Yahoo Censorship
Internet censorship seems to be a rather far-fetched issue until it actually affects you directly and personally.
I admit I do things that make a lot of people angry and this time it seems Yahoo! Inc itself decided to get angry with me! I perfectly well know why as my post on Yahoo handcrafting describing exactly how Yahoo! employees fiddle with your seach results clearly annoyed some of them as it was their own stupidity that allowed this information to leak out to the publc domain.
Now they are making some effort attempting to stop it from spreading - all feeds from my website lzzr.com had been blocked in Yahoo! Pipes and effectively censored out. No more Yahoo Pipes for LZZR.com!
Of course they are in their own right as it is their service and they are to decide which feeds to allow to Yahoo! Pipes and which to block out. I am not in a position to deny them this right. Neither I am in a position to deny them their right to act stupid. It’s been prooven too many times that repressive measures like censoring information resources you don’t like always results in an opposite effect! It gets spread by other channels and tends to snowball at each revolution.
Hopefully this is not the official policy of Yahoo! Inc as I don’t believe their top management is stupid enough to ruin their new project by introducing selective censorship. Most likely it is a personal revenge of a certain Yahoo! employee whose actions resulted in leakage of sensitive information. I have reasons to believe this person had to go through some hard times as a result of this blunder. Now this individual seems to be making another mistake.
On the other hand I may be wrong and somewhere at the top level of Yahoo! there is a clear policy of cutting out websits publishing information that is not exactly favoured by Yahoo. Not surprising and equally stupid considering the fact that Yahoo Inc attitudes towards censorship once already resulted in an enormous PR disaster when in 2005 Yahoo collaborated with Communist China helping Chinese authorities to imprison a journalist for 10 years. Shi Tao, a reporter who worked for the Contemporary Business News nwespaper in China was found guilty of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal Communist Party message. At this time Yahoo! was accused by Western media of providing Chinese investigating organs with information that helped link Shi Tao’s personal e-mail account and the text of the message to his computer.
Allow me a quote from BBC News website:
“We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
So, it may well be that Yahoo! Inc simply likes censorship policies since Yahoo! record on sensorship looks rather consistent - from acting as a Chinese police informant to censoring their owns search results and individual websites.
tags: shi tao, yahoo, yahoo pipes, blunder, censorship, internet, policy, scandal, search results
Posted by LZZR under SEO Ethics, Yahoo |
Yeah no fucking shit eh!!
What Yahoo!’s Flickr did to my friend Gail Orenstein in Deleting ALL her Work incl. over 3,400 Photographs + over 20,000 Comments that had over 1 Million Views from Flickr Users is nothing short of an abomination!!
Fucking Flickr Kangaroo Court*
Disgusting + Pathetic!!
Peace*
Comment by BillyWarhol — June 1, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
I agreed with your observation. Is a few people taking law in their own hand.
Moreover, I am questioning the Power & Political play that the Mid-Range Management & Senior management in Yahoo!
I believes; There are departmental head who is not US citizen have been involved in the National political play.
Whom might acting on the interest of the country that given them the financial & kinds advantage. That is why the National Security & Homeland security have to look at it closely.
From what I see the pornography adv still is a big revenue with major search engines. I doubt that Yahoo! departmental action on Artsy Nudes & Nudes ( of non porno nature ) are inline with their T & C. or TOS!!
It is really a personal issue as I research into Yahoo certain department doing for over 2 years.
I am sorry you have to goes through all these.
Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 era is the era of e-Communities.
No one can act like imperialism any long. As long as the community do the right thing to promo the healthy culture & bring the people together & closer on the web.
Divide & rules would not work!!
Thanks.
Comment by CharlieBrown8989 — June 1, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
2 BillyWarhol
Before getting these comments I had no idea how severe the problem of Yahoo censorship on Flickr really is. Flickr censorship seems to have no rational reason! It’s plain stupid to alienate a strong user community and doing this without any warning or explaination is nothing less of profound disrespect!
Of course as Yahoo owns Flickr they would always be able to reply in a way all burocratic machines do: “according to our rules you are totally wrong and we are absolutely right” and there is nothing we can do about it.
The only way out is to host our own communities. Otherwise it will always end up like this. In fact be it Google or Yahoo! or any other big monster they will always be suspisious of any dissent that might grow on those fields of so-called FREE services they provide. Even more they are afraid of political activism and for a good reason - risks of hosting anything politically out of the mainstream far outweight profits such resources can make for the owners. Besides they have their own vested interests too.
PS thanks for pointing out works of Gail Orenstein - these are just brilliant!
Comment by LZZR — June 6, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
2 CharlieBrown8989
Qute interesting! I always thought Yahoo! is plagued with a sort of corporate culture that is rooted in times when Yahoo! was a directory.
It seems you’ve got some interesting facts about Yahoo! management - would you mind telling a bit more about this? I am sure a lot of people are interested to learn more about Yahoo! culture of censorship!
Comment by LZZR — June 6, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
Yedda: RE: Informing search engines of a new site…
LZZR answered: re:Recently I’ve opened a blog. Is there a way of informing search engines directly of my new blog, or should I just wait and see whether or not they find me by themselves? …
Trackback by LZZR's answers on Yedda - People. Sharing. Knowledge. — June 12, 2007 @ 9:45 am