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Google preemptively banned hundreds of millions of 'pirate' URLs last year
- mistrial9 3y agoit might be more than that.. here in the USA I typed "Serbia News" into youtube and got only Albanian and Slovak sites.. only two months ago, I did the same and I did get TV news in Serbia.. I wanted to know more about the northern border expansion of course, from both sides.. and what I got instead is predictable and disappointing in a "free" press environment secondly, the only time I have ever gotten a suspicious pause in Google translate, was relating to this area in those languages..
- jWhick 3y agonothing new, I'm quite sure if you try to get to russian propaganda you would get to similar blockers.
- mistrial9 3y agohere we go back to the 17th century ?
- Synaesthesia 3y agoInternet censorship has stepped up big time, especially since 2016/2017.
- mschuster91 3y agoAnything involving Serbia is subject to serious trolling campaigns. Serbia and its borders have been the cause of multiple wars in the 90s, and they're the only real Russia-aligned nation in the Balkans so Putin is spending a shit ton of money on propaganda campaigns for his friend Aleksander Vucic. Personal guess, I think that Russia is also strongly responsible for the current bullshit going on in Bosnia where the Serbian minority is riled up beyond belief; I would not be surprised if that is the cause for the next war, and had Ukraine not beaten up the Russians so strongly I bet that the original plan was to violently break apart Bosnia after Kyiv had fallen and the Western nations were too busy to deal with Ukraine to open up yet another front.
- mistrial9 3y agoyeah but "trolling campaigns" is social media.. why is it unreasonable to read a newspaper in any language?
- mschuster91 3y agoSEO spam is just as much of an avenue for propaganda farms as social media is. When people actively search for something, they'll turn to Google, so getting "your" narrative in the first two pages is very important for the propagandists - and it's made easier by the simple fact that no tech company invests money into moderation staff that actually speaks the language and knows context to determine if something is spam or not.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago> to open up yet another front You should have a good look at the map.
- pjc50 3y agoDidn't stop Russia backing Serbian during the previous unpleasantness. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050 (Undoubtedly Blunt is exaggerating the story, but Russian forces were definitely present.)
- midoridensha 3y ago>I bet that the original plan was to violently break apart Bosnia after Kyiv had fallen How exactly would Russia get to Bosnia?
- mschuster91 3y agoSerbia doesn't need Russia for the military part, they have enough goons on their own. The key thing is, if had Kyiv fallen, do you think that the Western nations would have had time and resources to care about the Dayton accords and intervene again? I seriously doubt it and I'm pretty certain the Serbians came to the same conclusion. Thankfully though, Kyiv held up, and the Serbians were forced to cancel their plans since contrary to expectations the Western nations did manage to get a reasonably united response against the Russian aggression. The problem remaining is that ethnical tensions still are high and there's not much effort being done to defuse them, partially because everyone's attention is on Ukraine at the moment.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI'm still miffed that when I search for "coronavirus" into Google, I seem to get hand-picked results about covid-19, which is just one of hundreds of coronaviruses. The wikipedia entry (which is often first for most search results about generic topics) is on page 2 and still likes to their covid-19 entry, not the one on coronavirus genus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus
- 542458 3y agoWith all due respect, I think 99+% of people who Google “coronavirus” are looking for info about Covid-19, and as such the results being about C19 is pretty reasonable imo. It’s like how if you Google “watergate” you’ll near-exclusively get stuff about the watergate scandal (because that’s what most people who search “watergate” are looking for), and not about booking at the watergate hotel or other amenities of the watergate complex.
- Scoundreller 3y agoThe #1 result I get is the wiki link to the scandal. The #2 result is the wiki for the complex.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pjc50 3y agoHmm. Despite knowing what to look for it was a couple of goes before I could get a query to return https://www.rts.rs/sr/index.html https://www.rts.rs/sr/index.html - I had to ask for "RTS serbia". (I am one of the handful of people watching Pesma Za Evrovisiju every year despite not understanding Serbian. One day AI will be good enough to give me subtitles)
- atVelocet 3y agoIs it possible to file a FOIA to get the domains and build a uncensored version?
- throw_m239339 3y ago> Is it possible to file a FOIA to get the domains and build a uncensored version? Google isn't a governmental agency.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoTechnically true! Alas & woefully! They are acting under the demands made by the republic. If there is a government mandate to override freedom of speech, imo, it should always be required to leave a paper trail.
- serf 3y agoan easy fact to forget when thinking about their efforts to squelch/amplify propaganda at their own discretion, their funding and backers, and the lobbying that they do on behalf of themselves and others. they're just as close to governmental agency as is allowed without taking the blame.
- dontupvoteme 3y agoYou could scrape the lumen database if they were requested, but it sounds like they weren't. I guess the next best would be scraping google/yandex/bing and comping which domains never show up on google.
- userbinator 3y agoI wonder if this is also hitting things like right-to-repair; a lot of useful information like service manuals and schematics are almost certainly in the realm of piracy, and I've noticed they've become a lot harder to find recently.
- ddingus 3y agoSame, and that is part of what drove me to use Yandex more. It's working great like others here have said.
- JWLong 3y agoEarly last month, I found myself turning to Yandex in a search for the out of print manual for a 1980s mobile radio. Google had nothing. Yandex had almost nothing. But it was enough to piece together an answer.
- armitron 3y agoURLs that Google banned show up on Bing just fine. Another nail on the coffin.
- dataflow 3y agoTitle feels quite misleading. This doesn't seem to have been Google itself going out of its own way to ban URLs as the title suggests, but rather the copyright holders submitting the Google takedown form before the content was indexed, as opposed to afterward. > “Search accepts notices for web pages that are not even in our index at the time of submission. Nevertheless, we will proactively block such web pages from appearing in our Search results and will apply these notices to our demotion signal."
- rolph 3y agoyes , the reading suggests pre-emptive disqualification of urls from the include allows. i have a hunch that if you somehow had access to that indexing blacklist, it would be all manner of unseemly things.
- candiodari 3y ago"A distinction without a difference"
- transcriptase 3y agoYandex is incredible for things that Google and Bing serves up useless spam for. If you search “watch $MOVIE free” on google you’re going to get netflix, Hulu, prime, Disney etc as the first results regardless of whether those sites even have it in their library. The remaining links are SEO spam that also don’t have it but pretend they do, because the sites that actually do have all been struck or filtered. Yandex on the other hand… the first result is generally exactly what you wanted in 720 or 1080 with no BS. I do miss when google had a little footer that said “click here to view URLs that were removed due to copyright takedown requests”. Edit: And I do pay for all of those streaming services and more, but in Canada if a franchise has 5 movies it’s not unheard of to have #1 on Netflix, #2 on Paramount, #3 on no service available here, and #4 and #5 on Disney or Crave. It’s the same with seasons of TV series: exhausting.
- N3cr0ph4g1st 3y agoHow does it compare to searx.be?
- bandie91 3y agosearx is a search engine aggregator. searx.be is in instance of it and as i can see the only default general search engine which is on on this instance is google.
- Pannoniae 3y agoYandex Translate is also much better for many languages, especially for eastern ones. And viewing words and their synonyms individually is a huge godsend if you are looking at slang.
- anonimo37 3y agoI just tried out Yandex Translate on a few words. My only criticism is I find the audio playback too fast. Google Translate plays the audio at a slower rate which I find easier for learning the pronunciation of foreign words.
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- revskill 3y agoGoogle result is annoying, the same as all video contents there (interuppted intentionally by Ads). The whole Ads crap is broking my soul hard.
- pzmarzly 3y agoOff-topic but: Does anyone know of a way to support TorrentFreak other than disabling adblock? They run next to no ads, don't have a donation form or paid offering, and yet have been a major source of news in "Big Tech vs Piracy" battles.
- taspeotis 3y agoKeep downloading torrents so they have news to write about!
- djbusby 3y agoDoes your adblocker let you set exceptions? I've got an FF profile with uBlock that's disabled on some sites like that.
- Scoundreller 3y agoUnless you're looking for a VPN subscription, disabling adblock doesn't look to help them much. I guess you can always get in touch with them and ask: https://torrentfreak.com/contact/ https://torrentfreak.com/contact/ > Advertising / Guest posts > All advertising inquiries are ignored. We don’t accept guest posts or sponsored posts, period. I love them so much!
- crsv 3y agoI have a hard time disabling ad block on sites of this ilk due to their tendency to inject malware into their JS to prey on the unsavvy. I don’t trust that if I enable JS I won get hit with an aggressive malware / zeroday.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simbolit 3y agoI sometimes wonder why computer-literate people still use Google Search. Basically for all search queries I can imagine, DuckDuckGo or Yandex consistently give much better results.
- tyteen4a03 3y agoGoogle wins hands-down for local results, but I use Maps a lot to find restaurants so it might be just me.
- unstuck3958 3y agoSame for me. I use Google only to find local results, DDG for the rest.
- simbolit 3y agoCan the person who downvoted this tell me why? I want to learn.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y agoWe're discouraged from discussing downvotes, but I have seen a lot of totally innocuous comments get greyed out lately. I'm suspicious that some are deliberately abusing the feature. I wouldn't worry about it.
- Baeocystin 3y agoFWIW, I've noticed an uptick of that, too. Not sure what to make of it.
- Sabinus 3y agoThere's been an influx of users since the Reddit snafu, I think they're just settling in. Might just be my perception, but I've seen the tone of the average comment shift a bit.
- keiferwiseman 3y agoTrying to corner the market with Google Drive
- pentagrama 3y agoThis bans hasn't nothing to do with pirate sites that have scams and deceptive design patterns? The last time I visited the pirate bay without ublock origin, I was bombarded with ads with scummy copy like "you won x" or "stream for free now", fake search results, adult ads, and deceptive invisible clickable areas on top of the UI that opened new tabs with suspicious full page ads. I never followed those links but I'm sure that it will ended up on installing malware or asking for credit cards. I will understand if the Google Search algorithm de-ranks or bans sites like that, many people totally will fall to this scams.
- arijun 3y agoPeople in this thread have said the results on Google for those terms include more scams/malware. I have no idea if that’s the case.
- gerdesj 3y ago“For over two decades, we have observed that unmet consumer demand is a key driver of piracy. If demand is unmet by legitimate supply, users will seek pirated content. That is why one of the best ways to combat piracy is to provide better, more convenient, and legitimate alternatives,” Google writes. Children will be childed by Google. Define: "piracy". Now, who should enforce ... piracy. Google is a search engine and some other stuff - they should never, ever be involved in enforcement, let alone unilaterally involved in it and allowed to trumpet the same. Law enforcement does law enforcement and not Google. If I was a policeman I would be absolutely incensed at this overreach into my domain.
- bandergirl 3y ago> Define: "piracy". I think the definition is pretty clear in the DMCA, no need to play with words. > they should never, ever be involved in enforcement Sure, Google should keep linking to completely illegal content, correct? Scams, CP, drugs, all belongs to Google indexes, you say. There are laws, pretty clear laws around the world. Some countries deem illegal simply linking to certain sites. Pirates might hate the new Google, but don’t act like it’s not obvious that they should do this.
- gerdesj 3y agoI'm not an American so DMCA is moot for me. I did search a bit - https://www.dmca.com/ https://www.dmca.com/ and that doesn't help. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/What-is-DMCA https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/What-is-DMCA - better but not much. When I search for UK law stuff, it comes up on top. Your DMCA seems to hide itself somewhat.
- paul7986 3y agoI'm sure it helps some but pirate sites are all about word of mouth / sharing with friends
- hedora 3y agoInterestingly, this implies the people sending notices to google have a fresher index than google does. Is the pirate bay still a thing, or is there some new competitor? (It’s possible the copyright holders are running their own crawlers, but that seems unlikely and also easy to block)
- AraceliHarker 3y agoYouTube and other Google-operated services should do their best to crack down on piracy, such as the uploading of television programs. It's ridiculous that they only show off their "justice" that no one asks for on sites that they can't monetize.
- gscott 3y agoAnd removes them from saved links https://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-sites-from-users-privately-saved-links-230830/ https://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-sites-from-us...
- tryauuum 3y agoand this is my recent struggle with google search: https://bigmemes99.funnyjunk.com/pictures/I+hate+google+so+much+its+unreal_5b9791_10853615.png https://bigmemes99.funnyjunk.com/pictures/I+hate+google+so+m...
- greyface- 3y agoThis is a betrayal of Google's mission statement, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". It can be credibly argued that the DMCA requires Google to do this for allegedly-infringing indexed URLs. Nothing requires them to do this for unindexed URLs.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]