Why Censoring Alleged Defamation is Bad for Google

Censoring alleged defamation will always be bad for Google because it runs contrary to the company's mission, increases costs, and drives customers to Bing. Google's mission "is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google cannot accomplish that mission if it only organizes and makes available the world's information that cannot be called defamatory. Every effort that Google has made to censor itself unnecessarily in recent years has increased expenses and driven away customers in ways that should outrage shareholders.

Why Serving Defamation Satisfies Google's Mission Objective

It is impossible to accomplish a mission such as Google's while at the same time censoring anything accused of being defamatory. People often wonder why Google would continue to host defamatory information. Often such people assume that just because they know something to be defamatory and they have informed Google of that fact that Google knows the information to be defamatory. That simply is not true. All Google knows at that point is that their bot found something online and someone has accused that content of being defamatory. They do not know for a fact that it is. Until they know for sure that something is not true then their users are not best served by removing it. Quite the opposite in fact. When a user searches Google for information about a person or a business they want to see everything that could be true. They want to see things like negative business reviews (https://postalmostanything.com/rantrave/business), cheater reports (https://foulspeakers.com/cheating/), STD registries (https://stdcarriers.com), and police informant databases (https://copblaster.com/snitches/). They want to see if businesses have been accused of scamming people, they want to see if a potential sexual partner has been accused of having STDs or being unfaithful, and they want to see if a potential partner in crime has been accused of cooperating with law enforcement. Google cannot fulfill its goal of matching search engine results with the intent of the user if they refuse to serve anything that could be defamatory.

There is an argument that Google does not best serve searchers by displaying information that is false, but that argument fails to account for the overall intent of the searcher. Searchers typically want to see information that is allegedly or even likely false. That is why the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust (EAT) algorithm often ranks negative information from unreliable sources much lower than quality content from reputable places. EAT determines that negative user generated content (UGC) lacks authoritativeness and trust, so even though the author might be an expert on their subject to the extent that an ex-wife thinks she knows her ex-husband, their work will never rank as well as positive information from more reputable sources. That is why our typical reputation management clients are provided with personalized guides to help them create their own positive results using more reputable sources. Sources capable of outranking negative results. Negative information will never be entirely irrelevant to a query because even lies indicate a truth. That truth being that the subject has conflict in their life. Google users want to see evidence of such things, but such things are typically less relevant than more reliable information. It is therefore in Google's best interest to include everything that can be accused of being defamatory despite how unreliable the source may be, but it is also in their best interest to rank that content lower.

Why Shareholders Should be Outraged

Despite it being in Google's best interest to index allegedly defamatory content, Google itself has been making some exceptions in recent years that have sure damaged their business. Some types of posts are being removed even though Google is under no legal obligation to remove them and they are the types of posts Google users want to see. This should outrage shareholders for two reasons:

1) Driving Users to Bing - If users are not confident that the results of their Google searches include what they are looking for they will turn to the next major search engine. People are already turning to Bing when researching individuals because they know that they are more likely to find more information on Bing. If Google were to further limit the content of their search results to only positive things they would soon see a large exodus of users dissatisfied with Google SERPs.

2) Expenses - Hiring more employees for the sole purpose of completing unnecessary tasks is always bad for business. Despite this Google has already wasted money conducting some types of unnecessary removals. Why this has not led to a backlash among shareholders is most likely due to it not leading to significant losses and the fact that Google stock is higher than it has ever been. That success is not due in part to removals, but thanks to other successes that make shareholders really happy to the point that they would never consider selling their stock just because it could be slightly more valuable. Still, Google can only afford to hire so many people to devalue their search engine until such policies would be reflected in the stock price and lead to a backlash.

The only situation in which it is good for business to censor content is when it could suffer some type of penalty for not doing so. That penalty can be in the form of fines, lawsuits, and bad branding or boycotts. Google already must remove content that is illegal because the government would fine them otherwise. They must remove content that could get them successfully sued because in some jurisdictions they are liable. They could also face the potential of a decrease in sales due to bad branding or a consumer boycott. Those things could make censorship good for business, but are not likely to happen. The only governments that can impose fines for hosting defamatory content are in countries without the types of free speech protection that Americans enjoy and the same is true for countries in which you can successfully sue someone for accurately quoting someone else's defamatory statement. In order for bad branding to have an impact it would have to lead to a sufficient amount of people refusing to use Google products outright just because they want Google to be kind. Absent any of those things Google shareholders should be outraged to hear that the company is devaluing its services and increasing costs unnecessarily.

Conclusion

Google can only sabotage themselves so much without their stock dropping. If Google were to remove anything that could be defamatory they would drive users to Bing, increase their costs, and ultimately cost their shareholders dearly.