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Google will ‘de-rank’ RT articles to make them harder to find – Eric Schmidt

128 points by nkurz 9y ago

mtmail 9y ago
A less biased source for the same story, all quotes are the same https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa39vv/eric-schmidt-says-google-news-will-delist-rt-sputnik-russia-fake-news https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa39vv/eric-schmi...
- dleslie 9y ago
  > less biased > vice I mean come on now; that's just swinging all the way the other direction.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    There is a subtle but noteworthy difference between first amendment-protected opinionated reporting and foreign state sponsored propaganda.
    - GSimon 9y ago
      There is also a subtle but noteworthy difference between highly opinionated think pieces trying to present their views as being unbiased reporting and credible state-sponsored media outlets that don't force feed propaganda. But I guess you'd consider your view to be the objectively sound way to look at things without realizing the irony in the way you're portraying media outlets you favour over others you don't seem to like.
      - meowface 9y ago
        "Highly opinionated think pieces trying to present their views as being unbiased reporting" are a major problem in the US and around the world, but let's at least consider why RT is a special case here. RT is not only owned by a foreign state but is specifically owned by a state which attempted to deceptively influence Google's home country's elections, partially with the help of RT. RT is undoubtedly Russian propaganda and can't be anything else; anyone at RT who genuinely wants to provide a view that isn't uniformly pro-Russian risks retaliation from the government. If the scenarios were flipped and Voice of America were peddling propaganda to influence Russia's next election (which they probably actually are doing), Yandex would have a pretty valid reason to lower the rankings of Voice of America stories.
        GSimon 9y ago
        I don't largely disagree with some of the concerns I question the motives and timeliness of the decision to de-rank a media outlet like RT. It's not something that is done for the reasons presented and the whole Russian influence on the election has so many holes to be a proven credible threat. People are ignorant of media outlets and think stations like Al Jazeera are Al Quaida driven so I am highly skeptical that any party is doing any censoring for legitimate reasons or valid concerns. They aren't looking out for your best interests when it comes to presenting the news.
        meowface 9y ago
        >and the whole Russian influence on the election has so many holes to be a proven credible threat I'm not sure the impact so much matters as the intent. Even if it wasn't really a big threat, and even if Trump would've won without any sort of interference (which probably is the case, but it is and will be impossible to truly know), the fact that they did it at all shows they're trying to game the system, partly by gaming Google. Google is now going to make it harder to game. It is a bad precedent to de-rank results in this way, but I think this is a special circumstance. I agree that a better approach would be to provide warnings and context rather than merely trying to push things down.
        wybiral 9y ago
        > I'm not sure the impact so much matters as the intent. I think some of the election-related stuff is mostly politicization. If you follow some of the hearings on the subject of Russian propaganda (cspan has some) it seemed more that they were targeting and prodding cultural divisions. Organizing anti-immigration rallies at the same time and location as Muslim rallies and pushing racial and cultural divides. It seems like their focus is to polarize people and try to promote extremism.
        meowface 9y ago
        Yes, this was undoubtedly one of the Russian government's goals, but the US IC also came to the definitive conclusion that their goal was not only this but also to get Donald Trump elected. It was an open question for some time: were they merely trying to cause chaos and increase the divide, or did they specifically want one candidate in office? The answer, at least according to 17 US intelligence agencies, is both. And this isn't a huge shock considering Putin's well-known long-standing grudge against Clinton and Trump being considerably more pro-Russian than she was during the election cycle.
      - wybiral 9y ago
        I don't know why you're making assumptions about me personally or my preference towards news (Vice isn't one of my usual news sources fwiw) rather than keeping it to the subject. But I don't believe that Vice has quite the divisive and disruptive agenda that these state sponsored propaganda bullhorns have.
        GSimon 9y ago
        You were more dismissive of one source over another so I brought it into question. I am very familiar with Vice's reporting for the past few years and while they cover a wide range of topics and have an appealing style of presenting their documented footage they politically lean very left. I find their reporting on average to be less credible in many instances than state-reported media because state-reported media is often bland and less opinionated and there's less of attempt to blatantly sway my opinion through a click-bait title and with skewed information and a moralizing tone.
        wybiral 9y ago
        I've found RT to be incredibly right leaning and pro-Russian.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      No, there isn't. Journalism in USA is totalitarian. There may be two points of view, but they differ so little as to be indistinguishable to anyone whose intellect isn't constantly gaslighted by the overwhelming ideological conformity. The journalism to which we are subjected is still propaganda, because after all a journalist has to stay in the club in order to work, and he does that by parroting the bullshit the insiders tell him. Nobody steps outside the lines and stays on the air. A great place to get reporting without the approved USA right-thinking is foreign state media. I actually prefer Al Jazeera to RT, but I'm under no illusions: after they shut down RT, AJ is next, soon to be followed by BBC.
      - meowface 9y ago
        It's good to get a wide range of views, but RT, Al Jazeera, and even BBC all provide their own skewed viewpoints. An informed person would be wise to read their stories and compare them to stories from American journalism outfits, but the idea that Al Jazeera or RT is inherently more credible than American journalists is pretty ridiculous. They suffer from overwhelming ideological conformity as well; it's just a different ideology.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Haha "balance". Don't worry that's impossible to avoid in USA. In this country one can never escape the constant messaging: that War is good, that we ever actually win Wars, that we should fear minorities and the poor, that we should express that fear by locking them up and otherwise making their lives miserable... Thanks very much I'm still getting my recommended daily dose of that bullshit! Have you ever taken a week to mostly watch Al Jazeera or BBC or France 24 or CGTN or even RT? If you did, you might reconsider the blind certainty you evince here. This is one reason it's good to live overseas for a time: the corporate-state-approved media can't get you there, mostly.
    - bobcallme 9y ago
      There is zero difference between "opinionated" reporting and state-sponsored propaganda since both are pushing an opinion from a point of view. When you start injecting opinions it is no longer reporting. I'd say that Google is more of a propaganda engine than RT since Google has an order of magnitude more money and power than RT does. Propaganda both foreign and domestic should be treated the same if we are going to start censoring or injecting opinions on top of what other people say.
      - speedplane 9y ago
        > There is zero difference between "opinionated" reporting and state-sponsored propaganda Some differences: - Governments have far more power and resources to skew the narrative. - Governments are less accountable than any private individual or organization. Organizations are at least accountable to shareholders, the rule of law, and the government they operate under. - Domestic organizations are at least ostensibly committed to maintaining the system, many foreign governments literally want to tear the system down. - Governments have a historical track-record of tyranny, and have generally caused more harm than private organizations.
        bobcallme 9y ago
        > - Governments have far more power and resources to skew the narrative. s/Government have/Google has/g > Governments are less accountable than any private individual or organization. Organizations are at least accountable to shareholders, the rule of law, and the government they operate under. Again s/Governments/Organizations/g > - Domestic organizations are at least ostensibly committed to maintaining the system, many foreign governments literally want to tear the system down. Based upon what? Is that any justification for propaganda? Both Facebook and Google are both domestic entities and look at all of the polarization and discord that they have caused this election cycle. > - Governments have a historical track-record of tyranny, and have generally caused more harm than private organizations. In this era, the source of tyranny is private corporations that grant themselves monopolies with red tape and further regulations that make competition impossible. I guess based upon your arguments, we should grant private corporations a monopoly on speech.
  - untog 9y ago
    1. RT is reporting about themselves. Of course some other source is preferable. 2. RT is owned by the Russian government. I have no particular fondness for Vice, but they're worlds apart. More generally, "X has a hugely compromising feature, Y has a mildly problematic feature, therefore they're exactly the same as each other" is the kind of fallacy that causes the public to trip and fall on its face over and over. Let's try to avoid it it we can.
    - gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago
      I don’t see any reason you should view vice as better than RT—they’ve consistently shown a complete lack of regard for journalism, and they’re incentivized by page views rather (or in addition to) their owner. Why should they bother to get anything more correct? Their brand is a nightly show on HBO that isn’t boring, not a credible news source. And man, I wish I were being hyperbolic. But they are possibly the worst american news source to link to.
      - untog 9y ago
        At the very least, they aren't a propaganda organ owned by a foreign government. Yeah, their coverage is sometimes kind of shitty. But every news organisation is beholden to their audience and their owner. If Vice actually did publish lies all the time then their reputation would tank and they'd stop getting clicks. The free market connection to honest journalism is a tenuous one, but it exists.
        gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago
        Journalism is earned, not assumed. No matter the stance of RT vice still needs to demonstrate journalistic integrity. Have they? No. They’re on equal footing as i’m concerned. Propaganda is at least interpetable. Also they do tell blatant falsehoods, intentional or no. Americans care much less than they say.
        untog 9y ago
        You're falling into exactly the fallacy I described: Vice is not the best news organisation in the world, therefore it is functionally equivalent to a propaganda outlet. It's absurd logic. Almost as absurd as the fact that yours is a brand new account created specifically to comment on this story. I'm sure it's just coincidental though...
- sdenton4 9y ago
  A key fact somehow omitted from the RT piece: "Both outlets are wholly owned by the Russian government."
- nkurz 9y ago
  Less biased, or merely less obviously biased? Given that the argument against RT is essentially that they are too dangerous to include in search results because of their known and obvious bias, it would be interesting to look for distortions in their coverage. Did you spot any substantial differences in the two versions of the story? Or is the danger possibly that they will lull us in with factual reporting only to betray us once we let our guard down?
jenga22 9y ago
Look, I am all game for attacking fake news. However, this seems to me like a blanket ban which could apply to anyone. For example, Fox News has a slant which one could consider highly misleading. Would they get de-ranked too? Wouldn't a better solution be to identify the claims in the article and automatically alert the reader that one or more claims have been debunked? Then let the user decide?
- dataminded 9y ago
  I'm not sure that most 'readers' are able enough to balance points and counterpoints. If readers were capable of separating fact from fiction, you would think that 'fake news' would be less prominent.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    They're also being subjected to outright manipulative tactics that aim at where they're weakest emotionally and intellectually in order to exploit their resulting behavior.
    - wahern 9y ago
      What RT exploits are pre-existing prejudices and narratives inculcated by a wholly domestic popular nationalist movement begotten by the GOP. The demonizing of Hillary Clinton, for example, originated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America, which saw a resurgent GOP control both the House and Senate for the first time in over 40 years. That was a campaign which normalized calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch" after it came out that that's how Gingrich referred to her in private, and refused to walk it back, instead only lashing out at the leaker, Connie Chung. Ironically (given how events precipitated 15 years later where Democrats adopted the previously-conservative alternative) the main reason (but hardly the only reason) Hillary came to the foreground was because she was appointed to lead a task force to investigate healthcare reform in 1993. Basically, the poisonous, vitriolic, conspiracist, and highly personal attacks of today can be directly and unequivocally traced back to our daemons from the 1990s, some of whom literally walk the halls of government today using the same playbook. Laying the blame on RT and other outlets simply obfuscates things. The Democrats are idiots for their ham-fisted use of the so-called fake news narrative. Not because it's completely wrong, per se, but because the emphasis is so misleading and counter-productive. And it's why so many Republicans are joining the Democrats in the assault on fake news, as they know they have absolutely nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of their own credibility, which will undoubtedly be used to perpetuate more poisonous narratives (i.e. Birther Movement, Benghazi, etc). These poisonous narratives are domestic, crafted and perpetuated by domestic, elected politicians. We might as well "de-rank" C-SPAN. For all the techies on HN, we should be pushing back against this GOP and DNC attack on Silicon Valley. The Democrats idiotically created a scape-goat in Silicon Valley and the Republicans happily adopted the narrative. The only people stupider than the Democrats in doing this are Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who seem to have drunk their own kool-aid regarding their social impact and then decided to do a mea culpa. The whole thing is absurd from every conceivable angle. RT is an island of sanity by comparison. At least their own journalists don't believe their propaganda. They aren't fooling themselves; not like all the players in the U.S.
ucaetano 9y ago
Related news: 'Slap at the First Amendment’ - RT America forced to register as foreign agent
ebbv 9y ago
Good. Russia Today is not a journalistic entity, it is the propaganda arm of Putin's dictatorial regime.
- Alupis 9y ago
  It seems to me, that's it's becoming increasingly difficult to call most of these organizations 'journalistic' anymore.
  - pzone 9y ago
    Even the New York Times is suffering from over-politicization. Sad times.
- smallstepforman 9y ago
  As oppossed to any western mouthpiece (BBC, CNN, ABC, Washington Post, NYT etc)? Every news outlet parrots the opinions of its investors, and even when you think that a report is neutral, the adjectives try to slant the message in a certain direction. By agreeing to censorship, you are disagreeing with the concept of free speech. In the end, if Google becomes more political, it will alienate a demographic, and lose funds. In which universe is this “good”?
  - threeseed 9y ago
    > In the end, if Google becomes more political, it will alienate a demographic, and lose funds This is delusional and ridiculous logic. Trying to purse the truth in news should not mean alienating a demographic. And frankly a competitor search engine designed to cater purely to them is never going to be successful.
  - ebbv 9y ago
    Only the BBC fits, as it is also government controlled. The others may sometimes publish shill articles or whatever but they are not a government run propaganda arm. We don't have such a thing in the US, as NPR has lost almost all of its government funding. The US government runs media operations in other countries but none of our big media companies are government run like RT. And the fact that we just elected freakin' Trump helps underline the fact that the US is not yet a dictatorial country. So the comparison between Russia Today and any US media is pretty ridiculous on that level as well. Our media has plenty of flaws (answering to corporate sponsors instead of the government has its own drawbacks), but again, they are not comparable to RT.
chiaro 9y ago
> _“Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren’t allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia’ – even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT,”_ Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement. Funny, the official PR rings like a thousand troll posts I've read. Good on Alphabet, some CSR in this area is long overdue.
gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago
Another argument for open source search ranking. Anything else is likely biased and harmful.
untog 9y ago
Before everyone screams too loudly, RT was recently forced to register as a foreign agent by the US government: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564045159/rt-america-firm-registers-as-foreign-agent-in-u-s-russia-looks-to-retaliate https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564045159... So it's not as if Google is picking media organisations it dislikes at random.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  But AIPAC isn't forced to do so, despite even engaging in espionage[1] and literally boasting about how they've corrupted and influenced top politicians[2]. So everyone should take this foreign agent registration stuff as more political theater. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee#Steiner_resignation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs...
  - knowThySelfx 9y ago
    Exactly. It all depends on whose side you are. If it is from the side which the establishment/puppet masters favor, then its all fair. How much trust do MSM's have these days? They have bought it upon themselves by being slaves of people with agendas.
  - goialoq 9y ago
    For better of for worse, when USAmerican citizens spend their own USAmerican money to lobby the US Government on behalf of foreign countries, they aren't considered foreign agents. The AIPAC spies were fired by AIPAC. RT is directly funded by the Russian government
- blux 9y ago
  What does this have to do with the fundamental fact that Google decides to make access to information / opinions from certain sources less accessible than others?
  - 9y ago
tryingagainbro 9y ago
>>"But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.” Virtually every small business website has seen how you operate, you don't ban just bury them on page 15 and get a click every 4 months. How nice of you. At least you help us by letting us buy ads. I agree that RT is official Russian propaganda, but so is Voice of America or our government websites
- jessaustin 9y ago
  OMG it's such a racket. Why are our customers going to our competitor? Oh, they're using our name in adwords, and our customers are idiots who use google to navigate to the next block... ok Google here's thousands of dollars every month. Please don't extort any more from us.
makecheck 9y ago
If you blacklist things that people like (however misguided their reasons are for liking them), they will double down and probably consume even more of their propaganda news. Instead, demand that articles use language that states things plainly, probably with a machine learning model to help. No personal attacks, etc.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vm 9y ago
RT is Russia Today, which is funded by the Russian government. Sputnik, the other media outlet mentioned in the article, is similarly funded by the Russian government. Their Wikipedia pages imply that both are use for Russian government propaganda... in case anyone else also needed background context.
- MRSallee 9y ago
  And BBC is funded by British government. And PBS is funded by US government.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    That's pretty disingenuous without talking about the respective level of corruption in each country: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016 https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... Britain: Very clean, US: Clean, Russia: Corrupt.
    - Sone7 9y ago
      You wouldn't say that if you'd seen how the BBC and the Guardian, never mind the right-wing rags, were talking about Corbyn last year. And the US election? I honestly don't know why ye haven't dismantled your MSM brick by brick after that. Fucking hell.
cobookman 9y ago
So when's Al jezeera getting a lower rank. They are a state media which is also heavily baised.
- harry8 9y ago
  And presently the best news service in the world. A title they took from the BBC who are state median and heavily biased and always have been. Shut them all down? I can't see that being good for democracy.
0xbear 9y ago
Slippery slope, if I’ve ever seen one.
whack 9y ago
I don't doubt that RT has a pro-Russian slant, but is there any objective evidence that the traditional sources are any less biased? It was only last decade when American media proved itself to be frighteningly biased in favor of the US government's agenda[1]. By abandoning algorithmic rankings, and directly targeting "enemy" news sources, Google is moving away from its engineering roots, and is starting to become a weapon for the US government's foreign policy objectives. Is it any surprise that foreign countries, including our allies in the EU, are becoming increasingly distrustful of American technology platforms? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War#Criticisms_of_pro-invasion_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War...
- grandalf 9y ago
  > By abandoning algorithmic rankings, and directly targeting "enemy" news sources, Google is moving away from its engineering roots, and is starting to become a weapon for the US government's foreign policy objectives. This is precisely Schmidt's goal, and has been for a long time. He wants to weaponize Google and sell it to Government as if it were a defense contractor. It's totally shameful. Schmidt is one of the enablers of villains like GW Bush. History will judge him harshly.
- meowface 9y ago
  Most of the popular US media is very biased towards the US, but that's not what's spurring this action from Google. It's not just that RT is owned by a foreign state or that RT is biased or even propaganda. It's that it's owned by a foreign state which attempted to interfere in US elections, partially using RT, and partially with the help of Google search results showing RT stories. Google, being an American company, needs to draw a line somewhere, and that seems like a reasonable place. American state-owned or private outlets deliberately attempting to influence other countries' elections (as they undoubtedly do) are also right to be de-ranked by those countries' search engines and aggregators.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Aside from the accusations made by US intelligence agencies there has not been any data presented that links the Russian government with the stuff you mention. Surely there has been lots of mischief on both sides, but it's absurd to think that anything Russia did altered the outcome of the election. If you look into the details the evidence is not there. The reason Russia is being blamed is because the US has lost the chess game in the middle east with Russia and will need to do something more aggressive to fight back, but can't do that unless Americans start hating Russians again. Let's not buy into the hype.
rdtsc 9y ago
> The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” They don't even pretend to be unbiased. "Hillary is my friend and she refuses to acknowledge she lost due to her own hubris. Instead blames Russia, so I am going along with her here". > showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves. "The people don't seem to be swallowing our propaganda for some reason. The Manufacturing Consent machine has broken down a bit. Please stand by while tweak our algorithms to ensure they are force fed the proper version of truth". To be more serious, RT is propaganda and a branch of the Russian government just like Fox New is a branch of Republican party. What is interesting is the other media (traditional TV and print news) and now the tech companies have also dropped the pretense. Well at least things are bit more clear. Nobody is pretending anymore. That in itself is a step forward as well.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > What is interesting is the other media (traditional TV and print news) and now the tech companies have also dropped the pretense. It is a relief that it's happened during the era when we can be sure that it was due to human judgment and not due to some sort of AI quirk.
  - Sone7 9y ago
    It's disturbing how all your comments are going grey.. Fuck this site, it's lost it's way.
- caconym_ 9y ago
  You do not have to be a fan of Hillary Clinton to think that "audiences [can] not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves" based on the "experience of 'the last year'". The mention of her name in literally the same sentence where they implicitly question the validity of the "fake news" narrative could not be more transparently calculated. So yes, you are right that RT is propaganda, but in that light I'm not sure how to take your first two sentences. The word "irony" comes to mind.
grandalf 9y ago
And thus, Eric Schmidt applies the same patronizing wisdom used by the Chinese government when deciding that some search results are simply too disturbing to be viewed. Schmidt is an authoritarian first and a technologist second. I really wish he were not so influential, and I'm frankly shocked that Larry and Sergey don't see this (or that they see it and are pleased about it).
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  Deranking is sensible when the site is explicitly part of a campaign to manipulate its visibility though, isn't it? Aren't you drawing comparisons too quickly?
  - grandalf 9y ago
    What do you mean by "a campaign to manipulate its visibility"? Do you mean the link being launched on social media?
    - aalleavitch 9y ago
      And then re-shared and promoted by bots masquerading as US citizens specifically for maximum impact against targeted individuals who are most susceptible to manipulation and most likely to propagate the material.
      - grandalf 9y ago
        So you are critiquing the mechanism of getting social media likes for content? Don't all newspapers do that these days? I think the way to criticize the articles is by pointing out untrue content or bad journalism. So far nobody has done that.
      - averagewall 9y ago
        Did you really mean that? Do you think people who are susceptible to manipulation need to be protected by Google, not for their own good but because they can be manipulated to have political opinions that you personally disagree with? That means you think your political belief is so right that competing ideas should be suppressed. That's the complete opposite of freedom of speech that America is one of the world leaders in. Do you think the way China's government limits the spread of political ideas is good too?
jancsika 9y ago
I remember seeing separate interviews with Richard Stallman, Steve Wozniak, and Andy Müller-Maguhn on RT about five years ago. Also, some early pieces delving into Bitcoin before that. Has RT changed substantially in the last five years? Does it no longer interview people who are experts in their field?
- grandalf 9y ago
  No, it just covers issues that are unflattering to powerful US officials and to the US in general. The regular US press has somehow been conditioned to write lots of stories that are critical of other governments, other countries' infrastructure, etc., but always to carry the torch of American exceptionalism. Once we realize that American Exceptionalism is among the most evil ideologies of the modern era, it makes sense that other nations would want to offer a competing voice. RT has not been criticized for the quality of its journalism, only for its source of funding.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    Also the fact that identified Russian propaganda bots and troll armies have been sighted on numerous occasions disseminating RT articles. You'd be blind not to realize that RT is an important part of their machine.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      Propaganda bots and troll armies? None have been linked to the Russian government. Surely someone wishing to spend time making bots and hiring trolls would promote certain articles, but if the American papers did an acceptable job writing about facts, those bots/armies would obviously prefer to link American articles if trying to persuade the American people. So it's not sufficient to cite the means of distribution/virality, one must actually dig in and find factual problems with the content. Motive is even more difficult, as the motive of discrediting American leaders for lies or misdeeds is arguably in the public's best interest, so it's hard to persuade me that doing that is somehow harmful to America, even if it was done by an adversary.
foota 9y ago
"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik" - so no, they're not banning the site explicitly.
sl1e 9y ago
I wonder if anyone has noticed that you can't even query a search without it already being flooded with the news. You can't really customize the search in away you get zero news from any search.
mrschwabe 9y ago
One way to workaround this is simply to prefix your Google search with site:rt.com ex site:rt.com my search query With or without the communist Chinese style ban on RT.com it is convenient to use this technique if even to cross reference a specific issue you've heard buzz about with an non-US (and by extension, non Five Eyes) based source of news. Otherwise your news is, now openly admitted, at the discretion of Google's / US governments distorted and now limited view of what is 'news'. Have always enjoyed RT because it is one of the few quality international news outlets not based or biased in US - and will continue enjoying it despite Google or US introducing Chinese PRC style blanket censorship. Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are just a few of the respected names who have routinely appeared on RT to share their commentary. Slippery slope, but hey - this way they seal their own demise as independent thinkers lead the way in replacing the likes of Google and other compromised tech companies with decentralized, censor-proof solutions.
cft 9y ago
Wait till they start "de-ranking" or something similar when users manually enter undesirable URLs in their browsers' address bars. It seems implausible right now, but the stuff that is happening now was equally implausible in the internet when Google was just starting.
diebir 9y ago
Good for us. Thanks, Google.
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
Google giveth and Google taketh away, that's true for products as well - they changed something and now we get less organic search results and fewer purchases. Everyone on the Internet is in the same boat.
vincengomes 9y ago
Since US agencies are not meddling with other nations politics, and esp not through their news agencies, US based medias are safe from googles hammer /s
aalleavitch 9y ago
I think it's both legitimate and important to point out the fact that as this is a popular public internet destination where presumably some quite influential people are known to frequent that it could be a very likely target for Russian-backed (or otherwise) trolls looking to sway public opinion. I think it's important that everyone consider the intentions and motives behind the comments that they read.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  > it's important that everyone consider the intentions and motives behind the comments that they read. Isn’t it always? If critical thinking was a little more commonplace, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess i the first place. People are too quick to play the victim of big bad media. The first step should be a look in the mirror.
Nickersf 9y ago
Who the fuck is Google to tell me what I can read or not?! I rarely consume RT, but if I want to, I should be able to do so freely. I'm a free person with agency and a sense of reason. This is why I stopped using Google months ago...
jxramos 9y ago
I've watched RT videos on YouTube and after I realized where it was coming from I was able to connect the dots with various socialist leaning good feel pieces embedded in larger stories. But I mean it's not like it was super aggressive propaganda worth censuring. I think a lot of their material is interesting and well produced.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  Just about any news source has a viewpoint that can be found by connecting the dots, in Western sources, that might be termed "editorial policy". So basically we're seeing that all the powerful states seem to be moving towards not just producing their own propaganda but demanding outside propaganda be filtered out - China is far much more aggressive of course and thankfully for me, the US is merely exerting a "light touch". I assume this level of censorship is more or less happening proportionate to the degree the various ruling forces feel threatened.
averagewall 9y ago
I think this entire thing is based on this line of reasoning from people who can't believe Trump won the election: 1) No American would vote for him because he's obviously bad. 2) But they did. 3) Therefore they were weak-willed people who got manipulated by somebody. 4) ... (I don't know this step) ... 5) Therefore Russia did it. 6) Protect the weak-willed people from Russian ideas.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Tap RT America on this page, and view all the legit reporters banned by this act of censorship. https://www.rt.com/onair-talent/ https://www.rt.com/onair-talent/
Sone7 9y ago
Hey YC - Please answer me this question - have your mods flagged this story? It sure is odd how an incredibly active discussion in a fresh story with >100 points is on page 2 behind stale and dead stuff on the front page. Seems kinda relevant to the topic at hand. Also relevant is how little coverage this story is getting outside of RT - Fucking hmmm.
- grzm 9y ago
  It's also got 164 comments. It's likely been bitten by the "overheated discussion detector", which also depresses a story's rank.
  - Sone7 9y ago
    Sure would have been nice to know tho. Ah well - why should we expect that basic level of transparency, right?
speedplane 9y ago
The problem with Google "ranking" is that it's linear, when a real substantive analysis of results would first categorize results and then rank within those categories. Google needs to indicate the intent behind an article, such as to inform, to convince, to sell a product, or to generate clicks to show you more advertising.
darepublic 9y ago
Making the world safe from fake news is the new war on terrorism. In the same way there is just as much terrorism since 9/11, there will be just as much misinformation in the future, only with less freedom.
smsm42 9y ago
RT is trash and propaganda arm of Russian government, however what Google is doing is thousand times more scary to me that what RT is doing. When you come to RT (if you do), you know where you are, you know how to evaluate the information and you don't even have to go there if you don't want to - every link would clearly tell you "you are going to RT". It is exactly what it says on the box, no surprises. What Google is doing is essentially telling me "we own your information diet now, and for your own good we're not letting you to see this. Because we know what you should be seeing, and this is not part of it. So we will choose which content to show and not to show for our own reasons, and you don't bother your little head with it, we've got it". This is an approach that takes away my choice, takes away my power to decide which content I want to consume. I'd probably be ok if the content Google demotes is clearly junk - like spam sites that game the ranking etc. Maybe even with sites which are clearly criminal or used as a tool to commit crimes. But here we clearly have tweaking search ranking as a response to political pressure. This is terrible, and also now you can't trust Google with not doing the same for any other reason - maybe they are tweaking the ranking to boost political candidates they like? Maybe to boost businesses they invest in or partner with? Maybe tweak it to demote some companies that offended them in some way or stepped on somebody's toes? Before, I could say it's paranoid to think so, Google would never risk their business by doing this. Now I see head of Google saying this and I can't honestly say it's just paranoia anymore. Thanks, Eric Schmidt. That's why one should use every opportunity to use engines alternative to Google (I use DDG, other suggestions welcome) - when Google thinks they know what we need better than we do, it is a very bad symptom.
supergirl 9y ago
US should just install some kind of great national firewall. Then RT can be blocked completely
oliwarner 9y ago
It's interesting to see people take sides here. We freely rely on Google to sift through people trying to manipulate search rankings and show us the best results. Part of this process often results in entire domains being blacklisted. Hell, we we even allow copyright law to dictate what we can find on Google. So I don't understand why it's so controversial to exclude insidious propaganda and proven bad journalism from news searches. Some others have called this a slippery slope, saying Fox (or the left wing equivalents) could be next... But seriously, why not? The threat to excluding bad outlets should be extended to all outlets.
yAnonymous 9y ago
I'd consider RT more reputable than Fox News, The Sun or BILD. What are they going to do about the others? There is hardly a news outlet right now that wouldn't print lies if those lies make them money or increase their power and influence, so where do we draw the line?
stash_machine 9y ago
As a person, who lived in Crimea and survived Russian invasion I'm very happy about that. RT is not a media news it is absolute propaganda which exists for only one reason - to help russia seize other countries
Lidador 9y ago
Google 2000: " Don't be evil " Google 2018: " Educate people and protect them from evil* " *We decide what's 'evil'.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
A pertinent benediction from St. Ignutius: https://stallman.org/google.html https://stallman.org/google.html
enterx 9y ago
Who cares what Evil Shmit does anyhow. His fake lying news business(read ads!) is finally doomed to fail anyway in a very near future.

128 points by nkurz 9y ago

A less biased source for the same story, all quotes are the same https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa39vv/eric-schmidt-says-google-news-will-delist-rt-sputnik-russia-fake-news https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa39vv/eric-schmi...

dleslie 9y ago
> less biased > vice I mean come on now; that's just swinging all the way the other direction.
- wybiral 9y ago
  There is a subtle but noteworthy difference between first amendment-protected opinionated reporting and foreign state sponsored propaganda.
  - GSimon 9y ago
    There is also a subtle but noteworthy difference between highly opinionated think pieces trying to present their views as being unbiased reporting and credible state-sponsored media outlets that don't force feed propaganda. But I guess you'd consider your view to be the objectively sound way to look at things without realizing the irony in the way you're portraying media outlets you favour over others you don't seem to like.
    - meowface 9y ago
      "Highly opinionated think pieces trying to present their views as being unbiased reporting" are a major problem in the US and around the world, but let's at least consider why RT is a special case here. RT is not only owned by a foreign state but is specifically owned by a state which attempted to deceptively influence Google's home country's elections, partially with the help of RT. RT is undoubtedly Russian propaganda and can't be anything else; anyone at RT who genuinely wants to provide a view that isn't uniformly pro-Russian risks retaliation from the government. If the scenarios were flipped and Voice of America were peddling propaganda to influence Russia's next election (which they probably actually are doing), Yandex would have a pretty valid reason to lower the rankings of Voice of America stories.
      - GSimon 9y ago
        I don't largely disagree with some of the concerns I question the motives and timeliness of the decision to de-rank a media outlet like RT. It's not something that is done for the reasons presented and the whole Russian influence on the election has so many holes to be a proven credible threat. People are ignorant of media outlets and think stations like Al Jazeera are Al Quaida driven so I am highly skeptical that any party is doing any censoring for legitimate reasons or valid concerns. They aren't looking out for your best interests when it comes to presenting the news.
        meowface 9y ago
        >and the whole Russian influence on the election has so many holes to be a proven credible threat I'm not sure the impact so much matters as the intent. Even if it wasn't really a big threat, and even if Trump would've won without any sort of interference (which probably is the case, but it is and will be impossible to truly know), the fact that they did it at all shows they're trying to game the system, partly by gaming Google. Google is now going to make it harder to game. It is a bad precedent to de-rank results in this way, but I think this is a special circumstance. I agree that a better approach would be to provide warnings and context rather than merely trying to push things down.
        wybiral 9y ago
        > I'm not sure the impact so much matters as the intent. I think some of the election-related stuff is mostly politicization. If you follow some of the hearings on the subject of Russian propaganda (cspan has some) it seemed more that they were targeting and prodding cultural divisions. Organizing anti-immigration rallies at the same time and location as Muslim rallies and pushing racial and cultural divides. It seems like their focus is to polarize people and try to promote extremism.
        meowface 9y ago
        Yes, this was undoubtedly one of the Russian government's goals, but the US IC also came to the definitive conclusion that their goal was not only this but also to get Donald Trump elected. It was an open question for some time: were they merely trying to cause chaos and increase the divide, or did they specifically want one candidate in office? The answer, at least according to 17 US intelligence agencies, is both. And this isn't a huge shock considering Putin's well-known long-standing grudge against Clinton and Trump being considerably more pro-Russian than she was during the election cycle.
    - wybiral 9y ago
      I don't know why you're making assumptions about me personally or my preference towards news (Vice isn't one of my usual news sources fwiw) rather than keeping it to the subject. But I don't believe that Vice has quite the divisive and disruptive agenda that these state sponsored propaganda bullhorns have.
      - GSimon 9y ago
        You were more dismissive of one source over another so I brought it into question. I am very familiar with Vice's reporting for the past few years and while they cover a wide range of topics and have an appealing style of presenting their documented footage they politically lean very left. I find their reporting on average to be less credible in many instances than state-reported media because state-reported media is often bland and less opinionated and there's less of attempt to blatantly sway my opinion through a click-bait title and with skewed information and a moralizing tone.
        wybiral 9y ago
        I've found RT to be incredibly right leaning and pro-Russian.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    No, there isn't. Journalism in USA is totalitarian. There may be two points of view, but they differ so little as to be indistinguishable to anyone whose intellect isn't constantly gaslighted by the overwhelming ideological conformity. The journalism to which we are subjected is still propaganda, because after all a journalist has to stay in the club in order to work, and he does that by parroting the bullshit the insiders tell him. Nobody steps outside the lines and stays on the air. A great place to get reporting without the approved USA right-thinking is foreign state media. I actually prefer Al Jazeera to RT, but I'm under no illusions: after they shut down RT, AJ is next, soon to be followed by BBC.
    - meowface 9y ago
      It's good to get a wide range of views, but RT, Al Jazeera, and even BBC all provide their own skewed viewpoints. An informed person would be wise to read their stories and compare them to stories from American journalism outfits, but the idea that Al Jazeera or RT is inherently more credible than American journalists is pretty ridiculous. They suffer from overwhelming ideological conformity as well; it's just a different ideology.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        Haha "balance". Don't worry that's impossible to avoid in USA. In this country one can never escape the constant messaging: that War is good, that we ever actually win Wars, that we should fear minorities and the poor, that we should express that fear by locking them up and otherwise making their lives miserable... Thanks very much I'm still getting my recommended daily dose of that bullshit! Have you ever taken a week to mostly watch Al Jazeera or BBC or France 24 or CGTN or even RT? If you did, you might reconsider the blind certainty you evince here. This is one reason it's good to live overseas for a time: the corporate-state-approved media can't get you there, mostly.
  - bobcallme 9y ago
    There is zero difference between "opinionated" reporting and state-sponsored propaganda since both are pushing an opinion from a point of view. When you start injecting opinions it is no longer reporting. I'd say that Google is more of a propaganda engine than RT since Google has an order of magnitude more money and power than RT does. Propaganda both foreign and domestic should be treated the same if we are going to start censoring or injecting opinions on top of what other people say.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      > There is zero difference between "opinionated" reporting and state-sponsored propaganda Some differences: - Governments have far more power and resources to skew the narrative. - Governments are less accountable than any private individual or organization. Organizations are at least accountable to shareholders, the rule of law, and the government they operate under. - Domestic organizations are at least ostensibly committed to maintaining the system, many foreign governments literally want to tear the system down. - Governments have a historical track-record of tyranny, and have generally caused more harm than private organizations.
      - bobcallme 9y ago
        > - Governments have far more power and resources to skew the narrative. s/Government have/Google has/g > Governments are less accountable than any private individual or organization. Organizations are at least accountable to shareholders, the rule of law, and the government they operate under. Again s/Governments/Organizations/g > - Domestic organizations are at least ostensibly committed to maintaining the system, many foreign governments literally want to tear the system down. Based upon what? Is that any justification for propaganda? Both Facebook and Google are both domestic entities and look at all of the polarization and discord that they have caused this election cycle. > - Governments have a historical track-record of tyranny, and have generally caused more harm than private organizations. In this era, the source of tyranny is private corporations that grant themselves monopolies with red tape and further regulations that make competition impossible. I guess based upon your arguments, we should grant private corporations a monopoly on speech.
- untog 9y ago
  1. RT is reporting about themselves. Of course some other source is preferable. 2. RT is owned by the Russian government. I have no particular fondness for Vice, but they're worlds apart. More generally, "X has a hugely compromising feature, Y has a mildly problematic feature, therefore they're exactly the same as each other" is the kind of fallacy that causes the public to trip and fall on its face over and over. Let's try to avoid it it we can.
  - gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago
    I don’t see any reason you should view vice as better than RT—they’ve consistently shown a complete lack of regard for journalism, and they’re incentivized by page views rather (or in addition to) their owner. Why should they bother to get anything more correct? Their brand is a nightly show on HBO that isn’t boring, not a credible news source. And man, I wish I were being hyperbolic. But they are possibly the worst american news source to link to.
    - untog 9y ago
      At the very least, they aren't a propaganda organ owned by a foreign government. Yeah, their coverage is sometimes kind of shitty. But every news organisation is beholden to their audience and their owner. If Vice actually did publish lies all the time then their reputation would tank and they'd stop getting clicks. The free market connection to honest journalism is a tenuous one, but it exists.
      - gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago
        Journalism is earned, not assumed. No matter the stance of RT vice still needs to demonstrate journalistic integrity. Have they? No. They’re on equal footing as i’m concerned. Propaganda is at least interpetable. Also they do tell blatant falsehoods, intentional or no. Americans care much less than they say.
        untog 9y ago
        You're falling into exactly the fallacy I described: Vice is not the best news organisation in the world, therefore it is functionally equivalent to a propaganda outlet. It's absurd logic. Almost as absurd as the fact that yours is a brand new account created specifically to comment on this story. I'm sure it's just coincidental though...
sdenton4 9y ago
A key fact somehow omitted from the RT piece: "Both outlets are wholly owned by the Russian government."
nkurz 9y ago
Less biased, or merely less obviously biased? Given that the argument against RT is essentially that they are too dangerous to include in search results because of their known and obvious bias, it would be interesting to look for distortions in their coverage. Did you spot any substantial differences in the two versions of the story? Or is the danger possibly that they will lull us in with factual reporting only to betray us once we let our guard down?

jenga22 9y ago

Look, I am all game for attacking fake news. However, this seems to me like a blanket ban which could apply to anyone. For example, Fox News has a slant which one could consider highly misleading. Would they get de-ranked too? Wouldn't a better solution be to identify the claims in the article and automatically alert the reader that one or more claims have been debunked? Then let the user decide?

dataminded 9y ago
I'm not sure that most 'readers' are able enough to balance points and counterpoints. If readers were capable of separating fact from fiction, you would think that 'fake news' would be less prominent.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  They're also being subjected to outright manipulative tactics that aim at where they're weakest emotionally and intellectually in order to exploit their resulting behavior.
  - wahern 9y ago
    What RT exploits are pre-existing prejudices and narratives inculcated by a wholly domestic popular nationalist movement begotten by the GOP. The demonizing of Hillary Clinton, for example, originated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America, which saw a resurgent GOP control both the House and Senate for the first time in over 40 years. That was a campaign which normalized calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch" after it came out that that's how Gingrich referred to her in private, and refused to walk it back, instead only lashing out at the leaker, Connie Chung. Ironically (given how events precipitated 15 years later where Democrats adopted the previously-conservative alternative) the main reason (but hardly the only reason) Hillary came to the foreground was because she was appointed to lead a task force to investigate healthcare reform in 1993. Basically, the poisonous, vitriolic, conspiracist, and highly personal attacks of today can be directly and unequivocally traced back to our daemons from the 1990s, some of whom literally walk the halls of government today using the same playbook. Laying the blame on RT and other outlets simply obfuscates things. The Democrats are idiots for their ham-fisted use of the so-called fake news narrative. Not because it's completely wrong, per se, but because the emphasis is so misleading and counter-productive. And it's why so many Republicans are joining the Democrats in the assault on fake news, as they know they have absolutely nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of their own credibility, which will undoubtedly be used to perpetuate more poisonous narratives (i.e. Birther Movement, Benghazi, etc). These poisonous narratives are domestic, crafted and perpetuated by domestic, elected politicians. We might as well "de-rank" C-SPAN. For all the techies on HN, we should be pushing back against this GOP and DNC attack on Silicon Valley. The Democrats idiotically created a scape-goat in Silicon Valley and the Republicans happily adopted the narrative. The only people stupider than the Democrats in doing this are Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who seem to have drunk their own kool-aid regarding their social impact and then decided to do a mea culpa. The whole thing is absurd from every conceivable angle. RT is an island of sanity by comparison. At least their own journalists don't believe their propaganda. They aren't fooling themselves; not like all the players in the U.S.

ucaetano 9y ago

Related news: 'Slap at the First Amendment’ - RT America forced to register as foreign agent

ebbv 9y ago

Good. Russia Today is not a journalistic entity, it is the propaganda arm of Putin's dictatorial regime.

Alupis 9y ago
It seems to me, that's it's becoming increasingly difficult to call most of these organizations 'journalistic' anymore.
- pzone 9y ago
  Even the New York Times is suffering from over-politicization. Sad times.
smallstepforman 9y ago
As oppossed to any western mouthpiece (BBC, CNN, ABC, Washington Post, NYT etc)? Every news outlet parrots the opinions of its investors, and even when you think that a report is neutral, the adjectives try to slant the message in a certain direction. By agreeing to censorship, you are disagreeing with the concept of free speech. In the end, if Google becomes more political, it will alienate a demographic, and lose funds. In which universe is this “good”?
- threeseed 9y ago
  > In the end, if Google becomes more political, it will alienate a demographic, and lose funds This is delusional and ridiculous logic. Trying to purse the truth in news should not mean alienating a demographic. And frankly a competitor search engine designed to cater purely to them is never going to be successful.
- ebbv 9y ago
  Only the BBC fits, as it is also government controlled. The others may sometimes publish shill articles or whatever but they are not a government run propaganda arm. We don't have such a thing in the US, as NPR has lost almost all of its government funding. The US government runs media operations in other countries but none of our big media companies are government run like RT. And the fact that we just elected freakin' Trump helps underline the fact that the US is not yet a dictatorial country. So the comparison between Russia Today and any US media is pretty ridiculous on that level as well. Our media has plenty of flaws (answering to corporate sponsors instead of the government has its own drawbacks), but again, they are not comparable to RT.

chiaro 9y ago

> _“Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren’t allowed if they come from RT, ‘because Russia’ – even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT,”_ Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement. Funny, the official PR rings like a thousand troll posts I've read. Good on Alphabet, some CSR in this area is long overdue.

gudenuf4gvmt 9y ago

Another argument for open source search ranking. Anything else is likely biased and harmful.

untog 9y ago

Before everyone screams too loudly, RT was recently forced to register as a foreign agent by the US government: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564045159/rt-america-firm-registers-as-foreign-agent-in-u-s-russia-looks-to-retaliate https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/564045159... So it's not as if Google is picking media organisations it dislikes at random.

MichaelGG 9y ago
But AIPAC isn't forced to do so, despite even engaging in espionage[1] and literally boasting about how they've corrupted and influenced top politicians[2]. So everyone should take this foreign agent registration stuff as more political theater. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee#Steiner_resignation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs...
- knowThySelfx 9y ago
  Exactly. It all depends on whose side you are. If it is from the side which the establishment/puppet masters favor, then its all fair. How much trust do MSM's have these days? They have bought it upon themselves by being slaves of people with agendas.
- goialoq 9y ago
  For better of for worse, when USAmerican citizens spend their own USAmerican money to lobby the US Government on behalf of foreign countries, they aren't considered foreign agents. The AIPAC spies were fired by AIPAC. RT is directly funded by the Russian government
blux 9y ago
What does this have to do with the fundamental fact that Google decides to make access to information / opinions from certain sources less accessible than others?
- 9y ago

tryingagainbro 9y ago

>>"But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.” Virtually every small business website has seen how you operate, you don't ban just bury them on page 15 and get a click every 4 months. How nice of you. At least you help us by letting us buy ads. I agree that RT is official Russian propaganda, but so is Voice of America or our government websites

jessaustin 9y ago
OMG it's such a racket. Why are our customers going to our competitor? Oh, they're using our name in adwords, and our customers are idiots who use google to navigate to the next block... ok Google here's thousands of dollars every month. Please don't extort any more from us.

makecheck 9y ago

If you blacklist things that people like (however misguided their reasons are for liking them), they will double down and probably consume even more of their propaganda news. Instead, demand that articles use language that states things plainly, probably with a machine learning model to help. No personal attacks, etc.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vm 9y ago

RT is Russia Today, which is funded by the Russian government. Sputnik, the other media outlet mentioned in the article, is similarly funded by the Russian government. Their Wikipedia pages imply that both are use for Russian government propaganda... in case anyone else also needed background context.

MRSallee 9y ago
And BBC is funded by British government. And PBS is funded by US government.
- threeseed 9y ago
  That's pretty disingenuous without talking about the respective level of corruption in each country: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016 https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... Britain: Very clean, US: Clean, Russia: Corrupt.
  - Sone7 9y ago
    You wouldn't say that if you'd seen how the BBC and the Guardian, never mind the right-wing rags, were talking about Corbyn last year. And the US election? I honestly don't know why ye haven't dismantled your MSM brick by brick after that. Fucking hell.

cobookman 9y ago

So when's Al jezeera getting a lower rank. They are a state media which is also heavily baised.

harry8 9y ago
And presently the best news service in the world. A title they took from the BBC who are state median and heavily biased and always have been. Shut them all down? I can't see that being good for democracy.

0xbear 9y ago

Slippery slope, if I’ve ever seen one.

whack 9y ago

I don't doubt that RT has a pro-Russian slant, but is there any objective evidence that the traditional sources are any less biased? It was only last decade when American media proved itself to be frighteningly biased in favor of the US government's agenda[1]. By abandoning algorithmic rankings, and directly targeting "enemy" news sources, Google is moving away from its engineering roots, and is starting to become a weapon for the US government's foreign policy objectives. Is it any surprise that foreign countries, including our allies in the EU, are becoming increasingly distrustful of American technology platforms? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War#Criticisms_of_pro-invasion_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War...

grandalf 9y ago
> By abandoning algorithmic rankings, and directly targeting "enemy" news sources, Google is moving away from its engineering roots, and is starting to become a weapon for the US government's foreign policy objectives. This is precisely Schmidt's goal, and has been for a long time. He wants to weaponize Google and sell it to Government as if it were a defense contractor. It's totally shameful. Schmidt is one of the enablers of villains like GW Bush. History will judge him harshly.
meowface 9y ago
Most of the popular US media is very biased towards the US, but that's not what's spurring this action from Google. It's not just that RT is owned by a foreign state or that RT is biased or even propaganda. It's that it's owned by a foreign state which attempted to interfere in US elections, partially using RT, and partially with the help of Google search results showing RT stories. Google, being an American company, needs to draw a line somewhere, and that seems like a reasonable place. American state-owned or private outlets deliberately attempting to influence other countries' elections (as they undoubtedly do) are also right to be de-ranked by those countries' search engines and aggregators.
- grandalf 9y ago
  Aside from the accusations made by US intelligence agencies there has not been any data presented that links the Russian government with the stuff you mention. Surely there has been lots of mischief on both sides, but it's absurd to think that anything Russia did altered the outcome of the election. If you look into the details the evidence is not there. The reason Russia is being blamed is because the US has lost the chess game in the middle east with Russia and will need to do something more aggressive to fight back, but can't do that unless Americans start hating Russians again. Let's not buy into the hype.

rdtsc 9y ago

> The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” They don't even pretend to be unbiased. "Hillary is my friend and she refuses to acknowledge she lost due to her own hubris. Instead blames Russia, so I am going along with her here". > showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves. "The people don't seem to be swallowing our propaganda for some reason. The Manufacturing Consent machine has broken down a bit. Please stand by while tweak our algorithms to ensure they are force fed the proper version of truth". To be more serious, RT is propaganda and a branch of the Russian government just like Fox New is a branch of Republican party. What is interesting is the other media (traditional TV and print news) and now the tech companies have also dropped the pretense. Well at least things are bit more clear. Nobody is pretending anymore. That in itself is a step forward as well.

grandalf 9y ago
> What is interesting is the other media (traditional TV and print news) and now the tech companies have also dropped the pretense. It is a relief that it's happened during the era when we can be sure that it was due to human judgment and not due to some sort of AI quirk.
- Sone7 9y ago
  It's disturbing how all your comments are going grey.. Fuck this site, it's lost it's way.
caconym_ 9y ago
You do not have to be a fan of Hillary Clinton to think that "audiences [can] not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves" based on the "experience of 'the last year'". The mention of her name in literally the same sentence where they implicitly question the validity of the "fake news" narrative could not be more transparently calculated. So yes, you are right that RT is propaganda, but in that light I'm not sure how to take your first two sentences. The word "irony" comes to mind.

grandalf 9y ago

And thus, Eric Schmidt applies the same patronizing wisdom used by the Chinese government when deciding that some search results are simply too disturbing to be viewed. Schmidt is an authoritarian first and a technologist second. I really wish he were not so influential, and I'm frankly shocked that Larry and Sergey don't see this (or that they see it and are pleased about it).

aalleavitch 9y ago
Deranking is sensible when the site is explicitly part of a campaign to manipulate its visibility though, isn't it? Aren't you drawing comparisons too quickly?
- grandalf 9y ago
  What do you mean by "a campaign to manipulate its visibility"? Do you mean the link being launched on social media?
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    And then re-shared and promoted by bots masquerading as US citizens specifically for maximum impact against targeted individuals who are most susceptible to manipulation and most likely to propagate the material.
    - grandalf 9y ago
      So you are critiquing the mechanism of getting social media likes for content? Don't all newspapers do that these days? I think the way to criticize the articles is by pointing out untrue content or bad journalism. So far nobody has done that.
    - averagewall 9y ago
      Did you really mean that? Do you think people who are susceptible to manipulation need to be protected by Google, not for their own good but because they can be manipulated to have political opinions that you personally disagree with? That means you think your political belief is so right that competing ideas should be suppressed. That's the complete opposite of freedom of speech that America is one of the world leaders in. Do you think the way China's government limits the spread of political ideas is good too?

jancsika 9y ago

I remember seeing separate interviews with Richard Stallman, Steve Wozniak, and Andy Müller-Maguhn on RT about five years ago. Also, some early pieces delving into Bitcoin before that. Has RT changed substantially in the last five years? Does it no longer interview people who are experts in their field?

grandalf 9y ago
No, it just covers issues that are unflattering to powerful US officials and to the US in general. The regular US press has somehow been conditioned to write lots of stories that are critical of other governments, other countries' infrastructure, etc., but always to carry the torch of American exceptionalism. Once we realize that American Exceptionalism is among the most evil ideologies of the modern era, it makes sense that other nations would want to offer a competing voice. RT has not been criticized for the quality of its journalism, only for its source of funding.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  Also the fact that identified Russian propaganda bots and troll armies have been sighted on numerous occasions disseminating RT articles. You'd be blind not to realize that RT is an important part of their machine.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    Propaganda bots and troll armies? None have been linked to the Russian government. Surely someone wishing to spend time making bots and hiring trolls would promote certain articles, but if the American papers did an acceptable job writing about facts, those bots/armies would obviously prefer to link American articles if trying to persuade the American people. So it's not sufficient to cite the means of distribution/virality, one must actually dig in and find factual problems with the content. Motive is even more difficult, as the motive of discrediting American leaders for lies or misdeeds is arguably in the public's best interest, so it's hard to persuade me that doing that is somehow harmful to America, even if it was done by an adversary.

foota 9y ago

"We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik" - so no, they're not banning the site explicitly.

sl1e 9y ago

I wonder if anyone has noticed that you can't even query a search without it already being flooded with the news. You can't really customize the search in away you get zero news from any search.

mrschwabe 9y ago

One way to workaround this is simply to prefix your Google search with site:rt.com ex site:rt.com my search query With or without the communist Chinese style ban on RT.com it is convenient to use this technique if even to cross reference a specific issue you've heard buzz about with an non-US (and by extension, non Five Eyes) based source of news. Otherwise your news is, now openly admitted, at the discretion of Google's / US governments distorted and now limited view of what is 'news'. Have always enjoyed RT because it is one of the few quality international news outlets not based or biased in US - and will continue enjoying it despite Google or US introducing Chinese PRC style blanket censorship. Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are just a few of the respected names who have routinely appeared on RT to share their commentary. Slippery slope, but hey - this way they seal their own demise as independent thinkers lead the way in replacing the likes of Google and other compromised tech companies with decentralized, censor-proof solutions.

cft 9y ago

Wait till they start "de-ranking" or something similar when users manually enter undesirable URLs in their browsers' address bars. It seems implausible right now, but the stuff that is happening now was equally implausible in the internet when Google was just starting.

diebir 9y ago

Good for us. Thanks, Google.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

Google giveth and Google taketh away, that's true for products as well - they changed something and now we get less organic search results and fewer purchases. Everyone on the Internet is in the same boat.

vincengomes 9y ago

Since US agencies are not meddling with other nations politics, and esp not through their news agencies, US based medias are safe from googles hammer /s

aalleavitch 9y ago

I think it's both legitimate and important to point out the fact that as this is a popular public internet destination where presumably some quite influential people are known to frequent that it could be a very likely target for Russian-backed (or otherwise) trolls looking to sway public opinion. I think it's important that everyone consider the intentions and motives behind the comments that they read.

chatmasta 9y ago
> it's important that everyone consider the intentions and motives behind the comments that they read. Isn’t it always? If critical thinking was a little more commonplace, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess i the first place. People are too quick to play the victim of big bad media. The first step should be a look in the mirror.

Nickersf 9y ago

Who the fuck is Google to tell me what I can read or not?! I rarely consume RT, but if I want to, I should be able to do so freely. I'm a free person with agency and a sense of reason. This is why I stopped using Google months ago...

jxramos 9y ago

I've watched RT videos on YouTube and after I realized where it was coming from I was able to connect the dots with various socialist leaning good feel pieces embedded in larger stories. But I mean it's not like it was super aggressive propaganda worth censuring. I think a lot of their material is interesting and well produced.

joe_the_user 9y ago
Just about any news source has a viewpoint that can be found by connecting the dots, in Western sources, that might be termed "editorial policy". So basically we're seeing that all the powerful states seem to be moving towards not just producing their own propaganda but demanding outside propaganda be filtered out - China is far much more aggressive of course and thankfully for me, the US is merely exerting a "light touch". I assume this level of censorship is more or less happening proportionate to the degree the various ruling forces feel threatened.

averagewall 9y ago

I think this entire thing is based on this line of reasoning from people who can't believe Trump won the election: 1) No American would vote for him because he's obviously bad. 2) But they did. 3) Therefore they were weak-willed people who got manipulated by somebody. 4) ... (I don't know this step) ... 5) Therefore Russia did it. 6) Protect the weak-willed people from Russian ideas.

CodeWriter23 9y ago

Tap RT America on this page, and view all the legit reporters banned by this act of censorship. https://www.rt.com/onair-talent/ https://www.rt.com/onair-talent/

Sone7 9y ago

Hey YC - Please answer me this question - have your mods flagged this story? It sure is odd how an incredibly active discussion in a fresh story with >100 points is on page 2 behind stale and dead stuff on the front page. Seems kinda relevant to the topic at hand. Also relevant is how little coverage this story is getting outside of RT - Fucking hmmm.

grzm 9y ago
It's also got 164 comments. It's likely been bitten by the "overheated discussion detector", which also depresses a story's rank.
- Sone7 9y ago
  Sure would have been nice to know tho. Ah well - why should we expect that basic level of transparency, right?

speedplane 9y ago

The problem with Google "ranking" is that it's linear, when a real substantive analysis of results would first categorize results and then rank within those categories. Google needs to indicate the intent behind an article, such as to inform, to convince, to sell a product, or to generate clicks to show you more advertising.

darepublic 9y ago

Making the world safe from fake news is the new war on terrorism. In the same way there is just as much terrorism since 9/11, there will be just as much misinformation in the future, only with less freedom.

smsm42 9y ago

RT is trash and propaganda arm of Russian government, however what Google is doing is thousand times more scary to me that what RT is doing. When you come to RT (if you do), you know where you are, you know how to evaluate the information and you don't even have to go there if you don't want to - every link would clearly tell you "you are going to RT". It is exactly what it says on the box, no surprises. What Google is doing is essentially telling me "we own your information diet now, and for your own good we're not letting you to see this. Because we know what you should be seeing, and this is not part of it. So we will choose which content to show and not to show for our own reasons, and you don't bother your little head with it, we've got it". This is an approach that takes away my choice, takes away my power to decide which content I want to consume. I'd probably be ok if the content Google demotes is clearly junk - like spam sites that game the ranking etc. Maybe even with sites which are clearly criminal or used as a tool to commit crimes. But here we clearly have tweaking search ranking as a response to political pressure. This is terrible, and also now you can't trust Google with not doing the same for any other reason - maybe they are tweaking the ranking to boost political candidates they like? Maybe to boost businesses they invest in or partner with? Maybe tweak it to demote some companies that offended them in some way or stepped on somebody's toes? Before, I could say it's paranoid to think so, Google would never risk their business by doing this. Now I see head of Google saying this and I can't honestly say it's just paranoia anymore. Thanks, Eric Schmidt. That's why one should use every opportunity to use engines alternative to Google (I use DDG, other suggestions welcome) - when Google thinks they know what we need better than we do, it is a very bad symptom.

supergirl 9y ago

US should just install some kind of great national firewall. Then RT can be blocked completely

oliwarner 9y ago

It's interesting to see people take sides here. We freely rely on Google to sift through people trying to manipulate search rankings and show us the best results. Part of this process often results in entire domains being blacklisted. Hell, we we even allow copyright law to dictate what we can find on Google. So I don't understand why it's so controversial to exclude insidious propaganda and proven bad journalism from news searches. Some others have called this a slippery slope, saying Fox (or the left wing equivalents) could be next... But seriously, why not? The threat to excluding bad outlets should be extended to all outlets.

yAnonymous 9y ago

I'd consider RT more reputable than Fox News, The Sun or BILD. What are they going to do about the others? There is hardly a news outlet right now that wouldn't print lies if those lies make them money or increase their power and influence, so where do we draw the line?

stash_machine 9y ago

As a person, who lived in Crimea and survived Russian invasion I'm very happy about that. RT is not a media news it is absolute propaganda which exists for only one reason - to help russia seize other countries

Lidador 9y ago

Google 2000: " Don't be evil " Google 2018: " Educate people and protect them from evil* " *We decide what's 'evil'.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

A pertinent benediction from St. Ignutius: https://stallman.org/google.html https://stallman.org/google.html

enterx 9y ago

Who cares what Evil Shmit does anyhow. His fake lying news business(read ads!) is finally doomed to fail anyway in a very near future.