Google blocks Infogalactic
a case study in Big Tech censorship, with implications for indy Scotland
Infogalactic is a fork of the English-language Wikipedia that was set up to combat Wikipedia's perceived left-wing bias, and which also has looser rules on what is allowed:
InfoGalactic is intended to have less alleged politically progressive, left-wing, or "politically correct" bias than Wikipedia, and to allow articles or statements that would not be allowed on Wikipedia because of problems with Wikipedia's policies on reliable sources, or due to alleged biases held by Wikipedia editors. Standards on notability are more relaxed, within limits. Articles based on original research may also be allowed if all conflicts and controversies are disclosed.
So what happens if you look up Infogalactic in various search engines?
Searching Infogalactic on Bing
When searching for "infogalactic" on Bing, the website is the first search result.
This is obviously the correct behaviour, 10/10 for Microsoft.
Searching Infogalactic on Duck Duck Go
When searching for "infogalactic" on Duck Duck Go, the website is the first non-advert search result.
Duck Duck Go have to earn their money somehow so I'm giving them 9.9/10 for this search result.
Searching Infogalactic on Qwant
When searching for "infogalactic" on Qwant, the website is the first non-advert search result.
The same comments apply to Qwant as to Duck Duck Go: they have to earn their money somehow. So, again, they get 9.9/10 for this search result.
Searching Infogalactic on Google
When searching for "infogalactic" on Google, the website doesn't appear on the first page of search results, unlike all the other search engines I tried.
I'm giving Google 0/10 for this crappy biased effort. It's clear they dislike Infogalactic on ideological grounds and are blocking it. How much other stuff do they block on ideological grounds? I don't know, and I suspect you, dear reader, don't know either. Google boss Sundar Pichai might know, but big companies like Google generally make efforts not to produce or spread round internal documents saying incriminating things, so it is quite possible that there is no centralised document listing all the websites they block or down-rate.
If you use Google as your search engine, they'll be the gatekeepers of what information you see, and they hope you'll never find out what they're blocking. You might not even be aware that they are censoring stuff and manipulating search results -- that's real power on their part, the ability to manipulate people who all the while have no idea they are being manipulated.
Implications for an independent Scotland
When Scotland wins independence from Westminster, we must not just swap that for dependence on foreign Big Tech corporations; we would be merely swapping one master for another, and "independence" on those terms would all be in vain. In the modern world, no country can be truly independent when its computing and communication infrastructure is controlled by outsiders.
Google wants to increase their wealth and power and will continue to do so until they are stopped.
It's not just Google, of course. Another example of foreign Big Tech is the Chinese company Huawei, which wishes to insert itself in everyone's telecom networks, so China can spy on us.
So how do we stop foreign Big Tech from controlling us? Many of the steps that could be taken are a lot easier as members of the European Union. As I keep emphasizing, in geopolitics, size matters. Independent Scotland must be a member of the EU. This is not because it is perfect (it obviously isn't), it is simply the only game in town.
So what could the EU do to limit the power of foreign big tech. Here's a few ideas:
(1) Require that a search engine cannot own any other websites. Then they can never be tempted to list their own results higher.
(2) Ban a company from owning multiple social networks. So Facebook would have to divest itself of Instagram and Snapchat. This also prevents them from ranking their own sites more highly. Facebook and Twitter have both recently announced they are building sites to compete with Substack and obviously they will be tempted to rank their own sites more highly.
(3) Feeds to be time ordered, not algorithmic. So if you follow people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, the default feed you get would be the most recent posts from people you follow in chronological order
(4) Ban targetted ads. This would mean that ads would have to be based on the page you're looking at, not on who is looking. Doing this enhances privacy. It also hurts the business models of Google and Facebook, and makes it easier for competitors, who won't any more have to compete with massive ad networks that (because of their size) can efficiently serve privacy-violating targetted ads.
(5) Ban tracking cookies. Ban cookies and other technologies used to track users across platforms, to enhance privacy.
(6) Encourage local alternatives. The EU should encourage locally run and owned alternatives to foreign big tech firms.
All these things would obviously be a lot easier to do, and would have more impact, at the EU level than Scotland doing them alone.