I recently got some bad news from the owners of a well-established pro-gun website. They can no longer publish stories from the Second Amendment Foundation — or from any other pro-gun group, for that matter.
The reason? Google.
Their site now takes a “hit” from Google’s algorithm whenever it publishes non-original content, they told me. So from here on out, they can only run stories they’ve written themselves and that have never appeared anywhere else. The days of sharing SAF reporting — or reporting from any other Second Amendment outlet — appear to be over. At least for now.
One thing is certain: Google is in business to make money. They are constantly tinkering with new ways to make even more of it. Google has never cared about anyone’s First or Second Amendment rights. They care about the bottom line.
It used to be that backlinks to other credible websites actually helped a news story. They improved your Google quality score — the metric Google uses, along with a handful of other factors, to decide how prominently your site shows up in search results. The higher the quality, the better the ranking.
Maybe all that has changed. Maybe it’s become old-fashioned.
Of course, there’s still one surefire way to climb Google’s rankings: pay Google directly. They love cash.
And there’s plenty of it coming in. Alphabet pulled in roughly $402.8 billion in revenue last year (SEC filing). That’s a staggering number. Per Google’s own AI, it’s enough to fund more than ten years of education for every child on earth, finance 40 Marvel movies, build three International Space Stations, or scrub every bit of plastic from the world’s oceans for the next 80 years.
Here’s the thing. If any government agency told a pro-gun website what it could and couldn’t publish, the accusations of censorship would come flying — and rightly so. But because Google is a private company, we’re supposed to shrug and move on?
Several prominent critics have recently accused Google of “monopoly behavior” — prioritizing revenue generation over user experience. I wholeheartedly agree. Their latest anti-gun move proves it.
Google wants pro-gun readers to see a handful of stories from a handful of approved authors — not a broad, diverse ecosystem of Second Amendment journalism. Websites that don’t fall in line get punished severely.
That is pure censorship. 100%. The fact that Google is a private firm rather than a government agency does not change what it is. They are restricting access to information. They are withholding the truth.
Lee Williams is the Chief Editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. The SAF Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be possible without support from readers like you. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation and help keep pro-gun stories like this one coming.
It’s time to write my President and Congresscritters.
I’ll do it by the end of the weekend, I promise. Anybody else?
A colonoscopy on an earthworm would be more worthwhile than contacting any political representative of either party.
Yea, there are many better options especially for conservatives: Tor, Brave, FireFox, Opera, Vivaldi just to name just a few.
If that works for you, have at it. I’ve written to my congressmen, federal and state several times over the years and from different states. Always get a real nice form letter with all sorts of things saying how hard they are working. And nothing is ever done.
One state level rep did say she would look into the issue and get back to me. That’s been 14 months ago now. One senator told me to get lost as I was not a resident of her state. I disagreed as her decisions affects all of us. No response. One rep came to the house last week campaigning. What concerns to you have. Oh, that’s state or county level, I can’t do anything about that.
My general impression is the people we elect to run things don’t give a flip about us. Probably 80% of them anyway. Just send money. Good luck with your writing.
Me love Uncle pi Don.
He make Googah behave.
Uncle pi Don much constitution.
‘555’🇺🇸🥰
officialdemocRatlintlicker…You and your politically inept Gun talking blowbag ilk are to the Second Amendment what drunk farting gasbags are to fine dining. Call harris/walz for help and then gfy.
google is as dumb as the Gun Control adoring democRats it caters to.
f google…time for some Kris…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gPGuUHNT7U4&si=x_EiR3jEHojw9X3O
YouTube is owned by google.
Debbie, that was the funniest post you’ve ever made.
Whenever you search for anything anymore the results are clogged full of AI slop results, and even the -n trick seems less useful lately.
Also, for some reason the TTAG homepage kept redirecting to 127.0.0.1 the other night. Not sure why it was doing that, but I was able to get article pages to load normally from my history.
Likely just an error somewhere along the line.
127.0.0.1 is a loopback address for machines running multiple programs to allow those programs to interact.
I forgot to add, you can kinda poke around with this if you like:
If you want an example, on more modern windows machine open your terminal as admin and type “netstat -p TCP”.
You’ll note a lot of them are 127.0.0.1:xxxx(x)
If you’re running a base debian distro, the command is “ip addr show”. (You can add the netstat command with “sudo apt install net-tools” in most cases.)
Generally the first hit will be “lo”, loopback. 127.0.0.1/8
Oh, yeah, and if you get a list that’s constantly refreshing (you will with what I gave you) so your terminal no longer responds to commands, you can kill the refresh and get a command prompt back.
As a note, if you’re interested in how many connections you have to google itself, “netstat -f”, which will resolve the hostname and not just the IP you’re connected to.
*can kill the refresh with Ctrl+C”
FML, what a day.
Are you speaking english? I did not understand a thing you just wrote.
Of note for those who prefer to be technically correct:
“Well, it’s a TCP connection from my router’s IP on port 52253” is untrue.
It’s a connection from my IP, assigned to that machine by my router, on said port.
“Don’t be evil” is the antithesis of what they (Google) actually are, ironically
Google ditched their mantra of “do not evil” a really long time ago.
Does anyone use google anymore? Why TF would you do that? There’s plenty of superior alternatives – I use Brave, myself.
Like 9 out of 10 people searching world-wide use Google. Partly because of Android phones I imagine.
Not that it really matters because the company is such a behemoth and everything’s running Google Analytics, as such the web is mostly structured to cater to Google.
Everything from website design to top listed content is built to cater to them.
This is why there are all sorts of things that lose functionality if you don’t access them with Chrome. Shit, even OpenMANET is built in some regards this way.
To change the default search engine on your phone, go to the Settings app, find the Search section, and select your preferred search engine from the options available. This process may vary slightly depending on whether you are using an Android or iPhone.
2015 is calling…
Now, as I said:
Like 9 out of 10 people searching world-wide use Google.
You expect functionally illiterate 3rd worlders to know or care? I mean, have you met a European?
I’m not an expert, but as I understand it Brave does it’s own indexing of the net making it far more independent than other search engines that rely on google’s index. Duck is good for privacy, but still relies on Googles indexing. Brave is great for privacy as a browser, very good as a search engine (although if all you have is a part number for a washing machine part Google is still the place to go) and you can get an android version for the phone. I recently summoned up my courage and set up linux and Brave was easy to install and use. And boy is it different from windows.
before using google playstore, always check F-Droid first.
Just don’t sudo rm -rf * and you’ll be fine.
I use Brave and shun all things Googly. But most do not.
Duck Duck Go
How you get Duck Duck Go?
Me have use Google.
Download Duck Duck Go on Google Play Store.
Google, Duck, Firefox, Brave it all Google
Download Duck Duck Go on Google Play Store.
The irony here is at astronomical levels.
Don’t you have to use Google to get Duck Duck Go?
No. You can change your search engine in whatever browser you are using to use DDG as your default search. Uncheck Google. Furthermore, you don’t have to use Google to get Brave. If you are using an iCrap it is available as are other privacy oriented browsers.
I use a de-googled version of Android called Graphene. I get the few apps I need from the Aurora app store. I can’t buy premium versions but I find I get what I really need.
though they don’t allow trackers they do have a liberal bias on search results, research it.
startpage.com
$402.8 billion should be enough to finance roughly 4000 Marvel movies, not just 40. AI makes a lot of errors…
Google is in business to make money. They are constantly tinkering with new ways to make even more of it. Google has never cared about anyone’s First or Second Amendment rights. They care about the bottom line.
This is a shockingly naive view of how Alphabet or Google function.
They’ve used a “finger on the scale” method with their algorithms to screw people they ideologically disagree and promote their ideological fellow travelers for a decade.
They bend, break and even ignore their own rules when they WANT something. Every election season your Right leaning podcasts become very hard to find if you’re not a sub, and they’ll even turn off your notifications when you put them on. How is “encouraging you not to watch content” helping their bottom line in a lasse faire model?
It goes the other way too: Regardless of what you think of her, Candace Owens makes a mint off YT and makes them a bigger mint. However, it’s beyond argument that she is basically a walking, talking ToS violation. Channels have been nuked for single instances of things she does multiple times per week, sometimes multiple times per show.
Yet if you log out and use a clean browser she’s constantly on the YT front page being pushed. Why? Because she’s divisive within the cohort that Google sees as their ideological opponents, so they don’t just allow her behavior, they prop her up and expand her reach.
The author should cease to apply general free market assumptions to big-tech and look at the information from people who actually research this or work in the space.
Easier to fool than show people they were fooled. For fun I occasionally use altavista just to see what comes up but yeah google is the search results for any meaningful measure.
Interesting. DNK altavista is still around. Really liked it when it was first introduces.
Doesn’t altavista just search the waybackmachine, where altavista is kept, at this point?
I wasn’t aware that it still existed as a general endeavor.
Now that I look again it looks like they finally killed it as it links to yahoo.
+1 for Duck Duck Go.
It may be working insofar as the stories are being blocked, but as to whether it is working as, i’m sure google would wish, its not.
Gun ownership has been fairly stable at about 30% of adults for the last 50 years.
We find the news, hence TTAG.
“They are restricting access to information. They are withholding the truth.”
And?
In my house, and business (hoped for), I withhold information, and determine what may be said/seen on the premises; all perfectly legal and beneficial to me. Sorry (not sorry) the first and second amendments restrict govt, not individuals.
Do I like how Google operates? Of course not. Do I have any effective alternative to Google? Maybe, maybe not. Now what?
The general line of thinking is that .gov has allowed Google to become what it is and that the closest historical analog is telephone companies.
As it stands, the only reason that Google is what it is has to do with .gov allowing them two freedoms simultaneously. 1. They have censorship power at will and 2. they are not liable for what other people use their services for.
Let’s compare that to real property.
I dig a deep well on my property and fail to properly add safety measures. A kid both trespasses and falls in, I’m potentially liable for that. I can be sued, though the plaintiff’s victory is not assured.
Legally speaking, there’s a duty imposed on me to place safety precautions and warnings about the danger and if I don’t then the law treats the trespasser as if they were an invited guest who was not warned about a danger I knew existed whence the liability.
So, with Google, they’re inviting the public onto their digital “property” we’re guests. Yet, they have no legal liability if we “fall into a well on their property” yet at the same time they are allowed to effectively tie us up and hold us as hostages so long as we’re on their property (or any adjoining properties, honestly) in order to, ostensibly, keep us from falling into the well.
Would we allow that with children?
If we remove the legal liability for kids falling into our hypothetical well (since Google has no liability) would we then allow that property owners could assault, hog-tie and lock kids in a soundproofed garage after having invited them onto the property, and then claim they did it to prevent the kids from falling into our well?
I suspect not. I suspect that behavior would get you felony charges and looked at as a potential predator.
Agree. Merely pointing out that private businesses are like private homes, in that, like private homes, private businesses have freedom to restrict what is said or done in/on business property, or equipment.
It is so tiresome to hear people complain about “censorship” being committed by non-govt entities. Restaurants “censure”, retail outlets “censure”, news organizations “censure”, political conventions censure, movie production companies “censure”. That is, they all have freedom to restrict information, words, speech, demonstrations they don’t like. Actually, only govt can actually “censure” behavior/words.
Time to move on. There are billionaires (few) in this country who fund conservative causes; let them fund the new, conservative, online search monster, and “censure” commie crap all they want.
At a certain point your business becomes the public square, which was the goal of the company in the first place.
At that point, you’ve kinda crossed a line in terms of what you can and cannot do. I’d say that Google has reached that point.
It would seem that there should be two options granted:
1. Stop censoring opinions you don’t like.
2. We break you up like the Bells. That may completely destroy some of the businesses, oh well, tough shit.
Love breakup talk.
One caution, when USG dismantled Standard Oil, Rockefeller became richer than ever.
This is simply anti-gun socialist Marxist inspired “LBJ/KGB” style censorship which is morally and intellectually dishonest, deceitful, hypocritical, elitist, and odiously damnable vile!
What Google is doing is illegal. They invite people to put up websites, making them a common carrier. They should pay through the nose for their illegal activities. The courts have shirked their duties in the matter as have prosecutors.
I hate Google and use it and its affiliates like YouTube as little as possible, but I’m not sure that I want the government regulating them, if that is even Constitutional and possible.
If and when the Democrats win back Congress and the Presidency, do you want them regulating the Web? The Biden Administration created a new government department for censorship of their political enemies.