08/16/2017 / By Lance D Johnson
Widely used by millions of people on a daily basis, the Google search engine dictates what people can see and read online. Google prioritizes corporate media and popular thought, while relegating information that challenges the status quo to the back burner. In view of this, the individuals who work for Google hold great power. If there is a message or mission that they oppose they may be tempted to delist it from their search engine. If Google executives are on the payroll of a specific political campaign, they will be tempted to prioritize certain kinds of information that reinforces their worldview, while suppressing information that challenges it. In order to expand their influence, these Internet gatekeepers will censor and blacklist information that they disagree with.
When Google delisted the entire root domain of NaturalNews.com, including over 140,000 quality health, science and self-reliance articles, the public fired back, denouncing Google’s obvious censorship tactics. Due to the backlash, Google ultimately unblocked Natural News after six days, but questions arose. Was the censorship politically motivated? Is Google doing favors for some websites while making up reasons to penalize other news organizations that they ideologically oppose? Could it be that Google’s top executives were working for the Clinton campaign – something Natural News stood against? Should Google be regulated as a public utility to prevent future censorship?
Right now, fallible Google employees have the power to block an entire news organization from search results by simply coming up with some invalid excuse. Google ultimately responded to Natural News citing “technical issues.” In a statement, Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams wrote:
While Google said we were being flagged for a so-called “sneaky mobile redirect” on a very small number of pages in a subdomain (blogs.naturalnews.com) which were created by outside bloggers, Google went to the extraordinary step of banning the entire NaturalNews.com root domain and all its subdomains.
According to an investigation, the same technical issue occurs with the CNN, HuffPo and Forbes websites, yet these sites were never blacklisted in any way. When he tried to address the issue on Google’s webmaster forum, Mike Adams was met with insults and accusations by Google’s supporters who were nothing close to search engine professionals.
The best way to weaken Google’s influence is to stop relying on this search engine. More people are flocking to alternative search engines such as StartPage, but this search engine is dependent on Google’s search results, too. While StartPage promises to respect its users’ privacy, the search engine is ultimately dependent on Google’s biased and manipulative search results.
When conducting true Internet searches and investigative work, it’s much wiser to rely on a truly independent search engine like Duck Duck Go or Good Gopher. These sites do not share your information with third parties. These search engines respect user privacy and do not store personal information, do not track users, and do not bombard users with ads. Better yet, these search engines will give you more than just the corporate controlled media opinions. Good Gopher prioritizes the work of investigative journalists who do more than just regurgitate the mainstream media and popular narratives.
Bookmark these search engines and vote against Google’s information dictatorship:
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Tagged Under: Censorship, Duck Duck Go, Good Gopher, Google, Google censorship, information independence, manipulation, oppression, privacy, StartPage, surveillance
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