Russian regulator Roskomnadzor will send a request to the Google office in Russia asking to explain their definition of "ranking". The reason was the intention of the American corporation to reduce the number of messages from RT and Sputnik in their news bulletins. Daria Kozlova tried to figure out the causes and the consequences of such policy.
Google never blocks or bans, that's not its policy. It simply lowers the rating.
After such statements, a joke comes to mind: "The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results". At the International Security Forum, Eric Schmidt declared the company's new policy. The Sputnik Agency, before any discussion, was labeled a propaganda media.
- "I had a subscription to Google News in German. 5 out of 10 news results are propaganda like Sputnik. Why do you help them earn their money?"
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Alphabet: "We are well aware of that. We are working on identifying such scenarios and lowering the rank of those websites. It's mostly RT and Sputnik".
The new algorithm will allow for the lowering of the rating of questionable (according to Google) websites in Google News results. Who will develop the criteria and why would some news be considered questionable wasn't exactly clarified. It's also unclear, for what legal, not political mind, reasons that Google has already put RT and Sputnik on the list.
Margarita Simonyan, Editor-in-Chief of RT: "It was Google that released a statement that RT violated no rules. Is now enforcing censorship. They are developing an algorithm that would make our news disappear or appear in a weird way just because RT is Russian just because the American security services wish to limit our access to the global audience".
According to Schmidt, the ranking system has just started functioning but American experts claim that Google had introduced such a policy a long time ago. They even managed to notice the pattern that sends certain media to the 2nd page.
Dan Kovalik, Pittsburgh University: "In August there was a report on Google lowering the rank of some websites. I have a list of 12 American websites that offered an alternative view. All these websites are reporting a fall in the number of visitors. When Google begins to censor a certain website we all end up being censored".
On the 13th of October, RT was practically forced to register as a foreign agent. Now the US-officials have turned their eye to the Internet. It's a form of censorship, in that they want to lure users away from the content provided by RT. It would influence the public opinion in the US.
The relationship between Google and the US government is mutually advantageous. In 2012, the corporation made it on the list of the most generous lobbyists in Washington. In 2013, when Obama was pushing the idea of the invading Syria, Google published and announced the main news from Washington straight under the search bar at the main page. Jared Cohen is one of the top Google officials, the founder, and CEO of Google Ideas as well as a former employee of the US Department of State who was an advisor to Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. The criteria that regulate the news ranking of the main international search tool may be rolling to Silicon Valley straight from Capitol Hill.
Daria Kozlova, Darina Fomova Vesti
