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by jakear 2261 days ago
> If you Google "Piratebay", the first search result is a fake "thepirate-bay.org" (with a dash) but the Wikipedia article lists the right one. — shpx

How interesting. Bing doesn't do this, which leads me to believe it's not a matter of legality. Is Google simply electing to self-censor results that it'd prefer it's used not to know about? Strange move, especially given the alternative Google does index is almost definitely more nefarious.

5 comments

Google has been downranking sites based on copyright takedown requests since 2018 at least [0]. And it's been very hard to find torrent sites or streaming sites through Google since then in my experience.

As many have pointed out, this just makes it easier for actually malicious sites to get traffic.

[0] https://torrentfreak.com/google-downranks-65000-pirate-sites...

Google does list proper pirating sites!

At the bottom of the page click on the DMCA complaint, you'll find all the URLs you shouldn't ever, never ever, click on~

Whats funny and ironic is that this actually makes finding pirated content much easier since only actual sites that contain pirated content are the ones that will be listed on DMCA complaint list
In recent years it is less easy, as content owners are now reporting huge batches of URLs in one complaint, so finding what you are looking for in this mass is much harder. They also often report fake downloads and scam websites in DCMA complaints.
Yes I wonder if these URLs have to be made public by law in DMCA notices.

I assume that, if they legally could, they wouldn't show you anything

The notices don't have to be disclosed to anyone but the alleged infringer. The URLs don't have to be hyperlinked either. This is one part of Google giving the trolls a middle finger.
Google should index them all on a separate page. For science of course.

More than once I've done a search for something pedestrian (no intent for piracy/etc) only to notice the "some results removed" link. Out of curiosity I've clicked it, just to see what crazy things have been removed, and been quite amused/interested in the results.

> At the bottom of the page click on the DMCA complaint, you'll find all the URLs you shouldn't ever, never ever, click on~

I don't think everyone is seeing this, because sometimes I see this but sometimes not, seems to depend on the query. Searching for "piratebay" doesn't show it in the bottom (I live in an European country [also in EU]) and meanwhile, official thepiratebay website is blocked on a ISP level here.

I'm not sure how long that's been the case. The actual site at their normal domain seems to have been down for a few months, with a 522 cloudflare timeout.

I'm curious if that's the case for you as well, or if it's my ISP blocking (I wouldn't expect to see the cloudflare error if my ISP was blocking but I don't know).

I bring this up because if the site is unresponsive from wherever you're searching (or perhaps unresponsive for all, idk) then maybe it got de-ranked on google.

For me the address on Wikipedia times out with a 522 in exactly the same way. Bing's top result of the .party address works fine. I strongly suspect this is an ISP issue, but it is interesting that Google seems to have no knowledge of the .party domain.
Just tested over Tor and it works: piratebayztemzmv.onion

P.S. Yes, it's their new official "readable" onion site link.

Note that this is their official website, not just another fake Tor proxy

https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-moves-to-a-brand-new...

Is the .party actual official website, or is it just a proxy too?
That's the case for me for months now. I have no idea where do the proxies and mirrors even take the content from.
Piratebay is blocked in a few countries (like the Netherlands[0]). So proxies (with their own ads of course) are good business.

[0] https://blog.iusmentis.com/2017/06/19/eu-hof-verklaart-the-p...

This fake one seems to work fine. To what end is it there, honeypot or just ad money?