Bent out of Shape

Posted on April 27, 2004 in Google Eyes Hatred Mailbox

It’s Politics Tuesday. And today, I stuck my neck out a great deal.

These extracts come from an email from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. They form a response to remarks coming at the end of my April 16, 2004 Roundup regarding the Google counter-bombing of the word “Jew”:

Joel, I just came from reading the official Google letter/response to
someone’s complaint letter regarding the use of the word “Jew” to reach
anti-semitic results….

Although in your link to Google, where they explained how this was
happening and offered educational links in kind to several Jewish online
resources, blah, blah, blah, …. here is what I see:

“Because of our objective and automated ranking system, Google cannot be
influenced by these petitions. The only sites we omit are those we are
legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to
manipulate our results.”

To me, this statement is a direct contradiction. They say they are
objective? Okay, fine. And therefore, they cannot be influenced by these
petitions; again, fine.

But then they say: “The only sites” they “omit are those … maliciously
attempting to manipulate” their results.

Now I’m no statistician, linguist, or ethics professor, neither am I
Jewish, however, isn’t the whole point of entering the word “Jew” which
obviously has seriously negative connotations (as they very sensitively
explained,) that by using that particular word, the search WILL
manipulate their results to reach hate sites, or why else would this
page and letter be necessary in the first place?

Because they are getting “googled” (manipulated) to place higher in
Googleville, particularly, the Aryan Race Neighborhood.

It’s linguistic politics, plain and simple.

Anyway, I just found that whole explanation for why they couldn’t honor
the petitions, as bogus. They aren’t being very subtle. And the reason
this irritates me so, is because I just fought a several-months-long war
to ban and remove a ring leader for the scarily growing anti-semitic
movement (growing exponentially, globally, btw;) from spreading his hate
messages on a public discussion forum … and … I got crucified. “I’m
not racist!” I heard. “You’re the racist!” they accused. “You are
defiling the Constitution!” they screamed. “You are imposing your agenda
on my Right to Free Speech,” they accused.

For a while there, I was fighting all alone. I was scared. I got death
threats. I got hacked, spammed, flashed, you name it (we are now
receiving unsolicited Jewish/Israel/”stuff I didn’t order and don’t
understand” pamphlets in our MAIL BOX at the post office. What the hell.
These people are relentless in their pursuit of hate, vengeance, and
genocide.

Well, I just kept at it, gnawing, clawing, writing position papers,
arguments, speaking from my heart … and eventually, there were people
who sided with me, fought beside me, and our side grew in intensity of
mission, to eventually shame and run out the perpetrators and all his
new, wide-eyed, loyal followers, and man, were they all pissed. And did
that guy ever possess a presence, a mind-numbing, mesmerizing presence,
you could see a handful of new people falling for his spew every single
day. It was like, as soon as he would write something horrible, which
was thinly-veiled neo-Nazi-Aryan Race-type crap (I recognized it easily,
but I belong to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so maybe I’m a little
more sensitive to this rhetoric than most,) suddenly everyone lost their
minds, agreeing with him, blaming all the world’s ills and history’s
problems on the Jews … who were suddenly at fault for everything,
including perpetrating the Holocaust myth and controlling the world’s
wealth and banking industry (did I mention Hollywood?) … oy vey.

As if.

I think my reponses were more like “Bite me, jackboot,” towards
the end there, but I started out much more gentle and reasonable in the
beginning. Anyway, this battle went on for several months, and finally,
we got rid of them and most of the followers, although some still
remain, silent, surely, taking pot shots whenever they can. At least the
line has been drawn. There is now a zero-tolerance policy in place at
the forum. And many watchdogs, taking turns to keep an eye on things to
keep it out. They have their own sites, they don’t need to pollute ours
with their stench.

They are everywhere. They are legion. They are like goose-stepping
cockroaches, infesting every where. There is a groundswell of activity,
all over this sweet planet Earth. The walls appear to be moving, there
are so many.

I am offended that Google is taking the wienie approach to this problem.
But, that’s pretty typical for them, from what I understand, them being
so used to bending over backwards to please everyone that they are
permanently shaped like that now.

I don’t know what kind of risk I am taking by putting this comment up on my blog. Critic that I am of Israel, I am no friend of White Supremacists. The story told in this letter disturbs me deeply. I agree: Google is being cowardly. Furthermore, white supremacists remain free to terrorize.

Google is not a government — yet — but a private agency, a for-profit search engine. They do not have to make space for everyone. It seems that what they are waiting for is a massive outcry, a threat to their profits.