The Rise of the New Information Gatekeepers

Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have all been accused by users of screening out controversial terms. Where are those algorithms leading us?

By Mathew Ingram

The promise of the Internet age is one of unparalleled access to information of all kinds, but we have also seen the rise of powerful gatekeepers that control our access to that information, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and even Twitter.

The new information overlords have been in the news recently because of their control (or perceived control) over certain information. The reaction from users has reinforced the tension between the freedom these companies provide and the hoops through through which we have to jump in order to access it. How does that alter the way we see the world around us?

Google, for example, has been accused of censorship for removing certain terms from its “auto-complete” process and Google Instant-search features, including terms that relate to potential copyright-infringing services such as file-sharing network the Pirate Bay, or torrent search engines such as Isohunt—both of which have been the subject of lawsuits and other actions because they refer people to files that can infringe on copyrights. Google has said in the past that it wishes to help media companies combat piracy and so excludes terms it believes are “closely associated” with piracy.

Is it really censorship when a search engine removes a reference to such sites from its auto-complete feature? After all, users can still search for those terms and find them in Google’s index quite easily. It’s not as though links to the Pirate Bay have been removed from Google’s index altogether (although the prospect exists that this could happen, if Congress passes such laws as the Stop Online Piracy Act, which allows private companies to force search engines to remove sites from the domain-name system—or if legal judgments like the one handed down in Texas this week hold up).

Is excluding some terms censorship?

I raised this question on Twitter after a report in TorrentFreak about Google’s actions. Several people, including sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, said it’s a form of censorship, or at least a kind of “algorithmic gate-keeping.” While many people may not use auto-complete, others do. The argument is that their experience will be reduced, even by a small amount, due to this filtering. Tufekci said such small changes can affect the way people process information in subtle, yet important ways.

Google is an old hand at this kind of thing because it has dominated the search market for at least a half-decade, to the point where it’s being investigated by federal authorities for alleged antitrust activities. Critics claim it deliberately removes terms from its search results or highlights others that promote its own products. They argue that the company should be forced to abide by some kind of legislated “search neutrality” similar to the telecom-industry principle of net neutrality. But does Google really have a duty to provide unfiltered results? Is there a societal downside?

Twitter has come under fire for something similar—or at least the perception thereof. Advocates of the “Occupy” protest movement have complained bitterly over the past few weeks about how the network is excluding terms related to the movement from its trending-topics list. Some users may never look at the list, but appearing on it has come to be seen by many as a badge of honor. During recent removals of Occupy camps in Los Angeles and New York, there were repeated accusations of censorship against Twitter for having allegedly removed those terms from its trending list.

Twitter has said a number of times that it doesn’t filter trending topics to remove specific terms (although it does remove offensive words and phrases). Instead, the trending algorithm looks for short-term spikes in activity, which tends to exclude terms that are being used a lot over a longer period of time. In an e-mail message to me, Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner said: “Trending topics are based on an algorithm that looks at spikes. Trends surface the fastest-rising popular topics or the hottest hot topics. They are not curated. Bottom line—we aren’t censoring #occupy terms.