Leaked: Google’s “The Good Censor” Document Shows a Plan to Silence Political Opponents
1 2018-10-10 by chrsblk
Breitbart has published a leaked internal document from Google entitled “The Good Censor” that says the company plans to move away from the “American tradition” of free speech and toward a European model that values “dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.”
They claim that the election of Donald Trump, along with the rise of the right-wing in general, make free speech impossible, and that the old values of Silicon Valley have to be abandoned, and a new authoritarian control mechanism forced on people.
The 85-page internal briefing states that Google and other major platforms “control the majority of online conversations” and have made a “shift towards censorship” because they disagree with the current direction of global politics.
Along with the election of Donald Trump, they cite the rise of AfD in Germany. They also mention that using an aggressive censorship model makes their product more viable in China.
The paper claims that unlimited free speech is a “utopian narrative” that cannot stand in the face of recent political events and the “bad behavior” of their own users.
They mention that all the major platform initially promised free speech, but it is something they just can no longer do.
Google responded to Breitbart after the leak, downplaying the document and saying it is not company policy but simply a briefing they commissioned.
The paper also states that Google, its subsidiary YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are no longer neutral platforms, but “editors” and “publishers.” This is problematic for them, as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act draws a sharp distinction between “neutral platforms” and “publishers.” Effectively, if these companies are publishers and not neutral platforms, than they are responsible for any and all content published on their platforms.
Despite the fact that Google claims the paper is not company policy, it certainly had a lot of money spent on it and its “layers of research.”
These “layers” included expert interviews with MIT Tech Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer, and academic Kalev Leetaru. 35 cultural observers and 7 cultural leaders from seven countries were also consulted.
Along with the money spent, it also appears to be completely in-line with what Google is doing already. Though they and other tech companies have repeatedly claimed that they do not censor, that they do not regulate content based on political bias, no one who has been involved with these platforms believes it.
Pontin, when interviewed for the paper, told them that it was going to be problematic that they are censoring right-wing personalities while allowing left-wing personalities to do the exact same thing right-wingers are getting punished for:
[Richard] Spencer doesn’t get to be a verified speaker; Milo gets kicked off, but I know plenty of pretty abusive feminist users or left wing users, expressing themselves in exactly the same way that the right is being penalized for, who are permitted to perform certain kinds of speech. Furthermore, the paper shows a loathing for “have a go” commenters being able to compete with “authoritative sources,” and says that the company is already down-ranking certain content and promoting other content based on its authoritativeness.
This is possibly exactly what Trump needs to start making moves against this evil company – and all the rest of them.
This is the most important fight we are facing right now. If we had had in 2015-16 the kind of censorship we have in 2018, I don’t even know if Trump would have won. And clearly, their goal is to make sure that Trump can’t win anymore.
90% of conversations today take place online. The idea that any private entity at all should be able to control all of that is absolutely insane. There is no argument for that.
We need an Internet Bill of Rights that ensures our freedoms.
All we ever asked for was fairness in representation, and they are openly saying that we cannot have that. The only reason is that they are political companies. And you cannot be a monopoly on most forms of modern speech and also be a political activist organization. That goes against all the standards of freedom that America represents.
Furthermore, it simply demonstrates, without any question, that these people on the left are afraid of an open marketplace of ideas because they know that their own ideas will lose in such an open space.
Here is the full document.
https://www.scribd.com/document/390521673/The-Good-Censor-GOOGLE-LEAK#from_embed
28 comments
1 BennyOcean 2018-10-10
This is the real reason they're closing Google Plus.
1 tetragrammaton33 2018-10-10
Lol clearly. Not because it's an utterly failed social media platform costing them money.
1 HodgkinsNymphona 2018-10-10
They decided to censor everyone!
1 Darnaldt-rump 2018-10-10
This is what I would call modern day book burning. Except its even easier now with ai and algorithms they can target speech as specific as they want.
maybe it's time we go back to using paper and pencil
The funny thing is that Google pushes so hard for net neutrality yet they are the ones who want to control the flow of what information reaches society
"we at Google love and want a free and open internet! (as long as we get to decide what you see and what you read) because we've decided what is best for you"
1 Upupabove 2018-10-10
Exactly, net neutrality was the opposite of what it seemed. They often name bills the opposite of what they will actually do.
1 IanPhlegming 2018-10-10
It's the satanic "Law of Inversion." Why do you think they call Los Angeles the "City of Angels"? Why is it called the "Dept. of Defense"? Etc.
1 LET-7 2018-10-10
That's not what that means. It doesn't follow any train of logic.
1 eeeggg333 2018-10-10
We need an Internet Bill of Rights immediately... Crypto has to solve this somehow. What's internet 3.0 going to look like? Holochain?
1 t_bptm 2018-10-10
No, it needs to be solved technologically. Bill of rights does nothing, it is just words which will be explained as something different when the time comes.
memo.cash - uncensorable, distributed forum recorded on the bitcoin cash blockchain.
1 WTFppl 2018-10-10
They are only words if you do not seek to uphold the principles of the words.
1 whatdidusaybro 2018-10-10
decentralized, pied piper kind of system
there are projet that work on this, but we're not there yet
but in the end they will push us into developing safer and safer technologies until they shoot themselves in the foot
1 Cee-Jay 2018-10-10
I'm surprised this kind of thing hasn't been in the pipeline (sorry) ever since the first mobile bittorrent clients were pieced together for jailbroken iPhones...
​
Have you any additional literature on the projects you mention?
1 whatdidusaybro 2018-10-10
i'm not very current with these but quick search reveals a few promising ones like https://ipfs.io/ and https://storj.io/ https://beakerbrowser.com/ and there several router devices with mesh networking functionality so anyone can start building as well
1 HodgkinsNymphona 2018-10-10
The real conspiracy here is that Breitbart and Trump supporters are portraying this research paper as a corporate plan of action.
1 YertDirt 2018-10-10
What how? I think people just want free speech?
1 HodgkinsNymphona 2018-10-10
What is so confusing? The actual Google document is a research paper about censorship. It is being falsely portrayed as Google policy.
If conservatives really believed in free speech they would allow it instead of creating their own echo chambers.
1 YertDirt 2018-10-10
I don’t get why you just think it’s about conservatives but I guess you have a point then again I didn’t read it
1 HodgkinsNymphona 2018-10-10
Because Conservatives never shut up about it while doing the same exact same thing.
1 YertDirt 2018-10-10
I think you’re thinking about a small portion of conservatives I could apply the same principles to demarcates but I’m not because it’s stupid
1 MikeRusade 2018-10-10
The pivot to China is the new act to watch. All the big-tech big-noses are slowly pulling towards the communist system. You could say it's in their DNA
1 LET-7 2018-10-10
I'm not impressed by their China ambitions, but calling them communists for doing the most capitalist possible thing (chasing profits) is pretty foolish
1 TheUltimateSalesman 2018-10-10
It's almost like rich oligarchs are the same everywhere.
1 Dissenter9 2018-10-10
Nothing capitalistic about monopolies supported by government heads. This is cronyism, not open competition.
1 Upupabove 2018-10-10
It won't matter what they do bc this type of stuff only furthers the right wing narrative and adds fule to the fire. Not just here, but everywhere ...ok at Austria, Germany and other countries that were so close to the right taking over the leadership, and where they failed the last elections they will most likely win the next as shown by how close each election was.
1 ItsAllAbigGame 2018-10-10
Seriously, who are these people? Who determines what's best for me on the "Wild West" of the internet. Isn't there a saying "different strokes for different folks"? Please don't misinterpret what I say as I know what Goog is trying to do but dang. This is why we can't have nice things.
1 trudeauisapussy 2018-10-10
It's funny people been talking about this forever, hell, I'm gonna get shit on for this but its the truth; Alex Jones warned about this years ago even the social credit score system, all this stuff was being reported but msm ignored etc. Now we see it all coming to light, again.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/10/google-is-handing-the-future-of-the-internet-to-china/amp/
This stuff would've happened at a accelerated rate If Hillary got in too as it's been the plan for years she's been selling out the chicoms since Bills days when he sold all the nuke and missile secrets out to the Chinese for reelection campaign money.
https://observer.com/2016/09/facebook-and-youtube-show-frantic-alliegence-to-clinton/amp/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy
1 HelperBot_ 2018-10-10
Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy
HelperBot v1.1 /r/HelperBot_ I am a bot. Please message /u/swim1929 with any feedback and/or hate. Counter: 218970