Tech giant Google is attempting to have the High Court of Australia overturn a 2020 ruling, claiming that it would have a “devastating” effect on the internet and force Google to “act as censor.” Of course, Google, or “the Good Censor” as one internal document Breitbart News exclusively reported on calls it, already engaged in widespread censorship.
Engadget reports that tech giant Google is attempting to overturn a 2020 ruling by the High Court of Australia, claiming that the ruling would have a “devastating” effect on the internet and would force Google to “act as censor.”
Google train (Alex Wong /Getty)
The 2020 ruling awarded a lawyer $40,000 in defamation damages over an article made available via Google’s search engine. Geroge Defteros, a Victoria state lawyer, contacted Google in 2016 asking the company to remove a 2004 article from the Age. The article included reporting on murder charges prosecutors filed against Defteros related to the death of three men.
The charges against Defteros were dropped in 2005, but Google refused to remove the article from its search engine as it said that the Age was a reputable source. The situation eventually went to court and Defteros successfully argued that the article and Google’s search results defamed him.
The judge overseeing the case ruled that the article from the Age implied Defeteros had been personally linked to Melbourne’s criminal underground due to previously legally representing individuals implicated in Melbourne gangland killings. The Victorian Court of Appeals rejected a bid by Google to overturn the ruling.
In its latest submission to the High Court, Google argued: “A hyperlink is not, in and of itself, the communication of that to which it links.” Google alleges that if the 2020 ruling is left to stand, it will make the company “liable as the publisher of any matter published on the web to which its search results provide a hyperlink.” This would include news stories from reputable sources.
Surprisingly, Google seems to be attempting to argue it shouldn’t be forced to censor content, given the company’s willingness to censor content for authoritarian governments as outlined in the company’s 85-page internal briefing “The Good Censor,” which can be read in full at Breitbart News here.
Breitbart News senior technology report extensively reporting on Google’s censorship of Breitbart News. The Masters of the Universe ensured that no Breitbart stories showed up on searches related to Joe Biden in the months leading up to the 2020 election.
As Bokhari reported:
Breitbart News spoke to an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert, a 25-year industry veteran, whose job consists of analyzing traffic data from Google’s own website performance portal, Google Search Console.
The expert, who wished to remain anonymous, said he had never seen anything like this graph — and that it indicates highly probable manipulation on the part of Google.
“I’ve never experienced such a wholesale removal of rank and visibility on specific concepts on a site as I have seen being applied to Breitbart,” said the expert. “Removal is the key, not dropping in rank, which would be an organic devaluing. These ranks are just simply gone, overnight, while other topics have been untouched.”
“The sheer fact that there are thousands of pages of Breitbart content that reference Biden that were ranking before May 6, that now have no rank or impressions on search is a sign of manipulation, not algorithmic devaluing.”
Breitbart News will continue to report on Google’s frequent acts of censorship.
Read more at Engadget here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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