[HN Gopher] Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some... ___________________________________________________________________ Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results Author : danso Score : 281 points Date : 2021-06-11 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | drdavid wrote: | I wonder what checks and balances are in place. | | Can someone be a complete dirtbag and request that legitimate | criticism be removed simply because they don't want folks to know | they're a dirtbag? | | Can convicts request the results be removed? How about sex | offenders? How about people convicted of domestic violence | assaults or similar? | k2xl wrote: | What I was wondering is how do they verify that the person is | the one requesting themselves be removed? Can you technically | have all results of someone that you don't like be removed? I | could see that harming businesses if your name is often | associated with your websites around your business. | paxys wrote: | Not always voluntary. They have to do this by law in a lot of | countries. | renewiltord wrote: | Well, they kind of have to, right? Right to be forgotten and all | that. | dkokelley wrote: | This is an example of a large central authority censoring | information. | | How does the notion of a purely distributed, unregulated, | uncensorable, blockchain-backed internet handle "revenge porn" or | other genuinely harmful content? | | An argument I hear from the crypto community is that blockchain | is good because it enables freedom of speech that can't be banned | by governments or other central authorities. | | The crypto community needs to address the other side of that coin | too. Are there circumstances when something _should_ be banned, | and how does that work on a blockchain? | lozaning wrote: | I freaked a bunch of FBI agents out a while back by Base64 | encoding a photo of an FBI logo and writing that to the Eth | chain. They have massive concerns around this regarding data | exfiltration. The cost of removing the data, once written to a | chain, is essentially equal to the market cap of the coin for | that chain. | IncRnd wrote: | The reason is that it is illegal to use the FBI logo unless | authorized to do so. | CDRdude wrote: | I don't understand. Why did this freak out a bunch of FBI | agents? | gninazol wrote: | Are you asking why it freaked out real FBI agents or the | ones in lozaning's imagination? | | The FBI doesn't give a single damn hoot about "data | exfiltration" via blockchain metadata. Anyone with half an | understanding of any of those terms knows what an absurd | implication that is. | | For concerns about "data exfiltration", discussing | blockchain doesn't even make a single damn bit of sense. | Blockchain is about impermanence and publishing, not about | "exfiltration". | | I'm not sure which is more amusing, thinking that the FBI | would give a hoot about b64-encoded data in the metadata of | a transaction, or that this person wrote that comment on HN | to try and seem cool. LOL, what, the FBI reached out to | them (how?/why? nothing about this makes sense)? | lozaning wrote: | Because the data is there _forever_ and there's not really | anything they can do about it, which stands in stark | contrast to how they're used to operating. | | There is no person they can throw in jail, no corporation | that can be sued, no servers that can be seized, domains | taken over, etc, that will result in that data no longer | being available to those that know where to look for it. | | The data just remains online until such a time that the | coins of a given chain are worth $0.0 and coin holders no | longer have a financial incentive to keep the ledger | online. | | FWIW the ones I talked to where more of the door kicking | variety, not the 'cyber' type. | int_19h wrote: | But why would they freak out about a _logo_? | dkokelley wrote: | Another thought experiment: | | What would happen if someone encoded something horrible and | illegal like child porn into a blockchain? Is everyone who | operates on that chain guilty of possession? Does that make a | specific crypto "illegal" if its blockchain contains illegal | content? | tick_tock_tick wrote: | People already added it into bitcoin if you stretch the | definition a bit. As in the bits needed to reconstruct the | image exist in the chain. | lostmsu wrote: | If you extend it wide enough, one should ban natural | numbers because some of them in binary form are identical | to child pornography video files. | kr99x wrote: | No, no information should ever be banned from any | public/commons - the end. You want to ban certain information | from a particular place you control? Go nuts. The wider public? | No. | | The power to ban information is _too great_ to be entrusted to | any authority at all. Depending on how thorough the "ban" (web | text filter at the ISP level? mandatory AR implants at birth | filtering banned content? worse?), it's anywhere from an | abhorrent violation of human rights and the principles behind | free exchange and scientific inquiry all the way up through | literally the most powerful weapon which could even | _theoretically_ be designed. | | This is not a road worth going down, for any amount of harm | reduction. The cost _today_ may be worth it. The cost long term | is potentially too great to even consider risking. There is no | guarantee of who holds the ban hammer tomorrow. | dkokelley wrote: | Thanks for sharing. Do you think there is ever a scenario | where information should be censored from the public at | large? (Child porn, or you or your family getting 'doxxed', | for example) | | I appreciate the take that the future harm isn't worth the | benefit today, since we'd enable future arbiters to control | what is available. | | There's nuance in determining what is a public sphere vs. a | privately controlled platform. The places with the most | distribution are currently private, but crypto could change | that to where we collectively own the platform, effectively | making it publicly owned. Does that change your thoughts on | when censorship is appropriate? | ipaddr wrote: | You don't undo a harm by trying to erase it. If the porn has | been created/recorded the ex has a copy and could upload it to | non-block chain locations. Once he shares it it has been | decentralized. | | There was never a way to undo porn video you made when you were | younger. | afavour wrote: | The internet is incomprehensibly vast. Yes, there might be a | copy (or multiple copies) of a video you made in your youth | on the internet. But as long as it isn't a) prominently | available and b) attached to your name, you might be OK. | | The situation we have today does allow you to address such a | problem: Google can remove search results. It's not possible | to do that on the blockchain. | ipaddr wrote: | The blockchain is vast and growing. Discovery is difficult. | | Google prevents new searches or tries to but if you have | the link you can visit without google. Same as the | blockchain you would need to know where to look. | summerlight wrote: | But still you can try making it harder to access by cutting | the major distribution channels, which perhaps will | significantly reduce its propagation velocity. With whatever | technologies that refuse to fix this issue, you cannot. This | is a critical difference for law enforcement. | ipaddr wrote: | You wouldn't stop a torrent. Why should the blockchain be | different Discovery still happens elsewhere. | pjc50 wrote: | You can't 100% undo it, but you can criminalize distribution. | Uploading it to a system from which it cannot be deleted | guarantees no leniency. | [deleted] | gninazol wrote: | Always good to rehash the same exact conversation over and over | for ... 13 years now. Can we at least pretend to learn | something from every other time this exact conversation has | played out? | | No? We're just gonna relitigate it all from scratch again - | relearning the same naive lessons over and over? (Shockingly | people in this space _do_ indeed understand the implications of | censorship-resistant platforms.) | meekmind wrote: | > The crypto community needs to address the other side of that | coin | | Do they? Nothing is ever _really_ deleted on the good old- | fashioned internet either. | | We can't have our cake and eat it too. Having a centralized | arbiter of truth is more dangerous to the truth than bad people | who do bad things. | devenblake wrote: | > Nothing is ever _really_ deleted on the good old-fashioned | internet either. | | Tell that to folks doing web archival. | jedimastert wrote: | So, like, I get what you're saying, but I feel like you didn't | actually look past the title of the post. This isn't | governments censoring information or whatever, it's a form you | can fill out to request removal of coerced personal information | like revenge porn or doxxing. | dkokelley wrote: | I understand what the post is saying. I see this as an | example of censorship (by Google in this case) being a GOOD | thing. This caused me to wonder about how a decentralized | platform would handle similar circumstances. | jedimastert wrote: | Whelp color me an ass for commenting about not reading past | the headline while also completely missing the main crux of | your argument! That's my b | narrator wrote: | When talking about the blockchain and other voluntary systems, | I tend to look at these things from a "what if there was no | government that could just use physical coercion to implement | its laws, how would you get people to voluntarily sign up for | this?" perspective for these kinds of problems. | | You would get users to sign the social contract with some | online entity and that entity would censor the blockchain for | their ideological/legal jurisdiction. For example, you could | sign the Christian fundamentalist social contract and have all | blasphemy removed from your search results. In exchange, you | would receive community support, access to their content, etc. | If they found out you were browsing blasphemous material they | would revoke the particular social contract you signed. | | Just spitballing here, but I wonder if the nofap guys could | start something like this to block all nsfw content on whatever | distributed blockchain thing was out there. Then they could | offer some special forum as a benefit. You could use a DAO for | governance conflicts, etc. | pjc50 wrote: | That doesn't (and can't) prevent revenge porn or blackmail or | doxxing in any way, because the victim is not a party. | narrator wrote: | Obviously you can use courts and the police in the form of | the existing government. That works fine. We're trying to | figure out how to do this in a borderless global internet | via blockchain and so forth. | | The victim would contact the organizations and ask that | they remove the material citing their mission and bylaws. | Maybe they would form a hierarchy with the most generally | agreed upon rules being shared, like a treaty, between | blockchains. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | I'd love to walk into a business without shoes or a shirt and | demand service. For some crazy reason these businesses are | allowed to restrict my liberty on their property. | dkokelley wrote: | I guess I'm thinking more about a "decentralized Google" | where it's impossible to remove things like revenge porn. Is | there anything we can/should do about that potential? | kypro wrote: | IMO both of these options are terrible. | | I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most arguments, | but I do acknowledge there are times when action may need to be | taken in the interest of the public. My objection is that I | neither want it to be impossible to take action or for a | foreign company to unilaterally decide what action to take. | | What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If one | doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start deciding what | information the public should have access to and what is | "harmful", but for democratic countries to pass laws with the | consent of their local electorates to decide what legal | protections and processes need to be put in place. | | The problem we have today is that there are too many foreign | companies deciding what we can and can't say or do. Crypto has | the exact opposite problem, but unless our governments step up | and regulates these companies in the interests of the public | our only option (if you don't agree with the censorship) is to | create something uncensorable. | dkokelley wrote: | I appreciate this response! I agree that a legal process | seems to be the best solution (so far) to collectively | deciding what is and isn't ok. | | The legal system has its own faults of course. It's | administered by fallible governments and can have individual | bad actors. But could a legal system expect to exert control | over a decentralized system like a blockchain? | | Put another way, if there was a "crypto twitter" clone, and | someone posted revenge porn or personal information about | someone (home address, let's say), wouldn't that post be | forever embedded into the blockchain? Would a legal system | ever be able to remove it? | avianlyric wrote: | It may not be able to remove it, but it certainly can make | viewing, storing or disseminating it illegal and punish | those that do. | | Ultimately a legal system is how a society controls a | governments monopoly on violence. A legal system can remove | almost anything if it really want too, by virtue of the | fact that it can send big men with guns to destroy whatever | physical manifestations of the thing exists. | | Of course there are practical limits to this power. But | that's never stopped a government before. | Dracophoenix wrote: | It's not just companies. It's differing jurisdictions. The | Middle East would hold that promoting homosexuality is | "harmful" (not unlike the US even a few years into the 21st | century). China would hold that it is harmful to promote a | different political party than the CCP. India finds it | harmful for people to kiss in public. There is no legal | process that discerns "truly harmful" material from that | which is perceived. Harm or lack thereof is limited to | individual assessment | slg wrote: | >I seem to lean quite far on the freedom side of most | arguments, but I do acknowledge there are times when action | may need to be taken in the interest of the public. My | objection is that I neither want it to be impossible to take | action or for a foreign company to unilaterally decide what | action to take. | | >What we need in situations like this is a legal process. If | one doesn't exist, it's not for companies to start deciding | what information the public should have access to and what is | "harmful", but for democratic countries to pass laws with the | consent of their local electorates to decide what legal | protections and processes need to be put in place. | | What is interesting is that I wouldn't even have to change a | single word here and I can equally apply this reasoning to | encryption. It is almost always unpopular on HN to suggest | that universal end-to-end encryption might not be a great | idea or that encryption backdoors are something that need to | be seriously discussed, but those opinions are born out of | the same underlying logic. | | Free speech is good, but no society wants universal free | speech since there are legitimately evil people who will use | their speech for malicious means. Same is true about | encryption. Why are we ok with removing revenge porn from | Google results but need to just accept that we are allowing | child porn to be shared via easily encrypted channels? | kypro wrote: | Personally I'm not convinced the rewards outweigh the risks | in regards to encryption, at least not at this moment in | time. But again, I'd much rather issues like these were | debated democratically than some tech company deciding one | day that they need to view my private messages to "protect | the children". | | But to your point, if the sharing of child porn or other | illegal content ever got so bad that something urgently | needed to be done I would personally be open to limiting | the use E2EE (if there truly was no better option) and I'd | assume most people here would agree, although I would argue | in many cases it's E2EE that prevents you from becoming a | victim of things like revenge porn in the first place. | int_19h wrote: | The thing about E2EE is that it's not something that you | can meaningfully ban in a non-totalitarian society. RSA | boils down to one fairly simple formula, for example, or | a Perl one-liner. People who _really_ need it will figure | it out. | | Besides, there would be quite a few people who'd be | actively circumventing any such law if it were enacted, | e.g. by hosting the apps in other jurisdictions. And I | think that's a good thing! There should be fundamental | limits on the power of governance, regardless of how | democratic said governance is; and democracies can be no | less abusive than other forms when it comes to minorities | etc. Or even majorities, when established public mores | essentially require widespread hypocrisy - the | Prohibition comes to mind. "Think of the children" (or | terrorists, or whatever is the go-to political excuse at | any particular moment) is not a valid exception. | slg wrote: | >I'd much rather issues like these were debated | democratically than some tech company deciding one day | that they need to view my private messages to "protect | the children". | | I agree with your general point except most people in the | tech community are not willing to even have these | debates. It is often treated as an issue with a single | right answer and that encryption can never be | compromised. | | Removing ourselves from the debate is only going to end | up with the decision being made without our input. | avianlyric wrote: | The difference is that strong encryption is an all or | nothing proposition. You either have strong encryption that | works in all scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak | encryption that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no | middle ground, and plenty of people and governments have | tried. | | Selective censorship by central authorities can be | granular, choosing to create a legal process for selective | censorship doesn't suddenly allow any person on the | internet to potentially censor any thing they want. Weak | encryption however allows anyone, anywhere, with enough | effort to break all encryption everywhere, and do so | without without detection or needing to expose themselves | via a legal system. | | Also there aren't "central encryption authorities" that all | encryption passes through. Anyone can implement modern | crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. It's like | trying to ban the concept of Pi. | TurningCanadian wrote: | I wouldn't say it's all or nothing. Several of the more | regressive countries already demand access to decryption | keys. The government gets easy access to the data but | it's still hard for the non-state bad guys to intercept. | avianlyric wrote: | Doesn't help if people are using end-to-end encryption. | slg wrote: | >You either have strong encryption that works in all | scenarios, both good and ill, or you have weak encryption | that protects nothing. There unfortunately is no middle | ground, and plenty of people and governments have tried. | | This is always stated as a universal truth of the | technology, but this mostly seems like a people and | organizational problem. We already have encryption | algorithms that can encrypt content for decryption by | multiple optional keys. Why couldn't we fragment and | distribute one set of those keys among multiple legal | entities? That would require coordination and agreement | to decrypt anything. That wouldn't be a true backdoor | anymore than the original key is a backdoor, it would | simply be overhead on the existing encrypted content to | allow it to be decrypted by multiple keys. | | >Also there aren't "central encryption authorities" that | all encryption passes through. Anyone can implement | modern crypto wherever, so banning it makes no sense. | It's like trying to ban the concept of Pi. | | This is true, but defaults matter. If the US makes a law | regarding encryption, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, | Facebook, etc are all going to follow it. You still might | be able to roll your own encryption, but the people who | do that will be a tiny share of overall communication. | Laws like this aren't meant to completely stop something. | Putting in financial regulations to crack down on money | laundering doesn't stop money laundering. The goal is to | make it more difficult and prevent the most egregious | cases. | avianlyric wrote: | > Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of | those keys among multiple legal entities? | | There would be thousands if not millions of legitimate | decryptions every year. At each instance all of the | fragments will need to be put together, creating an | opportunity for the data to be exfiltrated. | | Additionally your making the assumption that legal | agencies will be able to securely store these keys long | term (I.e forever). Regardless of your view on the | operational and security competency of these agencies, | it's extreme difficulty to keep cryptographic keys secure | long term if you need to be able to access them on a | regular basis. | | Even if you don't think most criminal organisations will | manage this, you can pretty much guarantee that large | nation state actors like China and Russia will find a way | to get hold of these keys. You then give your largest | competitors the ability to seriously damage your economy | or steal secrets by either using the keys themselves, or | leaking them on the internet. Suddenly every single | message sent by every citizen, politician, bank, weapons | company etc becomes public for all to see. | | > This is true, but defaults matter. If the US makes a | law regarding encryption, Google, Apple, Amazon, | Microsoft, Facebook, etc are all going to follow it. You | still might be able to roll your own encryption | | You will 100% be able to roll your own, and trivially | too. You'll just need to go to GitHub and grab the source | code, or pre-built binaries for a working crypto system, | of which there are many. Banning the big companies from | using crypto isn't enough, you also need to ban anyone | from talking about crypto as well. | | This is very different to money laundering rules. | Realistically you can't opt out of the modern financial | system, regardless of what blockchain proponents say, so | introducing rules to gatekeep money flows at system choke | points makes sense. Also one ability to censor money at | choke points doesn't also create an opportunity for | enemies to exploit those same choke points. | | The money laundering equivalent of crypto censorship | would be like the US deciding that it was going to switch | to Bitcoin so that all transactions are public and | accessible to law enforcement. Then just kinda hoping | that a country like China isn't going to launch a 51% | attack. | slg wrote: | Your first three paragraphs are all focusing on | structural flaws with my suggestion and not technical | limitations of encryption itself. The debate has already | moved from this is impossible to this is impractical. We | can fix impractical. For example, we can design a way for | content to be reencrypted with new keys if anything ever | leaks. | | >You will 100% be able to roll your own, and trivially | too. You'll just need to go to GitHub and grab the source | code... | | Github is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft won't let you | host code that is designed specifically to break the law. | That is the point. You would need to jump through a | variety of hoops in order to avoid this. It wouldn't be | impossible, but it won't be the default and most people | won't go through the effort to do it. | avianlyric wrote: | > Your first three paragraphs are all focusing on | structural flaws with my suggestion and not technical | limitations of encryption itself. The debate has already | moved from this is impossible to this is impractical. | | I think the flaws are so large, and fixing them so | impractical (especially anything involving direct human | involvement), that the problem is essentially impossible. | | In theory traffic laws should prevent 100% of car | accidents. Yet people die every day in traffic accidents. | | In theory the judicial system should never execute an | innocent person. Yet the US sends people later proven | innocent to the electric chair on a semi regular basis. | | In theory everyone should have a strong interest is | keeping planet earth healthy enough to support human | life, yet we're on a course to cataclysmic climate | change. | | Alcohol addiction should have ended during prohibition, | and weed should be impossible to buy in the US. Yet | neither is true. | | What on earth makes you think we'll solve the structural | issues with government key escrow for all encryption, | when all the evidence suggest that we're unable to | perfectly solve these issues as a species? | | > Github is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft won't let you | host code that is designed specifically to break the law. | | Cool we'll host it on Gitlab then, or one of many no US | hosting providers. We can't even stop people pirating | movies despite the media industry throwing billions at | the problem. Do you honestly think we'll have better luck | with crypto? | | You wanna see how this story ends? Read up on prohibition | America, or just the war on drugs. We've been down this | road many times, with many different vices, it's ends the | same way every time. Normal people get criminalised, | illicit behaviour continues regardless. Organised crime | profits from facilitating illicit behaviour. Please | explain why you thing crypto is going to be the | exception? | kortilla wrote: | > Why couldn't we fragment and distribute one set of | those keys among multiple legal entities? | | Because crypto is implemented in software and it's | trivial to remove the part that encrypts for the | government's key. | slg wrote: | You completely ignored the last paragraph of my comment | where I addressed this type of concern. | gjs278 wrote: | stop posting. you're wrong and your idea sucks. there's | nothing else to say. | ChrisKnott wrote: | It's not all or nothing, at all. The argument is about | whether the material can be theoretically legally | recovered like Gmail and Facebook Messenger (currently), | or not, like WhatsApp. All these services use encryption | and are secure. | version_five wrote: | Huh? The google example is about content being available in | public, essentially the equivalent of someone posting dirty | / embarrassing pictures in a public square and needing | there to be a way to take them down. That sounds pretty | reasonable. | | The encryption example is about being able to intercept | private communication (never mind outlawing math) because | someone could use that private communication for something | illegal. | | The two examples have nothing to do with each other IMO. | throwitaway1235 wrote: | It's simple. The user is a thinking, conscious being, he or she | views, what he or she wants. No dilemma. Nothing shall be | censored. | anamexis wrote: | So if someone posts revenge porn of you, you're fine just | trusting the 8 billion people on Earth not to look at it, and | leaving it at that? | summerlight wrote: | To add more data points for your point: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_room_case | | Everyone, please DO NOT underestimate people's malicious will | to abuse weak minority groups having un-moderated platforms as | their primary tool. Due to lack of Telegram's basic moderation, | those victims had been severely abused to the unrecoverable | level, more than two years. This could've been at least | mitigated if they simply closed the room based on user | reporting, which they refused to do so. | shakezula wrote: | Google is not backed by a blockchain. | | And as someone who has worked in the blockchain space for a | long time, it's pretty much unanimously agreed in the space | that the cost of inevitably protecting bad actors is worth the | value in protecting good actors. Good and bad are subjective | there, but for better or worse the blockchain isn't. | spondyl wrote: | I'd like to take this opportunity to share some relevant | exercepts from In The Plex[^1] about Eric Schmidt, then-CEO of | Google. | | > One day Denise Griffin got a call from Eric Schmidt's | assistant. "There's this information about Eric in the indexes," | she told Griffin. "And we want it out." In Griffin's | recollection, it dealt with donor information from a political | campaign, exactly the type of public information that Google | dedicated itself to making accessible. Griffin explained that it | wasn't Google policy to take things like that out of the index | just because people didn't want it there. Principles always make | sense until it's personal," she says. | | > Then in July 2005, a CNET reporter used Schmidt as an example | of how much personal information Google search could expose. | Though she used only information that anyone would see if they | typed Schmidt's name into his company's search box, Schmidt was | so furious that he blackballed the news organization for a year. | | > "My personal view is that private information that is really | private, you should be able to delete from history," Schmidt once | said. But that wasn't Google's policy... | | I guess they've since changed the policy a bit? | | [^1]: https://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works- | Shapes/dp/14... | [deleted] | Blikkentrekker wrote: | On a slightly unrelated but nevertheless interesting issue: a | while back I wanted to find an "incel" board to see how discourse | thereon actually was, and _Google_ returned no direct results to | any of them but _DuckDuckGo_ immediately returned the results one | might expect when searching "incel forum". | legitster wrote: | To Google's credit, it's literally the first search results for | "how do I remove myself from Google". It is a bit ironic that | people looking to remove something for being too easy to find via | search are being stymied by a simple search. | | Still, good to provide some visibility about it. I certainly | never knew this was a thing. | oh_sigh wrote: | First result...under 4 ads that probably make you pay to do the | thing google does for free for you. | minsc__and__boo wrote: | 2 ads and a card linking directly to the Google support | article explaining how to remove it here. | jfrunyon wrote: | I get 0 ads on that search. The very first result, above | anything but their header, is | https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061 . | legitster wrote: | A weird example of Google creating business for third | parties. | danso wrote: | Couldn't fit the whole tweet, so just to be clear, she's talking | about manual, non-legal requests: | | > One of the surprising things about working on the slander | series is how few people in the field, even experts, know that | Google voluntarily removes some search results. (No court order | needed!) You have to visit this generic url: | https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?... | | Down the thread, she adds this: | | > _Because so few people know about it, "reputation managers" are | charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging information | from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out that form for | free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my husband after he | came under attack._ | | I didn't know about this service URL, and had just assumed | "reputation managers", if they did anything at all, were limited | to SEO spamming. | | edit: Searched HN for mention of this link and found exactly 5 | results, 3 of which look unique, and the earliest in Dec. 23, | 2015: | | https://imgur.com/EEUJn9M | tlogan wrote: | There is saying in Balkan countries: (my translation) "who | knows knows, who does not know then it is 500 deutsche marks | (dinars, etc.)". | tyingq wrote: | They are fairly narrow categories though, and don't handle | things like mugshot sites, even if it's something you were | arrested...but not convicted for. Still useful to know for | sure. | joshuamorton wrote: | Mugshot sites _might_ be covered by | https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9172218, but it | depends. | | [disclosure: I'm a googler, but no clue about this service] | tyingq wrote: | I'm pretty sure the mugshot sites have adjusted their | practices where it's much harder to prove what's really | going on. Straight up blackmail payment pages are gone. | Rasta1s wrote: | Aren't mugshots public records? | tyingq wrote: | Sort of. Some police departments publish them, some | don't. Some publish them only day of, then remove them. | Some only show them if you do the right kind of search | (last/first/ maybe + birth). The predatory mugshot sites | scrape these variations and publish them in a "forever" | way, with lots of SEO tricks. Then basically shake you | down for payment to remove them. | jrockway wrote: | It's the great "public" vs. "publicized" debate. | mike_d wrote: | Technically yes, but they are removed when a person is | found not guilty or released without being charged thus | protecting the innocent and falsely accused. The mugshot | sites capitalize on this by scraping the government | websites and archiving them forever - until you pay a | removal fee. | | Mugshots.com was doing exactly this until they got hit | with extortion charges: | https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-mugshot- | websi... | Rasta1s wrote: | " Technically yes, but they are removed when a person is | found not guilty or released without being charged thus | protecting the innocent and falsely accused. The mugshot | sites capitalize on this by scraping the government | websites and archiving them forever - until you pay a | removal fee." | | I don't believe anyone has an obligation to remove if | someone found not guilty. The arrest happened, that's a | fact. The information is public was made public by the | government, that's also a fact. | | From my understanding once something is made public you | can't put it back in the bag. The government may do so on | their own databases (Ie. Expungement, removal from | government databases) but that doesn't apply to the | public and especially not to publications who have first | amendment right to publish public records. | | I looked up the case you mentioned, it's still pending | and the arguments made by the government are questionable | | https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180523/10224639892/ca | lif... | judge2020 wrote: | This might also include what is required to comply with GDPR's | right to be forgotten, if that's still a thing. | vitus wrote: | That's a different form! | | https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal- | reques... | gist wrote: | > are charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging | information from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out | that form for free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my | husband after he came under attack. | | 'ALL THEY DO' is what anyone does in a similar way. You are | paying for what they know that you don't know how to do. There | is nothing wrong or deceptive about making money in this way. | (use of 'all they do' seems to imply this). Plenty of people | are busy and willing to pay for things to have someone else | handle the details. Google could easily publicize this but they | choose not to. | | Here is the thing. Someone charging $500 (or any amount) has | already filtered people that feel they have a real need from | everyone attempting to do similar. Now you could argue the fee | should be less but the friction caused by that higher fee (for | those who can afford it) is worth it. And those that can't can | do research and effort (like with anything) to find a way to | achieve the same. | | People often expect everything to be free and nobody to make | money off of knowledge. By the way if reputation managers are | charging $500 nothing to prevent someone from doing the same | for less and changing the market price. Also I'd image the rep | managers possibly massage some things to get the job done | something many people wouldn't know or want to do. | majormajor wrote: | > Because so few people know about it, "reputation managers" | are charging people like $500 a pop to "remove damaging | information from Google results." And ALL THEY DO is fill out | that form for free. Someone tried to hawk this service to my | husband after he came under attack. | | While that sounds like a high price, and you usually don't want | to just hire the first person you see advertise a service, the | concept of specialization there, and some people just not | wanting to devote the time to becoming experts everywhere, | seems perfectly fine and normal. | | People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just | "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all. | [deleted] | akiselev wrote: | _> People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just | "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all._ | | The ultimate reason people pay electricians is liability. | Unlicensed work is an easy way to invalidate your homeowner's | insurance, lose everything, and get sued for any damage to | your neighbors' property (by their insurance company, no | less). | version_five wrote: | My view is that if the only reason you are doing something | is because of the insurance implications, then you've | surely made the wrong decision. | | Nobody's interests are less aligned with your own than an | insurance company's. There are lots of legitimate reasons | to hire an electrician, but making decisions solely based | on what someone who wants you to perpetually give them | money whole finding reasons to never give it back is never | good practice. | sombremesa wrote: | Electricity can kill you. Doesn't seem like a good | comparison. | amelius wrote: | Ending up in a Google search result can too, I suppose, in | some indirect way. | theli0nheart wrote: | > _People often pay electricians even for tasks that are just | "flip a switch and turn some screws," after all._ | | Not really. | | People pay electricians for their experience and knowledge | that give them the tools to solve complex problems, simply, | without messing up your wiring, causing a fire, or blowing | something up. | | Removing a link on Google, on the other hand, involves | clicking on a link and filling out a form. You don't need | state licensing or problem solving abilities to fill out that | form. Any "reputation managers" out there that are doing this | are essentially defrauding people, and it's shameful. | majormajor wrote: | Let's say someone wants to replace a lightswitch. | Google/Youtube will show you how to do that safely in a | matter of minutes. | | People pay because they're afraid of at least one of (a) | their ability to be sure they're getting the right | instructions, or (b) their ability to execute. In the | electrician example, (b) could be substantial if you don't | understand electricity. "Electricity can kill you" is | basically the home-maintenance version of "the internet is | confusing" that would prevent someone from wanting to find | this Google form themselves. | | In the "reputation manager" example, (a) is going to come | into play more, I bet. A _good_ "reputation manager" | probably isn't going to just fill out one form on google, I | imagine there's a lot you could do to cover Bing, | wikipedia, and various other sites and services. I don't | know where employees go to get background checks, for | instance, but maybe I need to have that covered, too. So | now the problem still parallels working with an electrician | - how do you know if you found a good one? Lots of | handyman/contractor horror stories and scams out there too! | [deleted] | version_five wrote: | I think you meant that although it's easy to trivialize what | an electrician does, in practice there's actually a lot of | skill and experience in it. (I could be wrong, although it's | always funny to see how what was probably an off-hand comment | causes people to go down such a rabbit hole). | vmception wrote: | Agreed, my favorite example of this is how people pay like | $100 to get a tax-ID number for their new business, which is | free from the IRS and with accidental form choices being | consequence free, because they think its fraught with | disaster or just too obtuse | mattzito wrote: | I would say that the difference between your example and | these reputation managers is that they are often themselves | directly responsible for the problems they create: | | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/24/technology/on. | .. | | I guess this is more analogous to flipping someone's breakers | in their house and then charging them to flip them back on. | tialaramex wrote: | I paid a gas plumber full rates to in effect remind me where | the tap is for the fill line for my boiler. | | Over time a boiler that isn't meaningfully "leaking" will | still gradually lose internal pressure. Once the pressure | _inside_ the boiler is less than _outside_ the boiler even | when the water inside is hotter, that 's not good. Eventually | the system won't work and shuts down for safety, but before | that it'll make a _lot_ of noise while running. There 's a | pressure meter so you can see what's wrong if you don't | understand boilers. My meter said about 0.4 bar. So that's | too low, now I just needed to re-pressurize it. | | The regulations here say that, to avoid mistakes resulting in | stagnant water flowing back from a boiler tank into the fresh | water system, the two mustn't be permanently connected. So | there'd logically be an input, you connect a temporary hose, | re-pressurize. | | In practice, nobody does that, the installers will run a | permanent line, in defiance of the rules, and use a tap, now | you can re-pressurize by turning the tap. | | Except, many years after moving in and setting up I'd | forgotten where that tap could be. It wasn't where I expected | to find it, and I could not think there else they'd have put | it. So after sleeping on it and still not remembering I | called a plumber. Not an emergency plumber, but still | plumbers aren't cheap. | | The plumber also couldn't immediately find it, it wasn't | where he first looked either. But I can't actually tell how | much time he spent "pretending" to look versus how long it | really took him to discover it. Because it's embarrassing | right? Even if the customer is up-front about the nature of | the task, "It's under the kitchen sink - behind this panel, | here" (yes, that's where it actually is) doesn't feel like a | real job worth PS80 or whatever it was. | amalcon wrote: | I'm pretty good with electrical diagrams and such, and I know | exactly what one needs to do to stay about as safe as one | can. I've fished (ethernet) wires before. I still hire | electricians, because it's the only practical way to buy | electrician's insurance for a project. | | I know a retired electrician. He hires electricians for | anything nontrivial, for the insurance. | | That said your broader point has a lot of merit. I hire | plumbers for anything more complicated than snaking a drain, | and it's because of their specialty knowledge. | gambiting wrote: | What do you mean electrician's insurance? | | I do have a so called "DIY insurance" on my home policy - | if I damage something while doing a DIY project(drill into | a cable or a pipe for instance) my home insurance will | cover the repair. Is that not enough? | akiselev wrote: | No, that's just for incidental damage and probably | legally mandated by your state. If your house burns down | to due to DIY wiring, the insurance company won't pay out | a dime (if the inspectors discover it). | | Electricians have liability insurance provided by an | organization specializing in policies for practicing | tradesmen. If an insurance company fails to disqualify a | homeowner's policy and pays out, it will then go after | the electrician and his insurance to recoup their losses. | Residential electrical fires are extremely preventable so | insurance companies almost universally refuse to insure | homes with DIY electrical work because the homeowner _is_ | the one liable. | einpoklum wrote: | TBH the electricians I know tend to rely on their know-how | to just do things right rather than on somebody else with | the ability to sure in case it all burns down. | InvertedRhodium wrote: | Here in NZ, a lot of work on your own property is legal - | even some relatively complicated stuff - but the catch is | that you need to find a qualified inspector to sign off on | it. | | The reality is that unless someone knows you and your work | personally (friend, relative, w/e) it can be really | difficult to find an inspector who is willing to sign off | on some random persons work as there is a liability | component (nowhere near as large as there is in the US, we | have publicly funded "accident insurance" called ACC) in | doing so. | | That being said, anything I can legally do myself I do and | I am sure to maintain good relationships with the | inspectors I know. | f38zf5vdt wrote: | ...what? I've known of this for at least a decade. Do people | expect Google to be some free-for-all of unmoderated knowledge | that can be used to defame and degrade others? | danso wrote: | The author of the tweet also wrote a major NYT story about the | topic earlier this year: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25972121 | | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/technology/change-my-goog... | | The story focuses on a software engineer who discovered that he | was the slander target of someone who had been fired by his | father 30 years ago. He found her identity and took her to | court in 2018. But the libelous Google results didn't change. | The NYT story even ends with this: | | > _Yet even that hasn't solved the problem. See for yourself: | Do a Google search for "Guy Babcock."_ | | A day after the NYT story, those results disappeared. Here's | what they looked like: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25973045 | | If a software engineer with the resources to find and take an | anonymous libeler didn't know that Google could manually | intervene and remove results that listed him as a pedophile, | I'm assuming the vast majority of people are equally unaware. | wly_cdgr wrote: | This feature is certain to be abused & should really not exist | despite the good it may do in specific cases | kaliali wrote: | I would've thought more people would realize this from last years | US election. That's too bad. | wly_cdgr wrote: | This feature is certain to be abused & really should not exist | despite the good it may do in specific cases | joecool1029 wrote: | Cool, the section "Remove content about me on sites with | exploitative removal practices from Google" seems custom-crafted | to handle sites like RipoffReport. | https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9172218 | seumars wrote: | What's also surprising is how bad Google is at processing these | requests. It's almost like a PR stunt. I've had to use their EU | Privacy Removal form in the past and a single response can take | anything from a few days to several weeks to no response at all. | Half the time it seems like you're emailing a bot as I've | received the same canned reply to simple inquiries. In the end I | just gave up. | toby- wrote: | If people don't know about this, they haven't been paying | attention. I find the idea that 'even experts' (haha) don't know | about this rather hilarious. | H8crilA wrote: | Toby, I haven't laughed so hard in a month. | throwaaskjdfh wrote: | What does the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine do in similar | circumstances? | paulpauper wrote: | i am sure they will also remove stuff, but most ppl such as | employers just do a google search | deertick1 wrote: | Yeah also if you compare results from google vs duckduckgo for | controversial search terms like "I don't care about gender | identity" | | Google will return only content that tells you why that opinion | is wrong e.g. "why you should care about gender identity" | | Whereas duckduckgo will return stuff that actually matches your | search. | | Google always errs on the side of left wing political platform. | | Its actually really egregious once you start testing it out. To | the point that google actually completely buries really valuable | information such as primary sources for controversial events, | scientific studies etc and instead promotes shitty wapo articles | ans the like that tell you how to think about the thing you are | actually searching for. | cfgghsj wrote: | They call it prioritizing "authoritative sources" over organic | results. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Damn. That is a controversial statement? I am a rebel again. | gowld wrote: | Google is personalized to some extent. | | I don't see what you are describing at all. | thrwawy11jun21 wrote: | Searched Google and DDG for "I don't care about gender | identity" | | google top: reddit post about "What are you if you just don't | give a fuck about gender and you have no kind of dysphoria?" | | DDG top: blog post titled "Don't care about gender Self-ID? | Here's why you should" | Blikkentrekker wrote: | I also echo this; I'm not sure what exactly the poster you | replied to suggests. | | Both normal and incognito on _Google_ return similar results | to what was returned to you. | pjc50 wrote: | The second one is part of the anti-trans campaign. | crazygringo wrote: | What are you even talking about? | | I just Googled "I don't care about gender identity" and the top | results are all agreeing with that statement. | | The search is working perfectly. Google isn't inserting any | kind of left-wing bias whatsoever. It's finding the same types | of pages as DuckDuckGo does as well. | | So why are you spreading this misinformation? | deertick1 wrote: | I hadn't tried that particular search. Heres on I have tried | and just double checked it : "I don't care about transgender | rights" | | The example further down about the moon landing is a much | better example though. Its a lot worse right when some | political event happens. Like if trump said sonething really | controversial and you search for more context around it, on | google top results would all be articles about how shitty the | thing he said was whereas on DDG youd have a greater | probability of actually getting some context. | | Like when pandemic was in full swing trying to get | information that was against the mainstream narrative was | impossible on google but was doable on ddg. | | This might not be like an active decision by google but their | results do skew really heavy left. It might just be a | function of popularity rankings. But id imagine ddg uses a | similar ranming system so not sure what makes the difference. | | There are times tho when ive searched for something I know | exists like word for word and it still wont come up on google | but will on ddg so, go figure. | Cd00d wrote: | > I hadn't tried that particular search | | So, the one example you provided you hadn't taken the 10 | seconds to validate? | | You're not providing value here. Please make an effort to | make meaningful and additive comments instead of spewing | misinformation or made up anecdotes. | mythrwy wrote: | Yandex works even better for stuff like that. | brunoTbear wrote: | I'd ask if that error might be better understood as downranking | of two things that seem very reasonable to downrank in a search | engine (something designed to return accessible and useful | information): - bigots motivated by animosity towards | minorities - open contempt for the truth | | Hard to feel there's a compelling interest in supporting | bigotry when knowledge is best advanced by open inquiry and the | net result of bigotry is a suppression of voices which will | lead to less knowledge. | | As to conspiracies and lies? Very little truth value there, | unclear why Google would want to uprank that kind of content. | | Were there real debates about truth with actors in good faith | on both sides, I might be more open to your framing of the | problem as left wing vs right wing. | deertick1 wrote: | Yeah so thats the thing. You are just immediately assuming | that you are right and everyone who disagrees is wrong and a | horrible person. Personally, I see people obsessed with | gender identity as being wrong, anti-truth, anti science, | disingenuous, etc. | | So thats my point : I don't want google to give me the truth, | I want it to give me the internet, warts and all. I don't | want google to gatekeep the information I have access to. Lol | I remember everyone being in a tizzy when net neutrality gor | the axe cause ISPs would start gatekeeping. But if a | wholesome company like google does it its in pursuit of | truth. | pjc50 wrote: | > Personally, I see people obsessed with gender identity as | being wrong, anti-truth, anti science, disingenuous, etc. | | Well, yes, that's the basis of the anti-trans campaign: | obsession. It ends up taking over people and causing them | to become mono maniac posters on the subject, sometimes to | the detriment of their careers. It's worse than | scientology. | | People not caring about gender identity would in many cases | be a huge improvement. | danso wrote: | Why did you start using Google in the first place? Their | early papers on PageRank/BackRub describes how their | algorithm filters for quality, and their most prominent | example is explicitly political: | | http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html | | > _As an example which illustrates the use of PageRank, | anchor text, and proximity, Figure 4 shows Google 's | results for a search on "bill clinton". These results | demonstrates some of Google's features. The results are | clustered by server. This helps considerably when sifting | through result sets. A number of results are from the | whitehouse.gov domain which is what one may reasonably | expect from such a search. Currently, most major commercial | search engines do not return any results from | whitehouse.gov, much less the right ones._ | | > ... _The biggest problem facing users of web search | engines today is the quality of the results they get back. | While the results are often amusing and expand users ' | horizons, they are often frustrating and consume precious | time. For example, the top result for a search for "Bill | Clinton" on one of the most popular commercial search | engines was the Bill Clinton Joke of the Day: April 14, | 1997. Google is designed to provide higher quality search | so as the Web continues to grow rapidly, information can be | found easily._ | IncRnd wrote: | That isn't exactly how Google sorts or filters results | today. | | "Yes, we do use PageRank internally, among many, many | other signals. It's not quite the same as the original | paper, there are lots of quirks (eg, disavowed links, | ignored links, etc.), and, again, we use a lot of other | signals that can be much stronger." [1] | | [1] https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1232014208180592641 | John Mu, Search Advocate at Google. | deertick1 wrote: | Huh interesting. But lets be real asjing "why did you | start using google anyway" is a preposterous question. | | You used to be able to find all kinds of weird ass fucked | up shit on google but now its all internet based news | media. I miss the raw shit. | danso wrote: | To be fair, I asked the question because you made a | sweeping assertion about others being "anti-truth/anti- | science", which implies you'd be more cognizant and | knowledgeable about the algorithms and mindset behind | Google back "in the good ol days". | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | You're making a huge leap by assuming this is because such a | subject isn't politically correct or whatever. There's many | more likely explanations: | | * You have phrased the search in a way that people expressing | that view wouldn't be likely to use, yet is similar to how | people holding contrary views would express theirs. I think | that's the case here. If you search for "gender does not exist" | or so, you may get the results you want. | | * Google's results are customised based on what they think you | would be interested in. | | * Content from one side of a contentious topic may be less | popular online and/or not linked to as many authoritative | sites, and thus have a lower PageRank. | jfoster wrote: | > Google always errs on the side of left wing political | platform | | Reminds me that yesterday I tried googling around the topic of | how covid affects fertility (eg. "covid fertility") and nearly | every result that comes back is about vaccines not affecting | fertility. Okay, thanks Google, but how about the actual | disease? Results were a fair bit more relevant by adding | "disease" to the query, but still got one or two about | vaccines. | | I don't think you can call that behaviour favouring left. It | feels as though they're creating vaccine hesitancy. | deertick1 wrote: | Perfect example. Had the exact aame experience. As someone | who leans more right wing, I call it left skewed, but yes you | are right it is not necessarily purely left aligned, or even | at all. It feels like just any controversial opinion just | gets obliterated by their ranking algorithm (in the case if | covid I would bet a million dollars there was manual | intervention in the name of public health tho) | nradov wrote: | That's the type of thing that you'll have to search on the | specialized Google Scholar site to find useful results. | | https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=COVI. | .. | IncRnd wrote: | That's exactly the poster's point. | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | COVID-19 is a special case. I think Google has intervened | there to ensure that official sources are favoured due to | concerns about the impact of misinformation in a pandemic | specifically. This is not a common Google practice so far as | I know. | Blikkentrekker wrote: | Perhaps much of it is not ideological on Google's part but | actually simply the machine learning about what people want | to see. | | It's entirely possible that such a disproportionate number of | persons is more likely to access links about vaccines and | such politics than what you searched for that the machine, | not the man, has elected to favor those without having any | real political motive. | meisel wrote: | Can you provide more examples of this? | quacked wrote: | Look up "proof the moon landing was fake". I have an | aerospace degree and don't think it was fake, but I still | find it strange that Google won't return any of the | conspiracy pages I enjoyed reading about a decade ago. | crazygringo wrote: | Probably not strange since they probably have very low | PageRank, visits, etc. | | On the other hand, the top Google results go to The | Guardian, Wikipedia, Time, the BBC, etc., discussing the | topic -- hugely popular sites. | | Google's meant to find _popular_ relevant pages for your | search terms. Remember, that 's what PageRank was all | about. So seems to be working as expected. | Blikkentrekker wrote: | This does run into the same problem that _Wikipedia_ runs | into, that it insists on using "credible" or "reputable" | sources but does not really bother to define that, and it | essentially comes down to that sources are not "credible" | for disagreeing with their beliefs. | | Personally, I have yet to see any "credible" news source | and the adage remains that every news article about | anything I have even the most minor inside knowledge of | seems completely inaccurate, especially the politically | laden ones. | | No matter what mechanism _Google_ uses to assign such | ranking: be it their own judgement or simply an agnostic | a.i. that lets the masses decide, I cannot see anything | good coming from it and there will always be a bias not | based in factuality, but politics. | crazygringo wrote: | ...you don't see anything good coming from Google search | results? | | ...that it's incentivized to return the results that the | most people are looking for? As measured by clicks? | | If you don't believe the news and you don't find | popularity useful either then I honestly can't imagine | what you're even looking for then. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-11 23:00 UTC)