[macspoofing]

>The WSWS has been blacklisted in searches dealing with history, and in particular historical topics related to the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. These include the terms “Russian revolution,” “Bolshevik revolution” and “October revolution,” all of which returned results in the top 50 in April

That's probably ... correct.

[ReadEvalPost]

Why is that correct? Looking at their website they're currently running a lecture series/look back at the Russian revolution: http://www.wsws.org/en/special/1917/chronology.html

None of it seems to be conspiracy theory or low-quality material.

[LamaOfRuin]

"...what Google, working with the highest levels of the state intelligence apparatus, does not want them to find."

I'd classify that as conspiracy theory.

[hellbanner]

It is a conspiracy theory.

Do you have a better explanation?

[macspoofing]

Yeah. The NSA and the CIA doesn't care about WSWS, and Google simply made an editorial decision that these guys don't have a credible or objective view of history and shouldn't be a search result for neutral terms on history. How's that for a non-conspiratorial version?

[majewsky]

Since when is Google making "editorial decisions"?

[macspoofing]

Bad choice of words. "Tuning their search engine" is more apt. Search is intrinsically a subjective domain.

[monochromatic]

Since they started trying to stamp out "fake news".

[bastawhiz]

I think you mean that it's a conspiracy, and I think there are plenty of better explanations than Google working secretly with governments to promote capitalism.

[markbnj]

It may not be but if Google's goal is to promote authoritative sources there's no reason to consider WSWS to be authoritative for those search terms, imo. I'm not saying I agree with their goal, just that this seems consistent with it, and I imagine that's what the reply was getting at.

[thesmallestcat]

What does "authoritative" mean anyway? I don't want my search results to be authoritative, I want them to be relevant, varied, and interesting. Google is not an encyclopedia. Google fails recently at providing varied results, on any topic you get a Wikipedia article, a load of the same blogspam from sites like Guardian, Atlantic, or Daily Mail, and then the same 1-2 paragraph article repeated 15 times on content farm websites. It used to be a lot easier to find weird corners of the web.

[adventured]

> Google is not an encyclopedia. Google fails recently at providing varied results, on any topic you get a Wikipedia article

That's not recent. Google has been returning Wikipedia as a near universal top result for a decade.

Regarding content farms, they overwhelmingly smashed the content farms with their panda & penguin updates years ago and have refined the destruction of content farms since then. Very few remain, much less sustain, outside of temporary niche corners.

[Steko]

Fox News, Russia Today, et al also feature no small amount of real news that provides a strong foundation to build their whole propaganda operation on. The SEP/WSWS are frequently described as a cult-like organization within the left, I have no problem with google penalizing them as a reliable source.

[macspoofing]

As an advocacy group for an extreme ideology do you think they have an objective view of history? If a person does a neutral search on, say, the history of the Russian Revolution, should they be up there?

[immanuelcan]

What is an "extreme ideology"? The WSWS is a Marxist organization. Of course, it has a specific view of the Russian Revolution--namely, the view of those who led and organized it, opposed to both Stalinist and western interpretations. Who is Google to decide that this conception of the Russian Revolution should be removed from searches, that people don't want to have access to it, in favor of promoting the New York Times and other publications attacking the Russian Revolution and reviving old right-wing slanders (e.g., Lenin was paid with German Gold)?

[macspoofing]

>What is an "extreme ideology"? The WSWS is a Marxist organization.

You've answered your question.

[rsync]

"None of it seems to be conspiracy theory or low-quality material."

Even if it were, if it "wins" the pagerank contest it should be represented in the results accordingly.

I don't go to google for a human-curated yahoo-style directory service. I go to google for search - specifically for pagerank-style search results.

[aaron-lebo]

It's not low quantity but it seems very filtered. Recently finished reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-New-History-ebook/...

The Russian revolution was co-opted by Lenin and the Bolsheviks who were funded by the German foreign office and more than anything else were unscrupulous about who they murdered. 25 million people were dead by the end of the revolution (early 20s).

There's not so much as a hint of that just scanning though the titles.

[ue_]

Interesting, is there anywhere I can read about this aside from the book you've linked? Although I am a Communist, I am critical of the Bolsheviks and I have an open mind.

[aaron-lebo]

Wish I had more to suggest, but Wiki has some good articles on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution

[mc32]

I think there's a documentary on Neflix UK. The cover some of it. I would suggest looking at Ukrainian sources --but generally speaking, my understanding is you can find much of the information in Russian archives as the Soviets kept good records thinking those would never see the light of day.

[tomfrome]

incidentally, here's what WSWS has to say about McMeekin: http://intsse.com/wswspdf/en/articles/2017/06/30/mcme-j30.pd...

[virgil_disgr4ce]

What do you mean?

[macspoofing]

Because they are an ideological advocacy group so they have a revisionist perspective on certain parts of history. What it means is that they don't speak objectively on those periods - so they shouldn't be returned as a search result if neutral terms are used.