6 ms·
MSNBC Blocking Searches for "Wikileaks"
- tmorton 17y ago"wikileaks video" works. Malice, incompetence, etc?
- coreyrecvlohe 17y agoCNN is also deleting submitted stories about the wikileaks video from their website. http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bmr9w/reddit_i_submitted_the_wikileaks_story_to_cnn/ http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/bmr9w/reddit_i_sub... | http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-429272 http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-429272 | http://i.imgur.com/QE5w5.png http://i.imgur.com/QE5w5.png
- jcromartie 17y agoI would bet that "wikileaks video" will not work soon, too.
- abentspoon 17y agoYou're right. "wikileaks video" now returns an error.
- gort 17y ago3rd possibility: malice, incompetently implemented...
- orangecat 17y agoBizarre. "Wikileak" works and brings up wikileaks.org as the first hit.
- pauldelany 17y agonot anymore
- conflux0 17y agoThat is the first result I get.
- SlyShy 17y agoAnother interesting thing: on Facebook I have a fake account that I use to check how my account appears to other people. Statuses and links I've posted to collateralmurder.com keep disappearing from other peoples' displays.
- blhack 17y agoThat's interesting, but I'm not seeing the same thing... I have two accounts, one that I signed up for my freshman year and another that I signed up for when I transferred schools. I haven't signed into the former in about 4 years but just did so and saw the story that I had posted this morning from my other account. Not saying you're wrong, just that I'm getting different results.
- SlyShy 17y agoThey seem to have been restored. There was, however, definitely a window of time when they were ghost deleted.
- conflux0 17y agoI tried it just now and it worked so I'm guessing there was a mistake on your end.
- ErrantX 17y agoI have a number of fake accounts for work; just checked and they seem to be appearing for all of them ok.
- snprbob86 17y agoSide note: You don't need another account to do that. You can go to your privacy settings and click "Preview Profile". For example, this link will let your see your profile as me: http://www.facebook.com/USERNAME?viewas=100000686899395 http://www.facebook.com/USERNAME?viewas=100000686899395 You can type a friend's name into that box there. Also somewhere in the privacy options is the ability to see your profile as someone who isn't logged in, etc.
- 17y ago
- conflux0 17y agoIt works perfectly fine for me guys. I'm not sure what you are talking about.
- davi 17y agoYet Bing works: http://www.bing.com/search?q=wikileaks http://www.bing.com/search?q=wikileaks
- donohoe 17y agoTrying to post the YouTube video to Facebook allowed for the link but none of the usual meta data or embedded video.
- natrius 17y agoThat occasionally breaks. I've had problems with it today on an innocuous site.
- jcromartie 17y agoGE (a massive player in the military industry) is a major stakeholder in MSNBC/NBC. They make a lot of the parts that go in the helicopters involved in this latest video. I think this one can be filed squarely under "malice." Edit: updated for accuracy.
- cjoh 17y agoThat is incorrect. MSNBC is owned by NBC Universal which Comcast bought a 51% stake in the company to GE's 49%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Universal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Universal
- brettbender 17y agoHaving a "major stake" doesn't necessarily imply that it owns the majority. You wouldn't call 49% a major stake in NBC?
- cjoh 17y agothe comment in question was edited to say "major stake" instead of "owned by" after my correction. Thanks!
- conflux0 17y agoIf I remember correctly the deal is still being reviewed before it actually happens (but it will be soon). The wikipedia article also says the current owners are Vivendi and GE still.
- scott_s 17y agoNo. That is not evidence of a conspiracy.
- uriel 17y agoHow does that 'malice' square with this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090
- johSho7w 17y agoAnd yet: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34149853/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34149853/
- donohoe 17y agoAlso worth noting: I viewed the video on YouTube this morning (6 hours ago aprox.) and the View counter has not changes from 359 in all that time. I see more comments so I do not believe this is a browser cache issue. Or maybe YouTube doesn't update that value on the fly? Anyone know more?
- ugh 17y agoYouTube is always slow updating its view counter (certainly several hours if not a day behind). Completely normal, but certainly already started more than one conspiracy theory :)
- Zak 17y agoThe gun camera video doesn't seem to have been picked up by any mainstream US news outlets, at least, not that show up on Google News. It's on the BBC's front page. This seems odd to me.
- wmeredith 17y agohttp://huffingtonpost.com http://huffingtonpost.com has it in bold red letters on their front page. That's the most mainstream place I've seen it.
- pgbovine 17y agoi'd hardly call huffington post 'mainstream' ;) not when FOX News has a huge lead on all other mainstream news outlets in the US.
- krschultz 17y agoNew York Times has it, though CNN doesn't. There is another more recent military abuse scandal breaking today that is overshadowing this one at least as far as I can tell.
- ErrantX 17y agoIm not surprised it's on the BBC to be honest; they are usually quite good at picking up on news like this. In actual fact their article seems either rushed or ass covering. There are many "they say" and "appears" in the article.
- ElliotH 17y agoAs a big fan of the BBC and with greatest respect to their journalism - it is ass covering. The reason is that so long as they only report fact they're quite safe. So when they say a voice says: The transmissions says of one of the individuals: "He's got an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. I'm going to fire. Then they can't be said to be inaccurate - the video does indeed include someone saying those words. The article just leaves it to the reader to decide upon its accuracy - a very safe option. That said this video doesn't really need a 'report' so much as a pointer to its location. It speaks for itself - chilled me to the bone.
- westbywest 17y agoSearching for "Wikileaks" on MSNBC yields this error: "We are unable to display search results at this time. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and try your request again." Searching for "Tiger Woods" yields the results you'd expect.
- ricree 17y agoThough oddly enough, it still returns the story despite the error message.
- krschultz 17y agoRemove your tin foil hats, while MSNBC's search sucks they still have a mention of it that was linked from the front page. http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wikileaks-posts-combat-video-from-iraq-showing-civilian-casualties http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4117730-wik... Also NYTimes has one: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/05/us/politics/AP-US-Iraq-Shooting.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/05/us/politics/AP-US...
- iamdave 17y agohttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/109063/screenshots/us_civil_forces_msnbc.PNG http://dl.dropbox.com/u/109063/screenshots/us_civil_forces_m... This is the front page of MSNBC. You can't possibly justify their search function not presenting results when the blurb provides marginal insight into how severe this video is.
- conflux0 17y agoRedditors/Wikileaks is making a big stink about it, but it really isn't about being righteous. Its about making a big stink. Every army fighting a war against an insurgency makes mistakes like this. If you are saying that the rules of engagement are flawed it might be eye-opening to realize the reduction of military casualties by having a more aggressive set of rules. The only solution in my mind is to not go to war from the beginning and to end it as soon as possible with the best means possible.
- aphyr 17y agoTin foil hats? /?q=wikileak works, /?q=wikileaks returns an error. It's a politically sensitive topic involving the death of two press employees, possibly unethical conduct by the military, and the government has attempted to suppress its release. What more do you want? It seems pretty obvious to me that their search dept is trying to stop people from finding the story. Either that or their search is broken in a truly bad way--given that those words should stem to the same query, it's suggestive to say the least. [edit] Looks like their article search is working again. [edit] You know what? I'm sorry, that was premature. It is suggestive, but there are other plausible (and, to my mind, preferable) explanations. "wikileak" returns web results, whereas "wikileaks" returns article results. MSNBC may have a local index for their stories and a fallback to Bing. Perhaps it's a failure for a newly-emerging search term that only applies to the local index, which does not stem queries. Or perhaps they're doing extra processing for stories which failed, for any number of reasons.
- rms 17y agoThis just came out, so it may have been that the mainstream media didn't want to report until the authenticity of the video was confirmed by an independent source. http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/11660278998 http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/11660278998 See if the news stories start showing up in a few hours before calling conspiracy.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- thefool 17y agoposted this to my social network, definitely looks like malice.
- rudyfink 17y agoI'd propose the theory that a plausible explanation is that when the domain becomes unreachable/times out the search engine removes it from search results. Someone might have made a design decision that says that domains that cannot be reached are not shown to customers in their results.
- cynicalkane 17y agoExcept that they're blocking searches for "wikileaks", not results for "wikileaks.org".
- rudyfink 17y agoI think all we know is that the search is failing to produce results. I also tried "collateralmurder" and "collateralmurder.com" and both fail to give any web results and indicate no warning banner. Both results do link to MSNBC's own stories which cite the links. You may very well be correct that the cause of the result was deliberate blocking. I was simply trying to suggest that their might be some automated error prevention heuristic at work that was potentially a cause of the same effect.
- conflux0 17y agoThe main Bing search works, if what your saying is correct then since MSNBC's search is just a modified version of Bing, Bing would also need to have the problem for there to be no fault on MSNBC's end.
- rudyfink 17y agoThat seems reasonable, though if MSNBC did tracking of people clicking through and their success rate it could still be true. I have no idea if that is common practice or not though. When I try out wikileaks I get the message "We are unable to display search results at this time. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and try your request again." It doesn't describe what effect the error has though. It seems to just display results inside MSNBC and not results on the web at large.
- dotBen 17y agoIt is worth noting that NBC was until a few months ago wholly owned by General Electric, who are of course a major supplier of hardware and services to the US military. GE don't put much info about their military work on their corporate front page, but if you search their subsidary sites you'll see that they supply everything from fighter aircraft engines through to IT systems (um, perhaps even video encoding and encryptions systems). http://www.ge-ip.com/industries/mil-aero http://www.ge-ip.com/industries/mil-aero Comcast bought a controlling stake in the company last year, but GE remains a significant shareholder. (See http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/i...)
- blhack 17y agoIt's working now.
- aphyr 17y agoThe search is working again, and MSNBC has an official article available. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36182383/ns/world_news-mideastn_...
- gort 17y agoIt's only partially working at this time. It seems to return "articles" but nothing else.
- abentspoon 17y agoEarlier this afternoon, MSNBC aired a 10 minute segment on the video. It seems unlikely this was intentionally censored. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#36182090
- sili 17y agoIt seems to be inconsistent across all MSNB properties. I found this segment (through bing search) of show that runs on MSNB in which the wikileaks video is discussed: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/video-u-s-troops-shoot-innocent-civilians/60xhvp7 http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/video-u-s-troops-shoo...
- tzs 17y agoDid you even look at the results page when you try the search? It in fact gives the search results. Yes, there is a spurious error message at the top, but the results are there.
- 1010011010 17y agobing sucks.
- rms 17y agoThis story can be killed now; the video is now the center picture/video headline on CNN.com. Apparently the mainstream media was waiting for confirmation that the video was real.
- elblanco 17y agoJust saw Wolf talking about in CNN about 30 minutes ago.