you might care to read a very carefully reasoned but slightly intellectually demanding paper which answers all his arguments.

    http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limitations.pdf

    In essence, because renewables are intermittent energy sources and there is no real way of storing substantial amounts of electricity, most of the baseload generators have to keep on running whatever the output from wind or solar just to keep continuity of supply. As he points out – the wind doesn’t blow anywhere sometimes for days on end and the sun goes down every day.
    The author covers all the arguments in exceptional detail and if there is anything wrong with his reasoning then it is beyond my powers to see it and I’d be delighted for someone to point it out.

    Please read it and then tell me how you’re going to make any difference by building any amount of wind turbines or solar farms.

    Toodle pip

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