Calling all GEEKS!

[hippybngstockng]

Hey guys- Don't know if you saw my post in the middle of the night about Google and the word JEW. greyaenigma has pointed out that the bastards have bought ad space, therefore insuring that the first thing that comes up when you search for JEW you actually get these stupid evil assholes as your first choice instead of something that is more likely what someone who would search for the word JEW was looking for- Problem is that Google, a service I have enjoyed since it was still in beta for fucks sakes, stands by their algorithm, and is basically helpless to combat this unless its USERS take it upon themselves to try to reverse the trend somehow.

greyaenigma also pointed out that we could try to buy some APPROPRIATE ad space, but I did check into that a little and it seems like a lot more than I can afford or maintain on a personal level, but clearly it's still a good idea! It's really not fair of us to tell Google who they can and can't sell advertising to- as long as the advertising itself isn't offensive I imagine there is little they can do to prevent someone from expressing their freedom of speech, but at the same time I think in a situation like this where a single word (and such an important word) is being MISREPRESENTED for all intents and purposes IN A SEARCH ENGINE, well... Again, I just feel like there OUGHT to be something SOMEONE *cough*Google*cough* could be doing about it, and I am hoping some other more technologically minded soul out there will read this, and have some additional ideas of how we can make this happen, either through convincing Google to look at the issue, or through an outside user "Googlebomb" sort of way...

Please feel free to comment, and you could also put this same question to your friends- it went around last week, no reason it can't go around again!

And I think I've decided this is important to me because of the value I place on words. When a word that so many people love for a good reason is darkened by a tarnish to its meaning, it hurts me almost as much as it hurts the people to whom the word actually applies. Hi, my name is Hippy, I'm an English major, and I am a word-a-holic.

Comments

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I should point out that I didnt see any evidence that the adspace for the "jew" results doesn't necessarily seem to have been by the same stupid evil bastards, but they do seem to have the same agenda. It may be different stupid evil bastards.

I know there must be rich people out there willing to pitch in on this.

[hippybngstockng.livejournal.com]

I did notice that it was a different set of bastards which is why I went and pulled up the original bastards and threw them in as well- I don't care who's doing it, but whatever they did the original bastards went back to #1, and Wikipedia is down to #2. Since Bastards have a tendencies to lump all jews into one package, I figured I might just do the same with them ;)

I am still looking at Google trying to find their "policies" and I still can't find anything that isn't strictly about licenses- nothing about bombs that I've found... Morganminstrel said there was an NPR show about search engines that would be talking about Google this morning! It's not morning here anymore, but you might still be able to hear it!

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

The bit on search engines played a couple of hours ago here, and they stopped at the point in history where Google arose, it looks like they'll be covering that tomorrow. I know at least one person at Google, maybe I can ask him.

[hippybngstockng.livejournal.com]

Totally! Please do ask!

[anngwish42.livejournal.com]

I am not rich, but I am dedicated to eradicating stupid evil bastards. How about we set up a PayPal account where people can donate small amounts of money, until we can afford to buy ad space?

[hippybngstockng.livejournal.com]

That's an idea to explore for sure! I am hoping we might be able to do it for free though- I have some geek friends in high-ish places, and they have some big programming brains, so I am hoping we can get this done with just a little elbow grease and server space :) I really hope we can since it also seems wrong to have to pay money for something that Google should be able to address themselves, but are being kind of asshats about it from what I understand. I'm even still trying to find out the whole story still, so lets definitely leave that until I get more facts, but I hadn't thought of pay-pal! That would be a great way to collect money!

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing - in order to overcome it, everyone has to link to the SAME THING, because there has to be ONE page with more links to it than the motherfuckers' page. I had suggested the Wikipedia definition - I think if we spread this, we have to pick a page to link to, and give an explanation as to why every link has to be to the same page.

[hippybngstockng.livejournal.com]

Well, then the problem becomes that if people are putting up links who don't let their journal get crawled by spiders then it's not going to do any good (I finally found a web-person who could answer that for sure) so we'd either have to unlock that feature in LJ or set up new journals if we don't want our LJ's all over Google as well- I was avoiding that one on the off chance someone I don't want to know I have a journal somehow finds it magically that way, but perhaps I am just being paranoid. It's been suggested I could rectify this by starting an alternate LJ and posting it there, and I was thinking about doing that if I started a community I'd been pondering, so I might leave that one crawlable and put it there. But I think this aspect of it has to be mentioned early and often!

[morganminstrel.livejournal.com]

The other problem with linking to the wikipedia page is that it's sitting steady in the top 5--at #2 behind the assholes--with the rest of the top 5 going to the other antisemitic sites. So, wikipedia is good, but we need more sites as well if we're going to drive these people off the front page.

I'd also propose changing our tactics slightly. Instead of using a tag like "bastards" for the, well, bastards, we should "bomb" them with something that people will actually search on. I'm going to propose "terrorists" be used instead. That is, after all, what they are, essentially, and I'm sure it's a far more common search these days.

Still doing school work, hope to get to a post tonight...