“Google Search Is Doing Irreparable Harm to Muslims”

I’m inclined to libertarianism in economics and, to a significant though not unlimited degree, in other areas, as well.  So anything that savors of censorship concerns me deeply.

The fact is, though, that this is a problem:

“Google Search Is Doing Irreparable Harm To Muslims”

And not only for Muslims.

Latter-day Saints, too, have suffered from vast quantities of hostile online disinformation.

How to cope with it?

Obviously, good material has to be generated.  And efforts have to be undertaken to raise the visibility of good material in web searches.  And perhaps, occasionally, Google and or other relevant folks have to be contacted.

A number of years ago, a reviewer on Amazon made a serious but demonstrably false claim about my biography of Muhammad.  He claimed that I had said something that I had plainly not said, and even had the chutzpah to supply a specific page reference for his specious, and indeed incendiary, allegation.  He also falsely told the audience that a friend of mine, in conversation with him, had denounced me and my work.  (My friend claimed never to have spoken with or heard of him, and, given my friend’s views, I found such a denunciation impossible to imagine, anyway.)  I dropped a note to Amazon, in order to find out what, if anything, I might be able to do about what I regarded as malicious and indisputable public dishonesty.  It was, I said, not a matter of opinion or interpretation.  The allegation against me was simply, and incontestably, untrue.  I was astonished that Amazon (a) responded almost immediately and (b) that the response informed me that the false accusation had been removed — something that I hadn’t even requested.

Posted from Kotor, Montenegro