Comments on: Google blacklists http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14979 p2pnet.net - reader powered Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:05:08 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Reader's Write http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14979/comment-page-1#comment-322717 Reader's Write Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:10:57 +0000 http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14979#comment-322717 hopefully wikipedias new search engine will be better. hopefully wikipedias new search engine will be better.

]]> By: Just my two cents http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14979/comment-page-1#comment-321745 Just my two cents Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:53:25 +0000 http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14979#comment-321745 This is true with google across the globe. A popular consumer advocacy site in Japan "Akutoku Shouhou Maniacs" (a site devoted to the exposure of online, phone, door to door, religion scams), has been facing much of the same problems. This site is compiled of several message boards to help and warn against scams, from the simple pyramid schemes to cults masquerading as sports clubs. It also has a repository of links to news articles related to scams, a sort of a anti-scam version of P2Pnet :). Several years ago, one of the posters at the message board ran about the cult backing of a well known Ramen restaurant chain, and about how the proceeds were going to the cult. The poster, who was an ex-employee of the restaurant, explained that upon receiving his first paycheck, he was told that they expected him to donate a large portion of his paycheck to the organization (read "cult"). Upon hearing of this post, the organization resorted to making multiple posts under different names, discrediting the ex-employee, and saying that the restaurant was in now way related to the organization (sound like a familiar tactic to anyone?). This was later disproved when a different post reviled that the leader of this cult, also was on the board of directors for the restaurant chain. To make this long story short, and to the point, the cult ended up trying to use a lawyer to remove the post, and give them the IP address for the poster, and the site refused, and even faught them in court about it, only to win. Then Cult later lodged a complaint to Google, that the site made false accusations, and Google blacklisted the site, without any warning or even fact checking of their end. The site's owner tried repeatedly to be taken off the black list for over 2 years, and finally gave up trying (He now has a sister site that re-directs the users to the main site). The point is, unless you have political or monetary power, Google will treat you like a pile of year-old rubbish, at a drop of a hat. But that is not to say that I don't use google, but it still is scary that people can use them to censor sites that they don't like. Just my two cents This is true with google across the globe.

A popular consumer advocacy site in Japan “Akutoku Shouhou Maniacs” (a site devoted to the exposure of online, phone, door to door, religion scams), has been facing much of the same problems. This site is compiled of several message boards to help and warn against scams, from the simple pyramid schemes to cults masquerading as sports clubs. It also has a repository of links to news articles related to scams, a sort of a anti-scam version of P2Pnet :) .

Several years ago, one of the posters at the message board ran about the cult backing of a well known Ramen restaurant chain, and about how the proceeds were going to the cult. The poster, who was an ex-employee of the restaurant, explained that upon receiving his first paycheck, he was told that they expected him to donate a large portion of his paycheck to the organization (read “cult”).

Upon hearing of this post, the organization resorted to making multiple posts under different names, discrediting the ex-employee, and saying that the restaurant was in now way related to the organization (sound like a familiar tactic to anyone?). This was later disproved when a different post reviled that the leader of this cult, also was on the board of directors for the restaurant chain.

To make this long story short, and to the point, the cult ended up trying to use a lawyer to remove the post, and give them the IP address for the poster, and the site refused, and even faught them in court about it, only to win. Then Cult later lodged a complaint to Google, that the site made false accusations, and Google blacklisted the site, without any warning or even fact checking of their end.

The site’s owner tried repeatedly to be taken off the black list for over 2 years, and finally gave up trying (He now has a sister site that re-directs the users to the main site).

The point is, unless you have political or monetary power, Google will treat you like a pile of year-old rubbish, at a drop of a hat.

But that is not to say that I don’t use google, but it still is scary that people can use them to censor sites that they don’t like.

Just my two cents

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