STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP! STOP THE POLITICAL BLACKLIST OF THE WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE!

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOOGLE

David North, chairperson of the International Edi- In 2013, when Mr. Schmidt visited Burma, he torial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, has sent spoke in favor of free and open Internet use in the the following open letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of country. In light of Google’s recent actions, the Google; Lawrence Page, CEO of Alphabet, Inc; Sergey statements of Mr. Brin and Mr. Schmidt appear ut- Brin, President of Alphabet, Inc.; and Eric Schmidt, terly hypocritical. Chairman of Alphabet, Inc. Google, and by implication, its parent company Alphabet, Inc., are now engaged in political censor- August 25, 2017 ship of the Internet. You are doing what you have previously publicly denounced. Gentlemen: Google is manipulating its Internet searches to restrict public awareness of and access to socialist, Google’s mission statement from the outset was “to anti-war and left-wing websites. The World Social- organize the world’s information and make it univer- ist Web Site (www.wsws.org) has been massively sally accessible and useful.” Its official code of conduct targeted and is the most affected by your censor- was proclaimed in Google’s famous motto: “Don’t be ship protocols. Referrals to the WSWS from Google evil.” In recent years, you have seriously lost your way. have fallen by nearly 70 percent since April of this You are now engaged in hiding the world’s informa- year. tion, and, in the process, are doing a great deal of evil. Censorship on this scale is political blacklist- When Google officially discontinued its Chi- ing. The obvious intent of Google’s censorship al- na-based search engine, due to censorship by the gorithm is to block news that your company does Chinese government of search engine results for not want reported and to suppress opinions with political criticism, Mr. Brin publicly stated that for which you do not agree. Political blacklisting is not Google, “it has always been a discussion about how a legitimate exercise of whatever may be Google’s we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We prerogatives as a commercial enterprise. It is a gross believe that this is the best thing that we can do for abuse of monopolistic power. What you are doing is preserving the principles of the openness and free- an attack on freedom of speech. dom of information on the Internet.” We therefore call upon you and Google to stop

SIGN THE PETITION OPPOSING GOOGLE CENSORSHIP! TO ADD YOUR NAME AND FIND OUT MORE • VISIT WSWS.ORG/GOOGLE STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP! blacklisting the WSWS and renounce the censor- national voice in the fight against the resurgence of ship of all the left-wing, socialist, anti-war and pro- racism, xenophobia and fascism. gressive websites that have been affected adversely By the beginning of this year, the WSWS had by your new discriminatory search policies. achieved a global Alexa ranking of 36,525, and a The WSWS is the online newspaper of the in- ranking of 16,679 in the United States. In the spring, ternational Trotskyist movement. It is the most the number of monthly visitors to the WSWS ex- widely read socialist publication on the Internet. ceeded 900,000. In April 2017, according to our Since its launch in the year 1998, the WSWS has data, 422,460 visits to the WSWS originated from published more than 60,000 articles on politics, Google searches. history, science and culture in more than a dozen Beginning in April of this year, Google began languages. It is a significant and unique intellectu- manipulating search results to channel users away al resource. from socialist, left-wing, and anti-war publications, WSWS articles are reposted on innumerable and directing them instead towards mainstream websites and are published in printed newspapers publications that directly express the views of the all over the world. Material posted by the WSWS government and the corporate and media establish- is frequently cited in university research papers ment (i.e., the New York Times, Washington Post, and included in college syllabi. Leading American etc.), and a small number of mildly left “trusted” scholars, such as historians James McPherson and websites whose critiques are deemed innocuous Allen Guelzo, and Shakespeare expert James Shap- (i.e., Jacobin Magazine and the website of the Dem- iro have granted interviews to the WSWS. The film ocratic Socialists of America, which functions as a and theater reviews posted on the site have attract- faction of the Democratic Party). ed a large international following. World-renowned As a pretext for these actions, Google announced filmmakers—Wim Wenders, Mike Leigh, Richard that it was making changes to its search algorithm Linklater, Bertrand Tavernier, and Abbas Kiarosta- “to surface more authoritative content,” a term that mi, to name only a few—have discussed their work brings to mind efforts by authoritarian regimes to with the World Socialist Web Site. Essays and lec- censor the Internet and, specifically, political views tures posted on the WSWS have been included in deemed outside the consensus as defined by the es- anthologies produced by publishers with no con- tablishment media. nection to the World Socialist Web Site. Ben Gomes, Google’s vice president for search The World Socialist Web Site also provides cov- engineering, attempted to justify the imposition of erage of labor struggles and social issues that are ei- political censorship with a blog post on April 25, ther inadequately covered or completely ignored by claiming that the changes to the algorithm were a the corporate-controlled media. response to “the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ where As a result of our principled opposition to war, content on the web has contributed to the spread our focus on social inequality, and our high stan- of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or dards of political and journalistic integrity, the downright false information.” WSWS is indisputably an authoritative publication Google, according to Gomes, has recruited on world political events, the global economy, in- some 10,000 “evaluators” to judge the “quality” of ternational socialism, the history of the twentieth websites. These evaluators are trained to “flag” web- century, the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, sites that are deemed to “include misleading infor- and contemporary Marxism. It is a leading inter- mation” and “unsupported conspiracy theories.” STOP THE POLITICAL BLACKLIST OF THE WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE! Gomes explained that the blacklists created by these of the WSWS from search results strongly suggests evaluators will be used, in combination with the lat- that the anti-socialist bias of the new algorithm is est developments in technology, to develop an algo- being supplemented by the actual physical inter- rithm that will impose censorship automatically, in vention of Google personnel, enforcing authoritari- real time, across future search results. an-style direct and deliberate blacklisting. Whatever the technical changes Google has As stated above, since April, other left-wing made to the search algorithm, the anti-left bias of publications that present themselves as progressive, the results is undeniable. The most striking out- socialist or anti-war also have suffered significant come of Google’s censorship procedures is that reductions in their Google search results: users whose search queries indicate an interest in • alternet.org fell by 63 percent socialism, Marxism or Trotskyism are no longer directed to the World Socialist Web Site. Google is • globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent “disappearing” the WSWS from the results of search • consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent requests. For example, Google searches for “Leon • mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent Trotsky” yielded 5,893 impressions (appearances of the WSWS in search results) in May of this year. In • commondreams.org fell by 37 percent July, the same search yielded exactly zero impres- • internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent sions for the WSWS, which is the Internet publi- cation of the international movement founded by • democracynow.org fell by 36 percent Leon Trotsky in 1938. • wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent Other frequently used words and phrases that • truth-out.org fell by 25 percent no longer include the WSWS in Google search re- sults include: socialism, class struggle, class conflict, • counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent socialist movement, social inequality in the world, • theintercept.com fell by 19 percent poverty and social inequality, antiwar literature, and the Russian revolution. A search for socialism vs. Google justifies the imposition of political cen- capitalism, which, as recently as April, would have sorship by using a loaded term like “fake news.” This listed the World Socialist Web Site as the eighth re- term, properly used, signifies the manufacturing of sult on the first page of search results, now no lon- news based on an artificially constructed event that ger returns any results at all for the WSWS. Of the either never occurred or has been grossly exagger- top 150 search queries that returned results for the ated. The present-day furor over “fake news” is it- WSWS in April, 145 now no longer do so. self an example of an invented event and artificially All the search terms listed above are employed constructed narrative. It is a “fake” term that is used frequently by users seeking a left-wing, socialist or to discredit factual information and well-grounded Marxist take on events. Far from protecting read- analyses that challenge and discredit government ers from “unexpected” responses to their search policies and corporate interests. Any invocation of requests, Google is manipulating its algorithm to the phrase “fake news,” as it pertains to the WSWS, make sure that the left-wing and progressive seg- is devoid of any substance or credibility. In fact, ment of their users, who would be most interest- our efforts to combat historical falsification have ed in the World Socialist Web Site, will not find it. been recognized, including by the scholarly journal Moreover, the extent and precision of the exclusion American Historical Review. STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP!

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOOGLE

The facts prove that Google is rigging search It is benefiting the proponents of war, inequality, in- results to blacklist and censor the WSWS and oth- justice and reaction. er left-wing publications. This raises a very serious The censorship of left-wing websites, and the question, with far-reaching constitutional implica- WSWS in particular, reflects the fear that a genuine tions. Is Google coordinating its censorship pro- socialist perspective, if allowed a fair hearing, will gram with the American government, or sections find a mass audience in the US and international- of its military and intelligence apparatus? ly. There is widespread popular opposition to your Google probably will dismiss the question as efforts to suppress freedom of speech and thought. an example of conspiracy theorizing. However, it That is why Google feels compelled to cloak its an- is legitimate given the ample evidence that Goo- ti-democratic policies with misleading arguments gle maintains close ties with the state. In 2016, and outright lies. An online petition circulated by Barack Obama’s defense secretary, Ashton Carter, the WSWS demanding a halt to Google’s censor- appointed you, Mr. Schmidt, to chair the Depart- ship efforts has already attracted several thousand ment of Defense Innovation Advisory Board. Ear- signatures from readers in 70 different countries lier this month, Defense Secretary James Mattis on five continents. We are determined to resist visited Google headquarters to discuss the ongo- Google’s efforts to censor our publication, and to ing and close collaboration between the company continue to raise awareness internationally about and the Pentagon. More generally, according to a Google censorship. As long as this policy contin- report in The Intercept, Google representatives at- ues, Google will pay a heavy price in lost public tended White House meetings on average at least credibility. once a week from January 2009 through October The International Editorial Board of the World 2015. Socialist Web Sites demands that the anti-demo- Google claims to be a private corporation, but cratic changes to the Google search result rankings it is deeply involved in the formulation and imple- and its search algorithm since April be reversed, mentation of government policy. The distinction and that Google cease its effort to curtail search ac- between commercial interests and state objectives cessibility to the WSWS and other left-wing, social- is increasingly difficult to detect. By obstructing the ist, anti-war and progressive web publications. free access to and exchange of information, Google’s censorship program is aimed at enforcing a twen- Sincerely, ty-first century version of Orwellian “Right-Think.” David North It is undermining the development of progressive Chairperson, International Editorial Board and constitutionally protected political opposition. of the World Socialist Web Site

SIGN THE PETITION OPPOSING GOOGLE CENSORSHIP! TO ADD YOUR NAME AND FIND OUT MORE • VISIT WSWS.ORG/GOOGLE