[diogenescynic]

Meh, I have a hard time caring about this because I want Google to block propaganda and misinformation. From my experience, socialist websites and forums tend to ignore, rewrite, or white wash the history of communism in Russia/USSR, Venezuela, and even North Korea. So much so that the No True Scotsman fallacy should just be the No True Socialist fallacy. Go check out /r/socialism if you want your head to spin. According to that sub, there were no famines in the USSR, Stalin never killed anyone, and everything bad we hear about Venezuela is just media bias. And then when it's objectively true and can't be dodged, they aren't really socialists.

[dibujante]

...how far does "propaganda and misinformation" go? Political parties also put out propaganda and misinformation, as do businesses and individuals.

[evanlivingston]

Who determines what is misinformation?

[mhermher]

A private company with no oversight, obviously.

[geezerjay]

> A private company with no oversight, obviously.

Would you prefer a state/government entity? Or a political organization? Because god knows that socialist regimes are so hell-bent on promoting truth and impartial reports on inconvenient facts.

[diogenescynic]

No oversight whatsoever... none... obviously.

And really, would you seriously prefer the government to set search rankings? Because they have no conflict of interest either, right?

[pmarreck]

It's almost like "truth" isn't an absolute thing, but an ongoing discussion... which has become fractured!

[diogenescynic]

And yet there are observable and objective facts. Water freezes at 32 degrees. The sky is blue. Grass is green.

When a source repeatedly tells you not to believe your own eyes, but offers no valid counter-argument--you should be suspicious. I'm fine with Google/Facebook or whoever filtering out known dishonest and inaccurate websites, whether they are intentionally malicious or just ignorant.

[undersuit]

So WSWS is a known dishonest and/or inaccurate website?

[macspoofing]

WSWS? Oh yeah. It's an extreme left site that makes no attempt at any objectivity.

[undersuit]

I hate to have to ask again. Lack of objectivity isn't dishonest or inaccurate.

ob·jec·tive (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

So is WSWS a dishonest and/or inaccurate website?

[macspoofing]

If you notice, they seemed to be flagged for neutral historical search queries. Things like "Russian Revolution". Someone reading it would get a viewpoint that is not supported by mainstream historians. So yes, dishonest.

[slededit]

Up on the top of this mountain my water freezes at 31 degrees! You are a liar and propagandist.

[pmarreck]

> When a source repeatedly tells you not to believe your own eyes, but offers no valid counter-argument--you should be suspicious

Who put Google in charge of determining what is true and what is fakenews? And how are you entirely comfortable with that?

[codedokode]

Would not it be better to explain why something is a propaganda and what is its purpose rather than block it?

[pbreit]

This is ironic, right?

[mmbaghdad]

so much reductionism, there isn't one left. there're factions and they do have different opinions on the previous political projects.

[diogenescynic]

Sorry, but the tankies who think nothing bad has ever been done in the name of communism are just as foolish as the InfoWars junkies screaming about chem-trails.

[ue_]

Do you have evidence that this website in question is a "tankie" website? Or does it offer a different viewpoint, or a range of viewpoints?

[zeep]

you want them to block what you think is misinformation, but what they paint as misinformation might be very different.

[etplayer]

>From my experience, socialist websites and forums tend to ignore, rewrite, or white wash the history of communism in Russia/USSR

Your experience is irrelevant, because we're talking about a particular case, not a hypothetical website. Do you have evidence that your experience applies in this particular case, or are you just generalising? For a user named after a philosopher, you don't seem to be very keen to apply logic in this circumstance, perhaps because of bias or bad prior experience.

Not to mention you're grouping in several tendencies and ideologies and opinions within a very broad movement that's lasted 200 years to date in your criticism, which is at best inaccurate and at worst disingenuous.

[macspoofing]

>Your experience is irrelevant, because we're talking about a particular case, not a hypothetical website.

It's also true in this case. WSWS is a political and a ideological advocacy site with a non-mainstream interpretation of world history. If you want an objective view of the Russian Revolution, this is not the site you would go to - so I have no issues with Google tuning their search engine to suppress them in the search results for those kinds of queries.

[etplayer]

>WSWS is a political and a ideological advocacy site

I'm always a little amused when people use "ideology" in this way. Marx said that ideology promotes "false consciousness" about political power structures; by this measure, that which exposes false consciousness is anti-ideological. So by this measure, WSWS is non-ideological.

On the other hand, Zizek claims that for someone to actually be captured by ideology, the ideology must be first presented to them as non-ideological. Can you see the conundrum? Ideology isn't an illusion, rather, to be rid of ideology may be to put on the glasses rather than take them off, to use Zizek's example in the film They Live.

>with a non-mainstream interpretation of world history

Perhaps it is the mainstream that is ideological, because it's true ideology that holds the most power!

[macspoofing]

>So by this measure, WSWS is non-ideological.

And by every other (sane) measure, Socialism, Communism, Marxism are regular ideologies.

>Perhaps it is the mainstream that is ideological, because it's true ideology that holds the most power!

Playing with language is fun, I agree.