The Real Story Behind Big Tech Censorship

Censorship by Google and Bing Around the World

Rather than providing a neutral, 'take it or leave it' service that can be standardized throughout the world, Google capitulates to several different governments' threats in order to continue selling its services in those countries. The list of nations where Google restricts search is staggering. They rarely pull out of a country, favoring money over scientific and factual accuracy. And when they do pull out of a country, Bing is there to pick up the scraps. Here are just a few examples:

India: Widespread censorship by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo means that users can no longer search for any information on the process of sex determination in the womb. This was reportedly to stop people from having selective abortions if they found out that the baby was not the sex that they wanted. But it went beyond blocking advertisements and completely voided the purely scientific and factual information as well. The topic simply can't be searched without the use of a proxy.

Israel: Google commonly censors search results in Israel that are 'defamatory' or critical of the government's handling of matters in Palestine, or the violence of their military or police forces. One of the more recent cases was in 2019 when an off-duty officer shot an Ethiopian boy named Salomon Taka. Google blocked the identity of the officer, even though the information had been leaked and was publicly available at that point.

China: After years of censoring search results in China to avoid mentioning brutal government crackdowns on student protests and incidents of racially motivated imprisonment and genocide, Google pulled out of the region about a decade ago. But more recently, they planned to return to China with a censored version of their search engine, codenamed Dragonfly. This project was only scuttled after mass employee protests and many people leaving the company.

But Google isn't the only culprit there. Bing still operates in China and censors its results according to government preferences. This means that the violence that China uses against protestors, students, and minorities is erased in an act of unified big-tech censorship.

Bing has also been caught censoring images in the anniversaries of major Chinese government crackdowns, most recently hiding images of 'Tank Man' and claiming it was human error. These kinds of excuses are common when a company conducts active censorship. They set up a system where the quality and standards control are either absent or entirely separate from that of the main company's function. Then they can claim that the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing if they are caught.

Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people, are being denied proper scientific information, accurate historical information, or breaking news because their governments find these topics too inconvenient or embarrassing. And the way some of these governments are structured, it might just be a single politician trying to avoid looking foolish that kicks off a massive campaign of big tech censorship.

And it isn't just to search engines that are doing this kind of censorship.

Google's Bard Censors Prompts

Google's conversational AI chatbot, Bard, is their answer to ChatGPT. It's designed to engage in conversations and provide information on various topics. But it seems that it's picky about what subjects it will get into conversation on.

Bard will not respond to queries or prompts about the recent events in Gaza. The prompts don't even have to be related to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th or the heavy-handed Israeli response. Just mention Gaza or Israel and Bard essentially says, "No".

Image source: Twitter/X

Regional Social Media Censorship

As far as big tech censorship in social media, forget about individual accounts. What happens when entire topics, entire historical events, and entire races of people are simply erased with a hastily written line of code?

This is the kind of thing that can happen in more 'live' environments, like social media platforms. When a trend isn't in favor of the current administration, and that administration has the power to censor content… well it isn't hard to see what the problem might be. Investigative reporting and factual, scientific information become the victims.

Twitter (now X) explains in-depth what happens when something is censored in a certain region. But that's not exactly a defense. They have in the past, and continue to into the present, capitulated to government demands to censor subjects ranging from history to current events on a regional basis. Some examples of mass social media censorship:

India: Twitter completely censored the Indian farmer protest because it reflected badly on the government. They went after key protestor and reporter accounts and prevented the use of certain hashtags. Only after getting caught and reacting to massive public outcry did they restore some of the Tweets. Withholding breaking news about government unrest from 500 million Internet users is unconscionable.

Greece: Facebook blocked all details of a hunger strike, including posts from news organizations about the striking prisoner, Dimitris Koufodinas. Well-known journalists received 30-day bans simply for reporting on the news.

Israel: Facebook regularly removes just about any post that is deemed as 'incitement', an umbrella term that means the information might cause some form of protest or outcry. One of the government's ministers bragged that Facebook removed 95% of their requests to date, a staggeringly high number.

Social media users around the world have been reporting that any post containing hashtags like “FreePalestine” and “IStandWithPalestine” are being hidden. Posts that show any sort of sympathy with Gaza or criticism of Israel's actions are being removed for "going against community guidelines".

Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok are all actively censoring content that doesn't adhere to a certain government's narrative.

And these are just bigger governments that can't hide all of their interactions with Twitter and Facebook. Imagine the compromises being made in smaller countries that don't have this kind of transparency.

Social media and search engines are just two types of big tech censorship mediums. The greatest culprits may just be the Internet service providers (ISPs) that we trust every day to neutrally carry Internet traffic.

ISPs Committing Big Tech Censorship

It isn't a very comfortable idea to wrap your head around. But ISPs are one of the biggest collaborators to regional and global scale big tech censorship. If you thought that censorship by Google was kind of slimy, the level of control and access that some ISPs give to the local governments is unreal.

Some of the more horrible examples of ISP-based big tech censorship include:

Poland: In July 2019, news and human rights websites were blocked in Poland after there was a spike in public protests. Some networks in Poland even cut access to government websites that listed out peoples' rights according to their law and constitution, preventing protestors from looking up their rights during a police action.

Iran: Since the Internet became a global phenomenon, Iran has looked for ways to curb the freedom that it gave users. They established the Computer Crimes Law (CCL) in 2010, giving specific instructions for Internet censorship countrywide. ISPs must report any “production, sending, publishing, distributing, saving, or financially engaging in obscene content”. They have to maintain records of Internet user traffic and the complete personal profiles of all Internet-using clients. ISPs must also record chat, E-mail conversations, and anything that might allow people to communicate. Finally, encryption is not allowed, because it might prevent 'authorized individuals' from reviewing if the data is appropriate for consumption.

Turkey: It isn't a surprise that Turkey, with one of the worst free media report cards on the planet, would seek to censor the Internet. What's shocking is that they're so open about it. In 2016, they demanded that all ISPs block access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and other file-sharing sites to crack down on government leaks.

That same year, they blocked the usage of the privacy-focused Tor browser. And in July 2020, Erdogan announced that he wanted ISPs to grant him full control of all social media sites.

He said, “Do you understand now why we are against social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, and Netflix? These platforms do not suit this nation. We want to shut down, control them by bringing a bill to parliament as soon as possible.”

This is just a small sample of how big tech censorship is happening at the Internet service provider level, from backbone circuit carriers, all the way down to local installers. The same is happening in Cloud hosting and data centers within highly censored countries. No corner of the industry is safe from government interference when anti-freedom governments and dictators are put in charge.

And if you think that this couldn't happen in big 'free speech' countries like Canada and the United States, think again. Establishing 'global' power over the Internet and neutering policies like Net Neutrality is the precursor to allowing ISPs to mess with anything they like. Roya Ensafi of the Censored Planet research team had this to say:

“When the United States repealed net neutrality, they created an environment in which it would be easy, from a technical standpoint, for internet service providers to interfere with or block internet traffic. The architecture for greater censorship is already in place and we should all be concerned about heading down a slippery slope.”

Protecting Yourself from Big Tech Censorship

The best way to protect yourself from big tech censorship is to move to Iceland. Iceland tops several different charts that rate Internet freedom, providing the most neutral and free ISPs in the world. Next on the list is Estonia. Although only slightly warmer than Iceland, it is highly competitive in terms of Internet freedoms.

But a more realistic option might be to invest in privacy and anti-censorship software. Top-tier privacy tools such as Hoody can help users access news, social media, and search sites that commonly get censored by governments and private organizations.

By-passing geo-restriction and censorship is just one part of the puzzle. Hoody also neutralizes all internet tracking techniques, including digital fingerprinting, allowing users to be completely anonymous online. Hiding your activity reduces the ability of government organizations to track and retaliate against users who are interested in privacy.

Conclusion

Big tech censorship takes many forms, and almost none of them are being covered by the mainstream media. The clickbait, sensational news about individual social media bans is a joke. Real big tech censorship is taking place out there, impacting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, not one or two celebrities.

The fact that some of these countries and companies not only make their censorship policies public but proudly brag about them, should send a chill up every user's spine. It's time to stop reading the tabloid coverage of the issue and go get some real censorship protection.

Of course, big tech censorship can be better or worse, depending on where you live. Find out Which Countries are the Worst for Internet Freedom