Russia Threatens To Go To War With Google Over Stupid Comments By Eric Schmidt

from the what-a-mess dept

What a world we live in, where a giant country and a giant company may be about to go to war. At a security conference, Alphabet "executive chairman" Eric Schmidt made some fairly dumb comments saying that the company was looking at downranking sites like RT and Sputnik:

“We’re working on detecting this kind of scenario ... and de-ranking those kinds of sites,” Schmidt said, in response to a question at an event in Halifax, Canada. “It’s basically RT and Sputnik. We’re well aware and we’re trying to engineer the systems to prevent it.”

To be clear: I have no doubt that RT and Sputnik have engaged in attempts to push anti-US propaganda in the US. That seems fairly obvious at this point. My concern is twofold: first of all, saying that "it's basically RT and Sputnik" suggests Schmidt thinks that the issue is just those two sites and merely downranking them will solve problems related to propaganda. That's both wrong and naive. Second, having the executive chair of Google's parent company directly announce that Google is working on ways to downrank two specific sites is bad. Part of Google's longstanding position has always been that they don't interfere to go after specific sites, in part because that creates a massive slippery slope. Of course, Google gave up on part of that position five years ago when it caved in to Hollywood and agreed to start downranking sites based on accusations (not actual convictions) of copyright infringement.

Directly coming out and saying that Google is targeting these two sites -- no matter how bad those sites are -- only reinforces the idea that Google will ideologically rank sites, rather than focus on what was its core mission of helping people find the information they were looking for.

And, of course, there are the wider implications of this -- whereby you now have the head of Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor, threatening to retaliate should Google actually downrank those sites:

Alexander Zharov, head of media regulator Roskomnadzor, said his agency sent a letter to Google on Tuesday requesting clarification on comments Saturday by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt about how the Russian websites would be treated in search, according to Interfax. “We will receive an answer and understand what to do next,” Interfax quoted Zharov as saying. “We hope our opinion will be heard, and we won’t have to resort to more serious” retaliatory measures.

Now that's quite an interesting SEO strategy, to have a nuclear power threaten retaliation for dropping in the rankings. Never mind that this is the same Roskomnadzor currently involved in a corruption scandal, and which has been pushing forward on widespread internet censorship without due process.

The whole thing seems like quite a mess -- one that easily could have been avoided if Schmidt hadn't specifically called out those two sites, which, at best, are only a small corner of a larger issue. It would have been fine to suggest that Google was looking to algorithmically do a better job of minimizing false reports or outright propaganda (though, even that might raise serious questions). But to single out two specific sites backed by the Russian government just seems dumb. On the flip side, having Roskomnadzor hit back so strongly also seems fairly short-sighted, as it appears to be the Russian government more or less admitting that it relied on US companies to spread propaganda, and it won't tolerate efforts to diminish the power of its propaganda.

Of course, it does seem worth noting that three years ago, Google shut down its Russian office just as Russia picked up its efforts to censor the internet in that country. So it's not as if Google and the Russian government haven't been at odds before -- but this certainly feels like an escalation.

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Filed Under: downranking, eric schmidt, fake news, propagranda, roskomnadzor, rozkomnadzor, russia

Companies: alphabet, google, rt, sputnik