Thank you for pointing this out. I don't mean to be an alarmist, but people need to wake up to the fact that algorithms, or lack thereof, bear a great responsibility on human rights now, and that's only going to grow. If Google is trying to change free thought or information flow through algorithms either for internal political stances or the whims of a government (ie China,) that's a huge problem.

Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

> Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

Such a result would definitely be odd framing, though. Especially if it was the main infobox and not, say, the seventh result.

For instance, I could see a "soft authoritarian" regime subtly justifying its censorship regime by preferentially surfacing content that makes censorship seem more justified. One way to do that is to encourage the idea that "limits are common" and discourage the idea that "free speech is a natural right," which you can do by changing the search ranking to surface an article like you described.

Absolutely, yes. Because if I'm searching about "free speech" I will be looking for information about how it's limited, aka: censorship.

The implication being what, that returning the “Censorship” article is pro-censorship? That people who choose to type in “free speech” are so stupid as to flip their position because Google responded with an article on the exact same topic, which is no more pro-censorship than the free speech article is pro-free-speech?

You’re being silly.

Oh no, my opinion is being voted down. Must be the algorithm!

Here's another reply so you can vote me down again.

And another. Why would I care.

But hopefully at some point you'll engage with the argument?