Always Be Evil: Google and the "Good Censor"

Google really needs to change their slogan right about now.

​So after Google's creepy, cult-like sob session after the election was leaked, now an 85-page internal briefing with the Orwellian-sounding title "The Good Censor" has been leaked as well.

As Breitbart reports, the briefing outlines the difference between the "American tradition," which is basically free speech, and the "European tradition," which "favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” (Translation: Gobbledigook that rationalizes censoring speech I don't like.)

Given the political opinions of most of the people in Silicon Valley in general and Google in particular, it should be rather obvious what being "The Good Censor" entails.

From Breitbart,

• P12 – The briefing says the early free-speech ideals of the internet were “utopian...”
• P14 – The briefing admits that Google, along with Twitter and Facebook, now “control the majority of online conversations...”
• P37 – The briefing acknowledges that China – for which Google has developed a censored search engine – has the worst track record on internet freedom.
• P45 – After warning about the rise of online hate speech, the briefing approvingly cites Sarah Jeong, infamous for her hate speech against white males (Google is currently facing a lawsuit alleging it discriminates against white males, among other categories).
• P45 – The briefing bemoans the fact that the internet has until recently been a level playing field, warning that “rational debate is damaged when authoritative voices and ‘have a go’ commentators receive equal weighting.”
• P70 – The briefing sums up the reasons for big tech’s “shift towards censorship,” including the need to respond to regulatory demands and “expand globally,” to “monetize content through its organization,” and to “protect advertisers from controversial content, [and] increase revenues.”

And that's just a glimpse of it. And that's just what's admitted to in this briefing. 

As I've noted before, Google--and to a lesser degree other tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter--is becoming a sort of "government of the Internet." It is basically governing the Internet and search engine traffic in the way that the East India Company governed India during the period of "company rule" from 1757 until after the Sepoy Rebellion. And given the power of surveillance modern technology enables, it's hard to see how anything could throw off its yoke if Google and the other tech giants become truly authoritarian.

We should see to it that it doesn't get that far.