Global Voices Advocacy » Gilad Lotan

Israel: Did Tzipi Livni's team erase Shai's blog post from Google?

Gilad Lotan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:52:09 +0000

This story should serve as a warning for every internet user. It begins at a well known Israeli web-portal hook.co.il, with Shai Rozentsweig's blog, who writes funny satirical skits. Shai created a post that slightly mocks Tzipi Livni(a leading member of the Kadima party, and currently the front-runner for the primary election of the ruling Kadima Party) and her meager record of actual political achievements. This led to Google's intervention, most probably prompted by Tzipi Livni's team; an embarrassing surrender on Google's behalf, removing the blog from its search results.

Tom Wagner describes the events as they happened:

Shai Rozentzweig published a post named “Tzipi… Livni… achievements…” (ציפי ליבני עשייה) in his funny blog. Like many other readers, I couldn't stand the temptation and Googled “Tzipi Livni Achievements”. To my great surprise, Shai Rozentsweig's blog came up first. I found this very funny, added a comment to his blog, and wrote a note on my Facebook profile, saying – “the blogger that killed Tzipi Livni”. I added that if people who browse the web looking for her achievements see this post, it is proof that she lacks any!

One of my Facebook friends, who is close to Livni, saw this post and all of the comments it generated. He searched in Google and was alarmed as Shai's satirical post came up first. Now, several days after publishing that blog post, it is impossible to find it using Google search. If you query “Tzipi Livni Achievements” you do not see the blog post even in page 500. If one enters a whole sentence from the blog post into Google's searchbox, Shai's blog will not come up in the results.

How else can this be explained? I see a hysterical telephone call from Livni's office to someone in the Google offices, who most probably blocked Shai's blog. Everyone who trusts Google as a reliable search engine needs to know that Google is susceptible to political influence, that Google surrenders quickly, and that Google doesn't really care about information integrity when there is a possibility that nobody will find out.

Tom asked fellow bloggers to link to his story, hoping that if Google makes him “invisible” at least other links will keep the story alive. A long stream of comments trailed after Tom's story. Below are two of the many comments:

Sonny Daor writes:

It is shocking that Livni chose to deal with the situation this way, instead of doing actual things that go into her record and appear in the search result. Moreover, it is even worse that Google is realizing the Big Brother prophecies linked to the company from the very beginning.

Ronen Reznik writes:

I am not surprised from the minister's reaction – it is the anticipated behavior from a minister who is aspiring to be our next leader. Now she proved that she is not able to stand against criticism, even if light and satirical.
Google has no personal commitment towards us, but to the dollar! And the $$ interest dictates capitulation to local (political) forces (Israel, China, Saudi Arabia, and more…). We need to boycott Google. There are other information highways!

A day later, Tom receives a phone-call from Google's PR representative in Israel, Stern-Ariely. He writes:

I was very surprised – since when does Google call people who write a post against it? I will try to dictate the conversation in the most comprehensive manner:

‘…Google is not involved. It is not possible for us to block results within Google's organic search…’ When asked how it is possible that a blog appears in the first place, then disappears completely and then reappears in first place after much anger and outrage, the representative replied that he still has no answer.

Personally I am skeptical that I will ever receive an answer. My interpretation – Google surrendered first time to pressure from Tzipi Livni, and second time from us readers, when realizing that they've been found. If anyone has an alternative explanation please let me know.

Israel: Knesset Freezes Talkback Law for Web-Comment Censorship

Gilad Lotan — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:29:06 +0000

The Knesset has decided to freeze legislation regulating readers’ ability to respond to articles via the so-called “Talkback Law”, in an effort to allow web sites to practice self-regulation. The Talkback Law, submitted by MK Israel Hasson (Yisrael Beiteinu), passed its preliminary reading. It would make web sites responsible for the talkbacks (user generated comments) of its readers as though they were articles of the site itself.

Avner Finchuk of the Israeli Civil Rights Association, addresses the Knesset legislators in an article on ynet:

החוק לא נועד, וגם אינו יכול, לחנך את הציבור לנימוסים והליכות. אם רוצים המחוקקים בכנסת להשפיע על תרבות הדיון הציבורי, יתכבדו ויתחילו לעשות זאת בביתם ואל יפגעו בציפור נפשה של הדמוקרטיה.

“This law was not meant to educate the general public towards politeness and manners. If the Knesset legislators want to have an influence on the public conversation culture, they are welcome to begin to do this in their homes, not harming the soul of our democracy.”

Shahar Ilan of The Marker, writes:

נציגת משרד המשפטים, עורך דין תמר קלהורה, הביעה התנגדות להצעת החוק של חסון. לדבריה, אין להשתמש באמצעי החקיקה הקיימים לגבי מדיום חדש כמו האינטרנט אלא יש לבנות לו כלי חקיקה חדשים כמקובל בעולם. הצעת משרד המשפטים היא שברגע שתתקבל תלונה על תוכן גולשים. טוקבק או כל תוכן אחר האתר המארח יפנה לכותב, אם הכותב יודיע שהוא מתכוון להגן על התוכן בבית משפט, התוכן לא יוסר, אם הכותב לא יעשה זאת התוכן יוסר.

Lawyer Tamar Kalhura, representative from the Ministry of Justice, conveyed her objection to Hasson's law proposal. She claims that the existing legislative methods must not be used on such a new medium as the internet. It is necessary to build new legislative tools, as is done around the world, she continues. The Ministry of Justice proposes the following solution – when a website receives a complaint on a talkback (comment) or any other (user generated) content, the hosting site will contact the writer. If the writer claims that he/she will protect the content in court, it will not be removed, otherwise if the content writer does not respond, it will be removed.

From this proposal, it is not clear how content provided by anonymous sources will be handled. Yonatan Klinger of 2jk writes:

The website owners got what they wanted, Hasson got his headlines (and removed his legislative whip), but the public, users who surf the web, came out losers. It was decided that within this framework of “self-regulation”, each website will decide its own comment-censoring policy, under the patronage of the Israeli Internet Association (which is, by the way, today's biggest winner) in order to protect the public from being exposed to the horrors of web-comments!… oh, the horrors!

Today's losers are the public. If up until now, comments on Israeli sites represented a form of public space – a city square which supported open conversation. From now on these conversations will depend upon the policy which each website decides to use.

Alisa describes Israeli “talkbalk” culture as important, but not always at its best:

Israel is a small country with a very vibrant political atmosphere. As everyone knows, every Jew, especially an Israeli one, has at least one opinion on any given issue, public or otherwise. Add to this the fact that we live in a somewhat interesting neighborhood, and that the issues we have to deal with are often just as interesting, and it is a small wonder that the advent of the Internet brought with it an explosion of various sites that deal with current affairs. But the really big explosion and the real action is in the commentary sections of these sites – the Talkbacks. The Talkbackists, as they have become known, are often the real stars, very often not in a good way.

Israel: Israblog's Decision Against Banning Pro-Ana Sites

Gilad Lotan — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:57:05 +0000

An agressive campaign to shut down pro-ana blogs has been taking place in the popular Israeli portal Israblog. Pro-ana refers to the promotion or support of anorexia as a lifestyle choice. Many pro-ana organizations state that they exist mainly to give anorexics a place to turn to discuss their illness in a non-judgmental environment.

There have been numerous online conversation for and against banning of these sites. Ilana, a representative of the Israeli portal, responded to the petition calling to close down blogs that encourage anorexia. Below is a translation of her response:
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Israel: Law for Censorship of Web Comments Passes Initial Knesset Voting

Gilad Lotan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:09:38 +0000

Israeli web culture is known for having an active talkback (web commenting) scene. Every major news site allows users to submit comments for every single one of its stories. Israeli culture at its best and worst thrives through discussions held within these spaces; discussions which are planned to fall under future censorship, according to the Talkback Law, proposed by Knesset member Israel Hasson. The proposal passed initial voting in the Knesset yesterday, January 16th.

According to the proposal, a popular site, defined as one with an average of 50,000 hits or more per day, will be considered a “newspaper” and thus liable for the damage or harm caused to a person as a result from its user generated content (i.e. – comments). Ironically, the web post describing this case, published yesterday on the popular ynet news site, has already received over 200 comments.

Hasson's reasoning for the importance of such a law:
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