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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

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.
- meowface 9y ago
  I agree it's unlikely Russia altered the outcome of the election; Trump likely would've won with or without their influence. But intent matters more than results here. If a country tries to affect your country's election through deceit, even if they're not really that successful, it still deserves a response. I'm not sure what "if you look into the details the evidence is not there" is supposed to mean but in terms of intentions, the Russian government did intend to help Trump win (or at least help Clinton lose) and did intend to achieve this goal in part through spreading misleading information. The evidence is pretty damning.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    What information was misleading or false? There were lots of emails leaked. The FBI investigation was concerned with the legality of using the private server, but none of the potential campaign finance or ethics violations revealed by the contents of the emails has received any attention at all. As an American citizen who is not aligned with either major party, I'm pleased when one of the power mongers from either party is destroyed. What should have happened is that a panel of experts should have reviewed the troubling aspects of the emails and issued a statement. But the partisans wanted to pretend the issue was either a) automatically damning or b) a complete non-issue. The truth was likely somewhere in the middle. RT did nothing at all wrong by reporting on those things, and surely would have been happy to report on more Trump scandals or leaks if they'd existed. I think that what people miss is that the intention of RT was simply to reveal unflattering truths to help make Americans unhappy with their leaders. This is not a bad thing. If our leaders have committed crimes or ethics violations I want to know about it so that it can appropriately impact my vote. The most peculiar implication of the criticism of RT is the idea that somehow Americans should not know these things or should remain blissfully naive of embarrassing things about our leaders. It's almost too patronizing to believe.
    - meowface 9y ago
      You're picking one of many of the events that occurred during the election. No, RT is not necessarily biased for reporting on the leaked emails, which did contain legitimate information that was in the public interest to report (and which US and other outlets of course did report on), but it puts it in a different light when it became known that it was Russian intelligence who procured those emails. But even if we pretend that whole thing never happened, RT regularly pushes stories that cast the Russian government in a good light and the US government in a bad light. Ukraine, Syria, Trump, Hillary. They have the right to do that, being Russia's media, but doing that while also being owned by a state whose intelligence agencies interfered in the election is what creates the major journalistic conflict of interest.
      - grandalf 9y ago
- linkregister 9y ago
  I think you should change "there has not been any data" with "there has not been any data that I like". The Crowdstrike, Mandiant, and the Facebook & Twitter reports all linked Russian government actors with unregistered election interference, with varying amounts of forensic evidence; the Crowdstrike and Mandiant ones were chock-full of evidence, while the Facebook and Twitter ones just claimed that Russian media agency IP ranges were used to control the social media accounts.
  - grandalf 9y ago
    So basically what you are saying is no conclusive evidence, or no evidence that can be considered conclusive since any state actor could forge it. Further, any state actor (such as Russia) could easily avoid leaving such a trail if it wanted to. Of the many "campaigns" linked using loose turns of phrase to the Russian government, several would certainly have been obvious/easy to keep under the radar if they were indeed conducted by Russia. Why hand the US a smoking gun due to amateurish mistakes? I am not aware of any forensic evidence that it seems reasonable to consider conclusive. In fact, statements issued by Homeland Security concerning the exact same bits of evidence were not considered concerning or confidently linked to the Russian government prior to the insane politicization that occurred after the election. So as someone who does not want to help fuel the escalation of tensions toward war with a nuclear power, I demand that all evidence be made public so that independent security experts can conduct a full audit under full transparency.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      What specifically about the Crowdstrike and Mandiant reports was particularly suspect? They have tracked these campaigns and found them completely consistent with APT 28, whose infrastructure leads back to GRU. All actors leave traces, how do you think Kaspersky was able to track down Equation Group? Why did you choose to deflect with the Homeland Security "report"? I didn't bring it up, and it isn't meant to be evidence of anything. Why are you choosing to be a bit disingenuous in this argument?

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.

meowface 9y ago
I agree it's unlikely Russia altered the outcome of the election; Trump likely would've won with or without their influence. But intent matters more than results here. If a country tries to affect your country's election through deceit, even if they're not really that successful, it still deserves a response. I'm not sure what "if you look into the details the evidence is not there" is supposed to mean but in terms of intentions, the Russian government did intend to help Trump win (or at least help Clinton lose) and did intend to achieve this goal in part through spreading misleading information. The evidence is pretty damning.
- grandalf 9y ago
  What information was misleading or false? There were lots of emails leaked. The FBI investigation was concerned with the legality of using the private server, but none of the potential campaign finance or ethics violations revealed by the contents of the emails has received any attention at all. As an American citizen who is not aligned with either major party, I'm pleased when one of the power mongers from either party is destroyed. What should have happened is that a panel of experts should have reviewed the troubling aspects of the emails and issued a statement. But the partisans wanted to pretend the issue was either a) automatically damning or b) a complete non-issue. The truth was likely somewhere in the middle. RT did nothing at all wrong by reporting on those things, and surely would have been happy to report on more Trump scandals or leaks if they'd existed. I think that what people miss is that the intention of RT was simply to reveal unflattering truths to help make Americans unhappy with their leaders. This is not a bad thing. If our leaders have committed crimes or ethics violations I want to know about it so that it can appropriately impact my vote. The most peculiar implication of the criticism of RT is the idea that somehow Americans should not know these things or should remain blissfully naive of embarrassing things about our leaders. It's almost too patronizing to believe.
  - meowface 9y ago
    You're picking one of many of the events that occurred during the election. No, RT is not necessarily biased for reporting on the leaked emails, which did contain legitimate information that was in the public interest to report (and which US and other outlets of course did report on), but it puts it in a different light when it became known that it was Russian intelligence who procured those emails. But even if we pretend that whole thing never happened, RT regularly pushes stories that cast the Russian government in a good light and the US government in a bad light. Ukraine, Syria, Trump, Hillary. They have the right to do that, being Russia's media, but doing that while also being owned by a state whose intelligence agencies interfered in the election is what creates the major journalistic conflict of interest.
    - grandalf 9y ago
linkregister 9y ago
I think you should change "there has not been any data" with "there has not been any data that I like". The Crowdstrike, Mandiant, and the Facebook & Twitter reports all linked Russian government actors with unregistered election interference, with varying amounts of forensic evidence; the Crowdstrike and Mandiant ones were chock-full of evidence, while the Facebook and Twitter ones just claimed that Russian media agency IP ranges were used to control the social media accounts.
- grandalf 9y ago
  So basically what you are saying is no conclusive evidence, or no evidence that can be considered conclusive since any state actor could forge it. Further, any state actor (such as Russia) could easily avoid leaving such a trail if it wanted to. Of the many "campaigns" linked using loose turns of phrase to the Russian government, several would certainly have been obvious/easy to keep under the radar if they were indeed conducted by Russia. Why hand the US a smoking gun due to amateurish mistakes? I am not aware of any forensic evidence that it seems reasonable to consider conclusive. In fact, statements issued by Homeland Security concerning the exact same bits of evidence were not considered concerning or confidently linked to the Russian government prior to the insane politicization that occurred after the election. So as someone who does not want to help fuel the escalation of tensions toward war with a nuclear power, I demand that all evidence be made public so that independent security experts can conduct a full audit under full transparency.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    What specifically about the Crowdstrike and Mandiant reports was particularly suspect? They have tracked these campaigns and found them completely consistent with APT 28, whose infrastructure leads back to GRU. All actors leave traces, how do you think Kaspersky was able to track down Equation Group? Why did you choose to deflect with the Homeland Security "report"? I didn't bring it up, and it isn't meant to be evidence of anything. Why are you choosing to be a bit disingenuous in this argument?