What if something can’t be found through Google Search? Does it still exist? That question I have to ask myself when I found that a blogpost I wrote two years ago can’t be found anymore through either Google or Bing, though it is still listed on Brave. A LinkedIn post where I refer to the blogpost was also made inaccessible, even though Bing can still find that it exists and it can be partially read when browsing anonymously.
Given that it was delisted from 2 search engines and removed from LinkedIn, I suspect it’s not just “death by algorithm”. It appears someone asked for its removal from the search index and from LinkedIn. Who it was; staunch anti-net neutrality advocates, the publisher, authors or someone else, I don’t know. What I do want to understand is:
- How could someone file such a request?
- Are there any records of such requests?
- How could I as the author know of such requests? Should I have been informed?
- How can I get my article added to the public record?
Debunking an anti-netneutrality study by four economists
My blogpost debunks an anti-net neutrality study by four academic
economists. The anti-net neutrality study claims that net neutrality leads to
25% less investment in fiber broadband. It used to be that when someone searched for
the academic paper (eg “Briglauer net neutrality OECD broadband”) that my
post on Medium was the fifth or sixth result. The LinkedIn article would also
pop up in the search results.
The academic article is cited by telecom
lobbyists in the USA and UK as proof net neutrality is bad. However, the US FCC and Ofcom both dismissed the conclusions of the article on the effects. This shows I’m not alone in my criticism of the article. Anyone who tries to
verify the claims used to be able to find my debunking of it too and make up
their own mind. Now neither my Medium article nor my LinkedIn post can be
found through Bing, Google or Linkedin. My Medium post still exists on the
Internet, but it isn’t indexed and so it is unfindable. You would have to know that it exists and where I posted it, or otherwise you won’t find it, same as the LinkedIn:
Examples of how the article has become unfindable
- The article on LinkedIn now only shows that the post can’t be displayed. I received no notification, no request to change my tone or any other indication that the post isn’t visible anymore.
Being able to find things through search engines is essential for the public discourse on contentious subjects, such as net neutrality. If a rebuttal can be made to disappear from indices of search engines and removed from social media sites such as LinkedIn, then what does this do for our open society? I’m generally a techno-optimist, but this is a gloomy prospect.