As the saying goes, politics is a contact sport. Even so, this certainly seems like unsportsmanlike conduct—the political equivalent of click fraud (or vandalizing yard signs, for those who prefer).

Click fraud and vandalism are illegal; manipulating search engines is not. But it nevertheless is wrong. It is wrong for some of the same reasons it is wrong to, say, take every available copy of a free publication such as Style in order to keep others from reading it.

Free societies cannot pass laws to govern every conceivable circumstance; they depend to a huge degree on social norms, such as “Thou Shalt Not Cut in Line.” More than perhaps most other venues, the Internet relies on social norms to facilitate the information marketplace. Wikipedia, for instance, has had to step up its policing of the communally written encyclopedia because some—again, predominantly those with partisan motives—have been treating it as a propaganda tool.

Search engines are designed to help people find information they want. Sometimes they fail, but the failures are not intentional. Someone looking for, say, information about People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals probably wants to visit a PETA site, or at least a site sympathetic to animal rights. She isn’t looking for a jeremiad from the Cattlemen’s Association on all the reasons PETA members are a bunch of godless commie hypocrites. Now, perhaps everything the Cattlemen say is true; perhaps they do nothing but quote news stories about PETA’s shock tactics. Nevertheless, manipulating search engines to lead people seeking info on PETA to the cattlemen’s screed is mis-leading in the most basic sense.

It is also profoundly un-democratic. There’s considerable irony inherent in a site touting “direct democracy” that doesn’t trust people to make the right decision without a hefty shove.

Stunning! It’s hard to take in that this is for real. I can’t, for one moment, believe that any candidate would want this kind of help. Has politics always been this rotten?

My eyes have once again been opened by reading Barticles! I never thought about such deviousness occuring on a search engine. What they are doing is something like bait on a hook, aye?

But I suppose it doesn’t surprise me either. Nothing more American than good ol’ abuse of power.

Well, that’s so lovely I think I’m going to barf.

I love this line: “I want to emphasize to people that I am looking for NEGATIVE ARTICLES ON REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. ... Not favorable stuff on Democratic candidates.”

Nope - we don’t want to explain why our guy is the best for the job and why you should vote for him.  Nope, we’d rather expend our resources trying to dig up whatever we can to make the other guy look bad - no matter how irrelevant or untrue it is.  As long as it makes you think the other guy is awful, that’s fine by us.

Hmm… guess that’s because “their” guy has nothing to be positive about.

Post Your Comments: