Thursday, April 15, 2004
Anti-Semitic
site bumped off Google's top spot A WORLD-WIDE effort has
succeeded in bumping an anti-Semitic web site from
its No. 1 rank on the popular search engine
Google. Utilizing a cyber-petition and some clever HTML
programming, a diverse group of Jewish activists,
academics and even a US senator managed to replace
the top spot with Wikipedia's encyclopedia, which
two weeks ago held no
rank. David
Irving comments: A CORRESPONDENT writes to me Friday,
April 16, 2004: "I ran a search on Google
for 'Jew' today. Jewwatch.com is still
number one (despite claims to the
contrary) but Google has included a sort
of disclaimer. However, the site itself is
down (server not found). This may be
significant. I also checked out
jewwatch.org This site has been
'cybersqatted' [i.e., the enemy has
seized the domain name]. So much
for freedom of speech.". |
Google Inc. had come under fire for refusing to
remove the site, Jew Watch, which appeared No. 1
out of 1.75 relevant entries when a search for
"Jew" was conducted. Jew Watch's mandate is to keep
a "close watch on Jewish communities and
organizations worldwide." "I
certainly am very offended by the site," said
Sergey Brin, (left, in drag) who
launched Google with fellow Stanford University
graduate student Larry Page in the late
1990s, "but the objectivity of our rankings is one
of our very important principles." Angered by Google's response, New York-based
real estate investor
Steven Wienstock launched an online petition
on his site Remove Jew Watch. The petition
attracted over 82,000 signatures in just two
weeks. Many people signed the petition out of worry
that any person looking to find out about Judaism
would be offered choices such as the "Jewish Mind
Control," "Jewish World Conspiracies," and "Jewish
Banking and Financial Manipulations." Under one of the categories, titled
'Revisionists - 6,000,000 Jews DID NOT DIE,' there
are dozens of links to articles dedicated to
Holocaust revisionism. However, the investor-cum-internet crusader has
also received multiple threats, hate mail and
unwanted damage by computer hackers. Instead of
showing the petition, Remove Jew Watch temporarily
displayed pornographic images and the message "the
lamest site ever." Google said it would not be swayed by
Weinstock's petition, noting that a web site's
ranking was automatically determined by computer
algorithms. "Sometimes subtleties of language cause
anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted," said
Brin. "A search for "Jew" brings up one such
unexpected result." The Anti-Defamation
League, which monitors hate groups and
anti-Semitic activity, backed Google's decision not
to remove the hate site. "The ranking of Jew Watch and other hate sites
is in no way due to a conscious choice by Google,
but solely is a result of this automated system of
ranking," said the Anti-Defamation League in a
March 30 letter on its website. But US Senator (NY-D) Charles Schumer
sent Google a letter asking that it change its
algorithm to lower Jew Watch's ranking in the
search results. In the end, the anti-Semitic site
was done in by those same content-blind algorithms,
which were exploited by using a popular technique
called "Google bombing," said Daniel
Sieradski, editor of Jew School, a Web site
dedicated to Jewish fringe culture. "I decided to issue a call to arms on my Web
site, asking people to make a coordinated effort to
link all Internet communications to Wikipedia using
the word 'Jew,'" said Sieradski. When done in a coordinated effort, such linking
is known as a "Google Bomb." Although not illegal,
the technique exploits Google's technology by
artificially boosting the popularity of the
targeted site. "I can understand Google's concern that this
method can be abused," said Sieradski. "I admit
that we are abusing it; but frankly, I think it's
for a good cause." Others agree and have joined the fight to
replace the anti-Semitic site. University of
Manchester political science professor Norman
Geras has included a link to Wikipedia "Jew" on
his home page. While Jew Watch is no longer the number one site
that appears when a viewer conducts a Google search
for "Jew," many critics of the site said they will
not be happy until its completely eliminated from
search engine results. Copyright 2004 The
Jerusalem Post
-
Google
Says It Doesn't Plan to Change Search
Results
-
Three
cheers Organised
attempts by furious Jews around the world to
bomb "enemy" website off Google's top ranking:
Google refuses to come to their
aid | More
on
this story
-
Charleston
Post and Courier article
-
Jewish
Journal of Greater Los Angeles
story
-
CNET
News article
-
Controversy over Google
search-engine grows: Harvard
experts on Web censorship detect that Google
engine, bowing to German and French pressure,
suppresses sites (including
ours)
| Who
hijacked it? | Who
writes the offensive "category" notes? | See
too Google
Watch | Jamie
McCarthy's role | Who
hijacked ...
(continued) |
"C"
discovers another odd thing about it |
The
Memory Hole: Google engine has sanitised the
David Shayler website
[more on Google's
Web-fixing] | More
on The Google Gods
| Google.de
schließt illegale Seiten aus
-
So
much for First Amendment: As the traditional
enemies slowly throttle free speech, report
shows Internet filtering now in 43% of US public
libraries
(thank God for the home
computer)
-
Websites
become dependent on Google search
engine
-
White
House Alters Website To Block Google
Archives
-
The
two brains behind Google
-
Lynda
Mortl has been investigating library censorship
of websites
-
Robert
Fisk identifies US missile that killed 62 Arabs,
by using Google
-
Censorship
of revisionism - at €1,100,000 (over
$1million) the largest budget item in Euro
Internet
-
Europe
to criminalize Internet "hate speech" including
hyperlinks to offensive pages
-
Google.de
schließt illegale Seiten aus
-
Canadian
Jewish newspapers warned that revisionists have
seized the Internet high ground, called for more
police censorship
|