[governance] Halal Search Engine

[Rui Correia]

Hi

Until we know what this search engine will leave out/ block, and presuming
that the intentions behind this filtering are good and ethical, then what is
the problem?

It is no different from a public/ community library, NOT keeping
pornographic material, terrorism training manuals, books on how to torture
and kill human beings, how to smuggle endangered species and illegal drugs
etc. You will find books on these subjects, treated from an academic,
societal perspective, but not espousing these practices.

Regards,

Rui

2009/9/7 Lisa Horner <lisa at global-partners.co.uk>

> Hi
>
> I think what's important here is the principle of transparency.  As long
> as gatekeepers of information (such as search engines) are transparent
> about how they select content, including political, economic, cultural
> etc criteria, it's not necessarily a problem. Transparency needs to be
> coupled with "media literacy" amongst users.  They need to know that
> information presented to them can be affected by the values and bias of
> gatekeepers, and know how to find out about it and navigate around
> information to find what they need.  Whilst the medium is very
> different, the issues are similar to newspapers and broadcasters having
> political bias.
>
> Lisa
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
> Sent: 06 September 2009 22:59
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Ian Peter; Avri Doria
> Subject: RE: [governance] Halal Search Engine
>
> You can pay to be listed in the CLEARLY MARKED and SEPARATED sponsored
> links, which in fact attract far fewer clicks than the regular ones.
> Google was the first to clearly separate them and NOT make their regular
> rankings depend in any way on payments, and that of course is why it won
> the market - it really was better for finding what you were looking for
> than the alternatives. That set the standard for Bing, which is actually
> a very good competitor now if you haven't tried it. All hail market
> competition! What a friend we have in....Mammon!! Genuflect to Market
> FUNDAMENTALISM ;-)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com]
> > Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 3:52 PM
> > To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Avri Doria
> > Subject: Re: [governance] Halal Search Engine
> >
> > ( a couple of people disputed this)
> >
> > The most obvious example is that on any common Google search the first
> few
> > results that come through may be sponsored links - identified as such
> if
> > you
> > have good eyes and bother to look, but the first results nevertheless.
> You
> > can pay to be number one on a Google search results listing, that's
> the
> > bottom line.
> >
> > Beyond that - because Google doesn't release its algorithms this is
> > unproven. But articles such as this
> http://www.seobook.com/google-branding
> > do tend to suggest new factors coming into results.
> >
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-- 
________________________________________________


Rui Correia
Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant
2 Cutten St
Horison
Roodepoort-Johannesburg,
South Africa
Tel/ Fax (+27-11) 766-4336
Mobile (+27) (0) 84-498-6838
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