You should think through the consequences of what you suggest. Do you really want to live in a society in which corporations have the power to determine what counts as truth?

I find it odd that so many people who believe the government should not do such things are fine with corporations doing it.

We already live in that world today. Corporations already decide what is broadcasted and google does have to rank results at the end of the day. We all see the results on the page and right now they are not pretty. Try "does global warming exist?" I think link 2. is a problem. If it's damaging, maybe those damages should be determined by the courts. I don't think the corporations are the final arbitrator, a court should weigh in on matters of truth with well informed and constructed arguments. Then the rest of us can consider the merits of those arguments and vote accordingly.

Do you think that sites that raise concerns about GMO foods should be similarly classified as spam?

There's an ideological divide in our society. People who deny climate change support GMO foods and nuclear power. People who oppose GMO foods and nuclear power believe we should do more about climate change.

Accepting that Google should do more to suppress "bad" results on global warming also means that it should do more to suppress "bad" results on anti-vaccinations, anti-GMO foods and other areas where the majority scientific opinion is clear.

And then, of course, there's religion. What stance should Google take on that?

No-one's going to be happy with that situation. There is no course of action that Google can follow that will make everyone happy here.

Yes, educating people isn't about making them happy. How you feel about the truth is incidental to it being true. It's an interesting measure, when hearing the truth, how often do are you repelled by it :)

So my answer is yes to all the topics you mentioned, if the opposition can prove vaccination is worse than not, then don't flag as spam, but until then, please bump them down the search results page some.

The government has to prosecute religious cons already. Suppose you say, "Come to my church. Start praying and donating, the lord will take care of your cancer" Lies like these are misleading and dangerous. People can die from them. You can be prosecuted for making them. So, we ought not allow them to be promoted to our citizenry. If a religion wants to make that statement, make them prove their claim with a study that meets the standard.

>"prove their claim with a study that meets the standard"

really? there isn't a religion on the planet that can prove this. There's no evidence for everlasting damnation, how can there be proof that accepting Jesus as your personal saviour prevents you from being damned?

Again, no-one's going to be happy with any of this. And I don't mean "happy" as in "overjoyed", I mean "happy" as in "not going to sue Google".

The instant that Google actually start modifying their results for subjective truth they become liable for a gajillion lawsuits.

These matters come in degrees, so global warming is a credible threat with supporting evidence. Everlasting damnation is not a credible threat, since we've never had anyone come back to life and demonstrate the damages. I'm not holding my breath :)

So the answer to the question, "am i at risk of everlasting damnation?" would be at the top of the page: No we haven't seen any evidence to support everlasting damnation. Don't censor anything, just push it out of view to the degree it's damaging. Cancer claims made by religions go on page 2. You should have to work to get bad information, not the other way around.

Let them sue to have their story at the top, their argument is not going to hold up. You've used evidence (or lack thereof) to come to your conclusion. And what have they got, an appeal to emotion?

The truth is out their for people to see. Was I robbing the liquor store? No, work has me on camera at the time the robbery took place. Slam dunk. Will god cure my cancer? Not that we know of, but here is some medications you ought to take or you're likely to die. And here is our study showing that. And you've used these study standards before to great benefit when you've flown, used your cellphone and ate your food.

That works if you accept that science (as practiced by our institutions) is impartial, correct, unbiased and open.

It clearly and obviously is not all of these things.

A body of scientists have just recently complained about commercial organisations releasing papers in order to sow doubt. How would Google handle that?

It's judgement calls and subjective decisions all the way down. Any of which can be challenged. I understand why they don't want to do this.

Your truth is not and has never been the same as someone else's truth. The very idea of objective truth is debatable in some of these areas (e.g. "has any nation tried true communism?")

Google is not and should not be the judge of everyone's truths

> Your truth is not and has never been the same as someone else's truth.

Hopefully we can both agree that we are having this conversation. :) If so, we believe that truth is real and shared between individuals. Other common facts are sports, world events and books - at times we all look through the same lens. Science is like this too. Science happily ask for you to see for yourself.

Now look at another truth, cigarettes cause cancer. The tobacco industry denied these findings. But now we censor them and their advertising based on this truth. If we didn't censor the tobacco industry, we'd get cancer more often and die.

When we have a clear argument and damages, at least bump them down the page.

If you allow the disinformation campaign to continue, you corrupt the integrity of the system. This can manifest itself in a very ugly and damaging ways, cancer or worse.

I think you want google to be something it's not. Lies / Truth are not googles goals. It reflects what people believe because they create content which is consumed and linked to by other people.

Trying to work out what are lies/truth gets super super murky when it comes to religion.

Not to mention people actually want to search for what people believe, I want to know what holocaust deniers think, I want to know what climate deniers think, that shouldn't be filtered from me.

But, it exposes a bigger problem about the problem of consuming information, how we, as humans, determine what to believe when exposed to everyones beliefs. Especially for people who are young and can latch onto ideas very quickly.

Google's job is to give you relevant search results to queries. Putting misinformation at the top of the page is irrelevant and damaging to the goal of informing. For example questions like, "does global warming exist?" Notice link number 2. for that query. It's from a source townhall, this source is irrelevant, just as my opinion would be irrelevant on the matter of global warming. Whether a page has backlinks is irrelevant if it's full of lies. So push them down the page some, flagged as spam.

> Whether a page has backlinks is irrelevant if it's full of lies. So push them down the page some, flagged as spam.

Who would have the authority to do this, and why should they be trusted? How could we get rid of them when they start hiding true things they don't want people to know about? What would their job title be? Minister of Truth? (I suppose you'd need to get permission from Orwell's estate to use that title, which is probably a sign that you should think twice about what you're doing.)

It's all just information. Some of it true, some of it not.

People who believe different things think that people with opposing beliefs are lies or delusion or lack enlightenment. I think it's better that everything is laid bare to the world so it's not hidden. But it requires a certain set of skills when consuming information.

I think Wikipedia is more like what you are wanting. It's curated, it attempts to convey accurate information without emotional language, etc. Of course, that's super difficult and it has it's own problem in trying to do that.