Google is a private company, so they don't have to respect anyone's freedom of speech legally. But we do need to consider the implications of this when they are one of the largest conduits of information out there and they are using that position to ideologically alter what we can and can't see on their platforms. They never would have been able to get away with this kind of censorship earlier when there was more competition in this space and now that they're the 800lb gorilla it is just another case of 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
If Google refuses to be a platform that allows the free exchange of ideas then we need an apolitical platform who will.
I have noticed that my searches on certain wrongthink topics bring up a slew of supposed 'rebuttals' to the information I was searching for. I did look at the rebuttals, but they were all non-sequiturs coupled with fury and not, well, reason.
A little while ago a Socialist website argued they were being demoted in the search results and only typing their explicit domain name alongside the search terms brought up their arguments.
I know this is a complex topic far beyond my tiny snippet of text here, but I do not think this is good.
I also think this website (its owners and management) has a bias, towards Liberalism. I do not mean 'Democrats'. I mean the political thought of the upper middle class. This isn't a Red Team vs Blue Team thing the way most people seem to assume, there's a third actor. It believes itself correct, rationally and morally but naturally has its own vices.
Ya, more and more large tech companies are oblivious to the practice of not mixing politics with business. It will always alienate and anger a large fraction of your customers. Off the top of my head: Github, Mozilla, and Google all seem to be doing this unfortunately.
This is especially ironic to me when measures are taken to ensure some tiny quantity of people don't feel uncomfortable in exchange for angering a huge swath of their customers.
The Crockford/Nodevember thing is a perfect example of this:
That's the sort of thought process I expect from a totalitarian regime, not being humorous. What's next? Slashdot looks too similar to a Heil Hitler salute?
Peter Thiel made a bunch of observations on this kind of thinking. It's in 1996 if the C-SPAN camera's date is correct, but very relevant I think.
The big issue to me is how Google has already let ideology creep into what should be impartial.
The first one I noticed is when they removed guns from online shopping search results.
More recently there has been talk of doctoring search results to remove controversial content:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/youtube-censor-controversial-c...
Google is a private company, so they don't have to respect anyone's freedom of speech legally. But we do need to consider the implications of this when they are one of the largest conduits of information out there and they are using that position to ideologically alter what we can and can't see on their platforms. They never would have been able to get away with this kind of censorship earlier when there was more competition in this space and now that they're the 800lb gorilla it is just another case of 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
If Google refuses to be a platform that allows the free exchange of ideas then we need an apolitical platform who will.