Google honcho Eric Schmidt has announced that his ubiquitous search engine will move to “de-rank” RT and Sputnik, two Kremlin-owned news sites. At an event in Canada over the weekend, Schmidt accused RT—a television network and website—and Sputnik—an online news service and radio station—of spreading “misinformation—or worse.”
And so, Google is “working on de-ranking those kinds of sites,” he said. The company will remove their content from Google’s news page, and also to make it harder to find their work through searches. (A huge amount of traffic is delivered to news sites through search engines.)
RT, which has viewership so minuscule that it doesn’t register in the Nielsen ratings, has nonetheless been fingered for helping Donald Trump win the White House. This year, U.S. intelligence agencies accused it of contributing “to the [Kremlin] influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences” during last year’s election. The network airs a bizarre combination of mendacious conspiracy-mongering, unorthodox political discussion (it’s true when it boasts that it airs views that are left out of the CNN-Fox-MSNBC axis), and even traditional talk shows. Larry King—yes, he’s still alive—hosts an RT show.
Schmidt’s announcement comes as part of a concerted effort to reduce RT and Sputnik’s influence in the United States. Both outlets have recently registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents.
Twitter has barred the two sites from advertising on its social network. Tech companies, jittery at being accused of facilitating the spread of “fake news,” appear eager to reduce Russian influence.
Schmidt agues that “de-ranking” is a more elegant solution than censorship. Yet if the purpose of the de-ranking is to ensure that fewer people can access RT and Sputnik’s content—and it is, per Schmidt—then it’s hard to make out what the difference is. Google has near monopoly control of search—globally, its market share stands at north of 90 percent—so it’s extraordinarily powerful at determining whose content gets seen. And whose doesn’t. That’s worrying.
That is not to defend RT and Sputnik, per se. Much of what they produce is intellectually indefensible. But it’s worth considering whether we want hugely powerful technology corporations to determine what kind of news Americans are able to access. A potentially dangerous precedent is being set.
