June 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Francis Bacon first said in 1597, "Knowledge is power", which has since become Google's unspoken credo.

 

By controlling what gets to your eyes, ears and mind, Google can control you and everyone else.

 

Mercola.com is the #1 alternative and health-related site in the world, with a global rank of 6,335 of most traffic sites, receiving over 13 million visits per month.

 

48% of this traffic is from organic searches from engines like Google. However, Mercola has also been banned from Pinterest and shadow-banned by other social media.

Source




 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Part 1

Google Crushes Traffic to a Website by 99%

by Joseph Mercola

June 24, 2019

from Mercola Website

Spanish version

 

Story at-a-glance

  • This year, we've seen an unprecedented push to implement censorship across all online platforms, making obtaining and sharing crucial information about health in general, and vaccines in particular, increasingly difficult
     

  • Google's June 2019 update, which took effect June 3, has effectively removed Mercola.com from Google search results
     

  • When entering a health-related search word into Google, you will no longer find Mercola.com articles in the search results. The only way to locate Mercola articles is by adding "Mercola.com" to the search word(s) in question
     

  • Mercola's fully referenced content has been at the top of health search results for over 15 years
     

  • If undesirable pages don't vanish automatically in the new algorithm, Google's quality raters will manually manipulate crowd-sourced relevance to bury the page or pages

 

 

 

Google buries Mercola in their latest search engine update


Over the years, the government and business monopolies, including the likes of Big Tech, have formed a global alliance hell-bent on protecting and concentrating member profits.

 

The price for keeping business going as usual is personal liberty and freedom of speech that may impact these fascist government-industrial complexes.

The major industries colluding to take over the government and government agencies include,

The leaders of these industries have organized strategies to buy off politicians through lobbying and to capture regulatory agencies through revolving door hiring strategies and paid-for media influence through advertising dollars.

Big Tech has joined the movement, bringing in a global concentration of wealth to eliminate competition and critical voices - voices that bring awareness to the frightening future as our rights, freedoms and competition erode into a fascist sunset, all disguised as a means to protect you from "misinformation."

This year, we've seen an unprecedented push to implement censorship across all online platforms, making it increasingly difficult to obtain and share crucial information about health topics. If you've been having difficulty finding articles from my website in your Google searchers of late, you're not alone.

Google traffic to Mercola.com has plummeted by about 99% over the past few weeks.

 

NB: traffic as well to Bibliotecapleyades.net has plummeted by about 82%

 

The reason? Google's June 2019 broad core update, which took effect June 3, 1 removed most Mercola.com pages from its search results.

 

As reported by Telaposts.com: 2

"The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted the rankings of websites in Google's Search Engine Results Pages.

 

Several aspects of the algorithm were changed which caused some sites to gain visibility and others to lose visibility.

Generally speaking, sites negatively impacted will see a drop in rankings for many or all of important keywords or key phrases which they used to rank well for…

 

The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted sites across the web, however, I am personally seeing the most impact on News and Health sites."

 



Mercola.com targeted in Google's latest core algorithm update

Now, any time you enter a health-related search word into Google, such as "heart disease" or "Type 2 diabetes," you will not find Mercola.com articles in the search results.

 

The only way to locate any of my articles at this point is by searching for "Mercola.com heart disease," or "Mercola.com Type 2 diabetes."

Even skipping the ".com" will minimize your search results, and oftentimes the only pages you'll get are blogs, not my full peer-reviewed articles.

 

Negative press by skeptics has also been upgraded, which means if you simply type in my name none of my articles will come but what you will find are a deluge of negative articles voicing critiques against me in your searches.

 

Try entering my name in Yahoo or Bing and you will see completely different results.

 
 


As explained by Telapost, 3 a core update,

"is when Google makes several changes to their main (core) algorithm."

In the past, Google search results were based on crowd-source relevance. An article would ascend in rank based on the number of people who clicked on it.

Traditionally, if you produced unique and high-quality content that matched what people were looking for, you were rewarded by ranking in the top of search results. You would find Mercola.com near the top of nearly any health search results.

So, let's say one of my articles on diabetes was seventh on the page for your search; if more people clicked on that link than, say, an article listed in third or fifth place, my article would move up in rank.

 

In a nutshell, Google search results were, at least in part, based on popularity.

That's no longer the case. Instead, Google is now manually lowering the ranking of undesirable content, largely based on Wikipedia's assessment of the author or site.

Wikipedia's founder and anonymous editors are well-known to have extreme bias against natural health content and authors.

 

Google also contributes heavily to funding Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is near the top of nearly all searches - despite the anonymous aspect of contributors. Who better to trust than a bunch of unknown, unqualified contributors?

Wikipedia's co-founder even admits these bad actors have made it a "broken system." 4

 

Why would Google give such credibility to a platform that even its own founder says is broken and overrun with bad actors?

 

 

 


Google's new 'quality' rater guidelines are a death knell for experts whose views threaten industry profits

Another major change was Google's 2019 quality rater guidelines, 5,6 released May 16.

 

What are these guidelines?

 

As explained by Telapost: 7

"Google hires 'quality raters,' people who visit websites and evaluate their quality.

 

Their feedback doesn't directly impact your site; it goes to engineers who update the Google algorithm in an effort to display great websites to their users.

 

The guidelines give us great insight as to what Google considers a quality web page."

One significant change: Google now buries expert views if they're deemed "harmful" to the public.

 

As explained by The SEM post: 8

"There has been a lot of talk about author expertise when it comes to the quality rater guidelines… This section has been changed substantially…

 

[I]f the purpose of the page is harmful, then expertise doesn't matter. It should be rated Lowest!"

Google used to rank pages based on whether an author could prove their expertise based on how many people visited a page or the number of other reputable sites that linked to that page. No more.

As you may have noticed, we've stayed on top of this, even creating a peer review panel of medical and scientific experts that review, edit and approve most articles before they're published. This is in addition to my own medical expertise as a board-certified physician.

My articles are also fully referenced, most containing dozens of references to studies published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

 

Alas, none of this now matters, as the very fact that the information I present typically contradicts industry propaganda places me in the lowest possible rating category.

 

 

 


Bait and switch
Different perspectives are essential to a healthy debate of ideas.

 

When our voices are censored humanity loses and fascism wins. Pinterest has banned me, Google has mostly erased my information and many others are experiencing this same censorship.

 

What makes me so dangerous to these industries that they need to censor me from those looking for my information?

Google had the brilliant idea of utilizing crowd sourcing, providing the best answers to your questions by pushing the most frequently selected content to the top of the search results - a truly democratic system to reward people for sharing information, and helping you locate this information by essentially sharing the most popular, highest quality content.

My information was frequently at the top of many health searches, because many people like you found it to be the most valuable.

 

But as Google's power grew to enormous proportions, the goal of providing this service to you changed. The goal now is to become even more powerful by uniting with other powerful industries and government to force their beliefs on the masses and manipulate the future itself.

Crowd sourcing has become crowd control.

 

Google began by giving you everything you want so it can now take everything you have. Google has changed from looking at users as customers and giving them what they want, to making users custodians of their will - essentially making you a host of a virus to carry out their agenda.

Google has become the ultimate puppet master, infecting people and manipulating them without even knowing it.

 

Their true goal is to be in complete control of all of us, directing our behavior - and should we rebel, they also have partnered with the military to create drones utilizing artificial intelligence to ensure resistance will be defeated.

This is eerily reminiscent of many science fiction books and productions, but we have proof of what Google is doing - and we cannot go along with it. Google refers to the goal of controlling humanity as "The Selfish Ledger," described in the video below.

 

Our lives are being exploited by Google and other large tech companies, and you have no idea how far they have come or where they are going.

 

The truth is, they can already predict and control your behavior.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Natural health and healing threaten drug and vaccine industry profits

This sentence in the SEM Post article 9 cited earlier is key to understanding what's going on:

"If the purpose of the page is harmful, then expertise doesn't matter."

In other words, if a page is deemed harmful to the public, it gets the lowest possible rating regardless of expertise.

 

And if pages don't vanish automatically in the new algorithm, quality raters will go in and manually manipulate crowd-sourced relevance to bury the page or pages.

Just what might Google and its industrial and government/military allies deem "harmful"?

 

In short, pretty much anything that presents views differing from the PR created by said allies, and that most certainly includes alternative and holistic health, and articles revealing the truth about toxic industries, including the drug and vaccine industries.

Indeed, Telapost lists 10 Mercola.com as one of the biggest losers in Google's June 2019 core algorithm update, along with other natural health sites and Vimeo - a direct competitor to Google's Youtube video platform.

 

The article also notes that: 11

"In the QRG [quality rater guidelines], Google notes that raters should conduct 'research on the reputation of the website or creator of the main content.'

Later they say,

'…Wikipedia articles can help you learn about a company and may include information specific to reputation, such as awards and other forms of recognition, or also controversies and issues.'

If a news style website has a poor reputation, factors on their site could correlate with what Google is trying to push down in search results."

I will delve into Wikipedia's role in this censorship movement in Part 2 of this article, which will be published tomorrow.

Google is undoubtedly one of the largest and clearest monopolies in the world. In fact, the company monopolizes several different markets, including search and advertising.

 

Bing, its closest search competitor, has just 2% of the market - hardly a significant threat to Google's 90%. 12 Google also controls about 60% of the global advertising revenue on the Internet .

So, with this core algorithm update, Google is very effectively preventing a majority of people worldwide from learning about how to protect and support their health, which is nothing short of an attack on your civil liberties and right to pursue health and happiness.

I've written about the dangers of monopolies within the drug and agricultural industries on numerous occasions, but Google is without a doubt the greatest monopoly that has ever existed on the planet, and most people don't even realize it.

The technology giant has injected itself ever deeper into our day-to-day lives, from childhood education to Android phones, to patented meat substitutes 13 and health care.

 

Google's Internet  monopoly combined with its creepy personal information tracking and sharing poses a very unique threat to public health, privacy and well-being.

Anyone concerned about their health, food or environment and their ability to obtain truthful information about any of those issues needs to understand the role Google plays, and whose side Google is really on.

 

I'll delve further into this in part 2 far below.

 

 

 


Who are the Google 'quality' raters?
So, just who are these quality raters Google hires to decide who's who and what's what, and manually rank pages higher or lower? Ars Technica has written articles about the poor working conditions of these raters.

 

In April 2017, senior tech culture editor for Ars Technica, Annalee Newitz, reported: 14

"Few people realize how much these raters contribute to the smooth functioning act we call 'Googling.'

 

Even Google engineers who work with rater data don't know who these people are. But some raters would now like that to change.

 

That's because, earlier this month, thousands of them received an e-mail that said their hours would be cut in half, partly due to changes in Google's staffing policies.

Though Google boasts about its army of raters, the raters are not Google employees.

 

Instead, they are employed by firms who have contracted them to Google, full time, for years on end. These raters believe that Google has reaped significant benefits from their labor without ensuring their jobs are secure and stable.

 

That's why 10 raters came to Ars Technica to tell the story of what their lives are really like."

At the time, Leapforce - which was incorporated in 2008 15 - was one of the largest companies supplying Google with raters.

 

Most raters work from home and virtually everyone, including managers, use online pseudonyms, preventing employees from knowing who they're really working with.

"To get a task, raters log into Raterhub and see what's available. Some days plenty of tasks exists; on others, a rater might wait hours and be offered nothing…

 

A typical task takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes, and the amount of time the rater can bill for the task is pre-determined by Google," Newitz writes. 16

In 2017, the hourly pay for a rater ranged between $13.50 and $17.40. 17

 

Effective June 1, 2017, Google raters working in the U.S. could no longer bill for more than 26 hours a week, which meant those working full-time (about 20% of Leapforce raters) were reduced to part-time to minimize employee benefits.

In response to panicked workers, Leapforce founder and CEO Daren Jackson 18 told the raters,

"this is not a change we are able to control," and that the abolishing of full-time work was due to "risk mitigation" related to "regulations."

According to Newitz, a new Google policy stipulated they wanted to work with employee-based workforces, so to keep its contract, Leapforce converted its raters from independent contractors to employees.

 

It was very likely unlawful to have so many people independently contracted for these positions in the first place.

However, Jackson told Newitz he couldn't convert his full-time contractors to full-time employees,

"because Leapforce couldn't afford health care for all of them," as required under the Affordable Healthcare Act.

After speaking to Ars about their work conditions, three of the raters were fired by Leapforce, Newitz reported in a subsequent article. 19

 

 

 


Leapforce founder is a former Google employee

While Jackson claimed Leapforce had other clients beside Google (which he would not name when asked by Ars Technica), Google certainly appeared to be its largest.

 

It should come as no surprise then that Jackson and Leapforce didn't just appear out of the blue. In fact, as reported by Newitz, Jackson used to work for Google.

 

She writes: 20

"Jackson told Ars that he started Leapforce in 2008 after quitting Google, where he had been working on a project called EWOQ.

 

EWOQ is the precursor to Raterhub, though its origins are shrouded in secrecy. We do know that, as early as 2004, Google had a quality rater tool... At that time, raters were hired directly by Google...

But by the time Google purchased the website Raterhub.com in 2012, all of Google's raters were coming from contracting companies like

  • Leapforce

  • Lionbridge

  • Appen

  • ZeroChaos

Many of Leapforce's raters still call the tool they use at Raterhub 'EWOQ,' though one told me that they have no idea why, nor what it stands for."

In essence, the separation between Leapforce and Google appears to have been little more than a legal fiction that shielded Google from any legal liabilities for the way this workforce was treated.

In a subsequent article, 21 published May 2, 2017, Newitz pointed out that Jackson had just created yet another rating company called RaterLabs, 22 and was in the process of transferring raters from Leapforce to RaterLabs, but at reduced pay rates.

As reported by Newitz in a third article, 23 published December 1, 2017, Leapforce/RaterLabs were ultimately acquired by a top competitor, Appen. 24

 

She also reported that several Leapforce raters had filed complaints with employee rights groups.

 

Two of the raters fired after speaking to Ars Technica filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. Both cases were reportedly settled.

 

 

 


Google is not an independent actor in its censorship movement
While some argue that Google, being a private company, has the right to do whatever it wants, even if that means creating algorithms that censor important and relevant news and health insights while manually burying "undesirable" pages to protect the profits of its advertisers and other financial stakeholders.

However, being one of the biggest monopolies in the world, one could argue Google has really become more of a utility (like gas, water and electric utilities), and as such has a responsibility to serve the people.

 

In fact, last year, U.S. House Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, suggested Google and Facebook be turned into, and regulated as, public utilities. 25

After all, if you want to find an answer on the web what do you do? You Google it, you don't just "search." Google worked for many years to earn your trust, but it was just setting a trap to twist that trust into powerful control.

Unfortunately, even if such an idea were to gain traction (which it has not), it still wouldn't solve the problem, as Google is not acting independently, but rather is merely fulfilling a role within a much larger complex that includes the U.S. government, its military and national security apparatus, as well as several of the wealthiest and most powerful industries on the planet.

 

I'll delve into these issues in part 2 far below.

All of these "partners" have a vested interest in censoring information addressed by yours truly on a daily basis:

Again, as explained earlier, Google's latest core algorithm update and quality rater guidelines bury all of this information, favoring instead information relayed by sites that are either part of this industrial-technological-military-government complex, or that peddle the desired talking points.

It doesn't matter that I'm reporting on and referencing publicly available peer-reviewed research and have a whole panel of medical and scientific experts reviewing much of the information, because the science I highlight is the science industry doesn't want you to see.

Few are ever going to take the time to dig up these studies even though they're readily available, and thus by censoring me and other online sources like myself, the industrial-technological-military-government complex's task of social engineering is significantly simplified.

The information we share about,

...and other dangerous additives are prime targets for censorship for the simple reason that when you take control of your health, they LOSE control over you.

 

By being informed, you take their power over you away from them.

 

 

 


What can you do?
I have been writing about Google for years because I knew this day would come.

 

June 03, 2019, Google predictably removed my website and several other health sites from its search results.

It's a wakeup call for everyone, and now more than ever we must work together to share this information with others by word of mouth, by text and email. We have built in simple sharing tools at the top of each article so you can easily email or text interesting articles to your friends and family.

My information is here because all of you support and share it, and we can do this without Big Tech's support.

 

It's time to boycott and share!

 

Here are a few other suggestions:

  • Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure you'll stay up-to-date on important health and environmental issues.

     

    NB: Become a subscriber too, to Biblioteca Pleyades newsletter.
     

  • If you have any friends or relatives that are seriously interested in their health, please share important articles with them and encourage them to subscribe to our newsletter.
     

  • Use the internal Mercola.com search engine when searching for articles on my site. Nearly all major search websites except Yahoo! and Bing still use Google as their primary engines and have their own privacy issues. Then you have sites like StartPage and DuckDuckGo, which provide greater privacy than Google, but rely on Google's search results.

     

    NB: Use the internal Biblioteca Pleyades search engine when searching for articles in B. Pleyades.
     

  • Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:

    • Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo 26 and Startpage 27
       

    • Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. 28 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
       

    • If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as ProtonMail, 29 an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
       

    • Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives 30
       

    • If you're a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

  • Sign the "Don't be evil" petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly

 

 

 

Sources and References

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part 2

Google raters use Wikipedia for 'expertise' and 'trustworthiness'

by Joseph Mercola

June 25, 2019

from Mercola Website

 

 

Story at-a-glance

  • Google's June 2019 broad core algorithm update, which started taking effect June 3, and its updated quality rater guidelines have effectively removed Mercola.com from Google search results
     

  • When entering a health-related search word into Google, you will no longer find Mercola.com articles in the search results. The only way to locate Mercola articles is by adding "Mercola.com" to the search word(s) in question
     

  • One of the primary sources Google's quality raters are instructed to use when assessing the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of an author or site is Wikipedia
     

  • Wikipedia is censoring information and crafting narratives to benefit certain groups; it started censoring information and blocking editors shortly after its inception. Co-founder Larry Sanger calls Wikipedia "a broken system"
     

  • Together with Amazon, Apple and Facebook, Google is amassing "an army" of lobbyists - 75% of which have served in government or on political campaigns - to ensure survival as antitrust investigations into the four companies get underway



In Part 1 far above, it was discussed the effects Google's June 2019 broad core algorithm update and updated quality rater guidelines is having on traffic to this site.

As mentioned in Part 1, Google's "quality raters" are now manually lowering the ranking of undesirable content and buries even expert views if they're deemed "harmful" to the public.

 

 

 


Google raters use Wikipedia for 'expertise' and 'trustworthiness'

One of the primary sources Google's quality raters are instructed to use when assessing the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of an author or website is Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia."

 

Excerpts from my Wikipedia page read: 1

"Joseph Michael Mercola (born 1954) is an alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Web entrepreneur, who markets a variety of controversial dietary supplements and medical devices through his website, Mercola.com...

Mercola criticizes many aspects of standard medical practice, such as vaccination and what he views as overuse of prescription drugs and surgery to treat diseases.

On his website mercola.com, Mercola and colleagues advocate a number of unproven alternative health notions including homeopathy, and anti-vaccine positions...

 

Mercola's medical claims have been criticized by business, regulatory, medical, and scientific communities."

RationalWiki, the stated purpose of which is to analyze and refute "pseudoscience and the anti-science movement" presents me as: 2

"[A] member of the right-wing quack outfit Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

 

Mercola advocates and provides a forum for many classic crank medical ideas, such as vaccine hysteria and the belief that modern (sorry, "allopathic") medicine kills more people than it helps.

 

His website is a veritable spring of pseudoscience, quackery, and logical fallacies. He is also a promoter of the idea of an AMA/Big Pharma/FDA conspiracy."

It comes as no surprise then that Mercola.com is listed as one of the biggest losers in Google's June 2019 core algorithm update. 3

 

Since its implementation, Google traffic to my site has dropped by approximately 99%, as no Mercola.com pages will now appear in search results using keywords only.

To have any chance of finding my articles using Google search, you have to add "Mercola.com" to your search term (example: "Mercola.com heart disease" or "Mercola.com Type 2 diabetes").

 

Even skipping the ".com" will minimize relevant search results.

 

 

 


Wikipedia isn't what it pretends to be

How can Wikipedia be a primary authority of credibility when the editors are anonymous and uncredentialed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia has bizarre policies, including to never use a primary source for information - only 'secondary' sources are considered applicable for sourcing information.

 

In the 2016 Full Measure article 4 "The Dark Side of Wikipedia," investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson exposed the fact that Wikipedia is censoring information and crafting narratives to benefit certain groups:

"The promise of accurate, neutral articles and privacy for contributors is often just a mirage, according to two insiders. They say they've been left battle-scarred after troubling personal encounters with the world's most popular encyclopedia.

 

It's billed as 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit.' But for many, it's the opposite."

While Google's censoring of content is a more recent phenomenon, Wikipedia has been censoring information and blocking editors since the beginning.

 

According to Greg Kohs, one of the insiders interviewed by Attkisson, about 1,000 users are blocked from the platform on any given day. 5

 

Attkisson writes:

"When Kohs ran afoul of Wikipedia, he was drawn into an unseen cyberworld. One where he says volunteer editors dole out punishment and retaliation, privacy is violated and special interests control information."

As reported by Attkisson, Wikipedia is often edited by people with a very specific agenda, and anyone who tries to clarify or clear up inaccuracies on the site is simply blocked.

 

The reality is a far cry from Wikipedia's public promise, which is to provide readers with unbiased information.

 

 

 


'Inmates running the asylum'

Even Lawrence (Larry) Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, bailed ship the very next year, 6 saying "trolls sort of took over" the site, that,

"The inmates started running the asylum," 7 and that "In some fields and some topics, there are groups who 'squat' on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases." 8,9

 

Earlier this year, Sanger told 150Sec he and co-founder Jimmy Wales tried to "figure out how to rein in the bad actors."

 

He admits they were never able to devise a good strategy for that, and as a result,

"Wikipedia is a broken system." 10,11

Full Measure reports: 12

"In Wikipedia's world, the ruling authorities are the hundreds of volunteer editors who've reached the most powerful editing status. They're called 'administrators,' known only by their pseudonyms or user names.

 

They always win the edit wars.

Sharyl: The more edits you make, the longer you've been making them, the more power you're going to have?

 

Kohs: Yes.

But what happens when powerful editors improperly control content?

 

Kohs: You'll have different people with a particular scientific point of view and they'll edit and modify Wikipedia so that its articles kind of reflect that point of view...

Two trusted Wikipedia officials were exposed running businesses that covertly edited Wikipedia for PR clients.

 

Interests for Sony, the CIA, the Vatican, Barack Obama and John McCain all reportedly have been caught secretly editing their own Wikipedia pages to their advantage.

And anonymous Wikipedia editors maintain a stranglehold on selected topics… One study found mistakes in nine out of ten Wikipedia medical entries.

 

Millions of dollars can depend on how an idea or product is portrayed within the computer pages...

Kohs: When you read Wikipedia, you have to be aware that the people who are writing it, who don't identify themselves, who don't necessarily have any credentials to be writing in the subject matter that they've chosen to write in, are very often pushing an agenda."

 

 


 Wikipedia is controlled by special interests

Three years later, May 25, 2019, Attkisson wrote 13 about her own struggles with Wikipedia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She also discussed it in a TedX talk (above) on astroturf tools.

"My own battle with Wikipedia included being unable to correct provably false facts such as incorrect job history, incorrect birth place and incorrect birth date," she writes. 14

 

"What's worse is that agenda editors related to pharmaceutical interests and the partisan blog Media Matters control my Wikipedia biographical page, making sure that slanted or false information stays on it.

 

For example, they falsely refer to my reporting as 'anti-vaccine,' and imply my reporting on the topic has been discredited.

In fact, my vaccine and medical reporting has been recognized by top national journalism awards organizations, and has even been cited as a source in a peer reviewed scientific publication.

 

However, anyone who tries to edit this factual context and footnotes onto my page finds it is quickly removed.

What persists on my page, however, are sources that are supposedly disallowed by Wikipedia's policies. They include citations by Media Matters, with no disclosure that it's a partisan blog.

Another entity quoted on my Wikipedia biographical page to disparage my work is the vaccine industry's Dr. Paul Offit.

 

But there's no mention of the lawsuits filed 15 against Offit for libel (one prompted him to apologize and correct his book), or the fact that he provided false information about his work and my reporting to the Orange County Register, which later corrected 16 its article.

Obviously, these facts would normally make Offit an unreliable source, but for Wikipedia, he's presented as if an unconflicted expert. In fact, Wikipedia doesn't even mention that's Offit is a vaccine industry insider who's made millions of dollars off of vaccines...

The powerful interests that 'watch' and control the pages make sure Offit's background is whitewashed and that mine is subtly tarnished.

 

They will revert or change any edits that attempt to correct the record."

Sanger believes the solution to the Wikipedia problem is a decentralized blockchain system where edits are approved by a community.

 

This is how Everipedia, which Sanger joined in 2017, is run.

 

He told 150Sec: 17

"Since last July, every edit to Everipedia has had to be approved by the community of IQ token-holders. 'IQ' is the Everipedia token, or cryptocurrency. If someone uploads nonsense or copyrighted text, we downvote it.

 

This already provides for a layer of editorial oversight that Wikipedia lacks.

We have barely even started to explore what will be possible when there is no centralized control of editorial policy, when editorial decisions are made according to various smart contract-driven systems, and when participation in the system is remunerated by the system itself."

Wikipedia co-founder openly hostile against holistic medicine

As early as 2010, the Alliance for Natural Health pointed out the impossibility of finding,

"information that isn't heavily biased toward conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry" on Wikipedia, 18 and matters certainly have not improved in the years since.

If anything, they've gotten much, much worse.

Still, even back then, ANH gave several examples of the blatant censorship of holistic medicine.

 

As just one example, the president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine was prevented from posting positive information about anti-aging derived from the academy's own research.

From where I stand, it seems Sanger's co-founding partner, Wales, is part of the problem. Wales is openly hostile against holistic medicine, and in 2014 rejected a Change.org petition to bring in more positive discussion of holistic medicine on Wikipedia.

 

As reported by Business Insider: 19

"The petition, which has nearly 8,000 supporters, calls for people to stop donating to Wikipedia in response to what it called 'biased, misleading, out-of-date, or just plain wrong' information about holistic approaches to healing."

Wales' response: 20

"No, you have to be kidding me...

 

Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

 

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't."

 



Google funds Wikipedia
Considering Wikipedia's history of bias and its incredibly effective blocking of opposing views, no matter how factual, it's not surprising that Wikipedia is Google's chosen arbiter of expertise and credibility.

 

It also means the whole "quality rating" system Google has set up is rotten from the ground up, as its quality raters are instructed to base their quality decisions on an already biased source.

As reported by Tech Crunch, 21

in January 2019, Google donated $2 million to Wikimedia Endowment, Wikipedia's parent organization, and another $1.1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Together, Wikipedia and Google are also working on Project Tiger, which will expand Wikipedia's content into more languages.

 

In a blog post, Google president Jacquelline Fuller wrote: 22

"While efforts to empower editors will help them continue to add more information and knowledge to the web, we also aim to support the long-term health of the Wikimedia projects so they are available for generations to come."

In other words, biased Wikipedia editors will receive even more support, and with the backing and injections of funding from Google, Wikipedia will be in an excellent position to further the stranglehold on natural health in years to come.

 

 

 


Antitrust complaints ignored

As mentioned in part 1 far above, Google is the largest monopoly in the world.

 

Yet while the European Union successfully raised antitrust charges against Google, resulting in a $2.7 billion fine - and this despite the revolving door between Google and EU policy advisers 23 - the U.S. has continued to look the other way.

The Federal Trade Commission investigation that took place during the Obama administration, for example, resulted in no formal action whatsoever. 24

 

One possible reason for this, Music Technology Policy 25 suggested back in 2016, could be because Google managed to install one of its former lawyers in the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division, thereby protecting the company's interests.

The revolving door swings both ways, of course. In 2007, Google paid Makan Delrahim - a lawyer and current deputy assistant attorney general of the DOJ's antitrust division - $100,000 26 to lobby for the approval of its acquisition of DoubleClick, which was under antitrust review. 27,28

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has also pointed out that Delrahim lobbied on behalf of Apple in 2006 and 2007.

As reported by The New York Times 29 and The Verge, 30 Delrahim,

"is now facing pressure to recuse himself if the Justice Department pursues an investigation..."

A study 31 by Public Citizen published May 23, 2019, found a whopping 59% of FTC officials entered into financial relationships with technology companies after leaving the agency.

All of this brings us to the issue of monopolization and the corruption that inevitably follows. 32

 

It is very clear that there is no company operating in breach of antitrust rules as blatantly as Google. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this adage certainly fits when describing Google.

 

As reported by The Washington Post in 2017: 33

"Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power.

 

It has reached a dangerous point… The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent...

Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, 'Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.' Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony…

 

[I]n recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse."

 

 


Google recruits law professors to defend its corporate views

To help sway public opinion and policy, Google has also recruited law professors to back up and promote its views.

 

According to a 2017 Campaign for Accountability report, 34 Google has paid academics in both the U.S. and Europe millions of dollars to influence public opinion and policymakers alike. 35,36

This includes funding research papers,

"that appear to support the technology company's business interests and defend against regulatory challenges such as antitrust and anti-piracy."

Some of these academics have not declared the source of their funding, even though payments have reached as high as $400,000. 37

 

As noted by The Times: 38

"On one occasion Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive, cited a Google-funded author in written answers to Congress to back his claim that his company was not a monopoly - without mentioning that it had paid for the paper…"

 

 

 

'Tech giants amass lobbying army'
Power can be assessed by looking at lobbying expenditures and Google is leading the pack when it comes to corporate spending on lobbying - efforts primarily aimed at eliminating competitors and gaining power over others.

 

Google also appears to take full advantage of its power over organizations that it helps fund, which is one reason to be suspicious of its donations to Wikipedia.

According to a June 5, 2019, article 39 in The New York Times,

"[F]our of the biggest technology companies are amassing an army of lobbyists as they prepare for what could be an epic fight over their futures."

The four companies in question are,

  • Google

  • Facebook

  • Amazon

  • Apple

Combined, these four tech giants spent $55 million on lobbying in 2018 - double what they spent in 2016.

 

The New York Times continues: 40

"As they have tracked increasing public and political discontent with their size, power, handling of user data and role in elections, the four companies have intensified their efforts to lure lobbyists with strong connections to the White House, the regulatory agencies, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Of the 238 people registered to lobby for the four companies in the first three months of this year… about 75 percent formerly served in the government or on political campaigns…

 

Many worked in offices or for officials who could have a hand in deciding the course of the new governmental scrutiny.

The influence campaigns encompass a broad range of activities, including calls on members of Congress, advertising, funding of think-tank research and efforts to get the attention of President Trump...

 

Earlier this week, the threat of government action became more real, driving down their stock prices. The House Judiciary Committee announced a broad antitrust investigation into big tech.

And the two top federal antitrust agencies agreed to divide oversight over Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google as they explore whether the companies have abused their market power to harm competition and consumers...

The industry's troubles mean big paydays for the lawyers, political operatives and public relations experts hired to ward off regulations, investigations and lawsuits that could curtail the companies' huge profits."

Going forward, the DOJ will be investigating Google and Apple - conveniently, the two companies that antitrust department head Delrahim lobbied for in the past - while the Federal Trade Commission will have jurisdiction over Amazon and Facebook.

 

 

 


Google - An integral part of the national security state?

Google could potentially also garner some protection or aid from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

 

According to an Aljazeera report 41 published in 2014, emails reveal a cozy relationship between Google and the NSA, with coordination occurring at the highest levels.

Two years later, in March 2016, Wired reported 42 the executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet and former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, had been chosen by the Pentagon to chair its new Defense Innovation Advisory Board.

 

According to a Pentagon press release: 43

"The board will seek to advise the department on areas that are deeply familiar to Silicon Valley companies, such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing."

 

 

 

Google is not what it seems

In his article, 44 "Google is not what it seems," Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also details,

"the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department."

I recommend reading through this detailed and comprehensive analysis for your own edification. The article is an extract from his book, "When Google Met Wikileaks."

 

He writes in part:

"Google is 'different.' Google is 'visionary.' Google is 'the future.' Google is 'more than just a company.' Google 'gives back to the community.' Google is 'a force for good'…

 

The company's reputation is seemingly unassailable. Google's colorful, playful logo is imprinted on human retinas just under six billion times each day, 2.1 trillion times a year - an opportunity for respondent conditioning enjoyed by no other company in history.

Caught red-handed… making petabytes of personal data available to the US intelligence community through the PRISM program, Google nevertheless continues to coast on the goodwill generated by its 'don't be evil' doublespeak...

Even anti-surveillance campaigners cannot help themselves, at once condemning government spying but trying to alter Google's invasive surveillance practices using appeasement strategies.

 

Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has.

Eric Schmidt's tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive mega-corporation.

 

But Google has always been comfortable with this proximity.

Long before company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hired Schmidt in 2001, their initial research upon which Google was based had been partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

And even as Schmidt's Google developed an image as the overly friendly giant of global tech, it was building a close relationship with the intelligence community. In 2003 the US National Security Agency (NSA) had already started systematically violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) under its director General Michael Hayden.

These were the days of the 'Total Information Awareness' program.

 

Before PRISM was ever dreamed of… the NSA was already aiming to,

'collect it all, sniff it all, know it all, process it all, exploit it all.'

During the same period, Google - whose publicly declared corporate mission is to collect and 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful' - was accepting NSA money to the tune of $2 million to provide the agency with search tools for its rapidly accreting hoard of stolen knowledge."

Assange also points out what he calls a "crucial detail" in the media's reporting on the email correspondence between Schmidt, Google co-founder Sergei Brin and NSA chief general Keith Alexander:

"'Your insights as a key member of the Defense Industrial Base,' Alexander wrote to Brin, 'are valuable to ensure ESF's [Enduring Security Framework program] efforts have measurable impact'…

The Department of Homeland Security defines the Defense Industrial Base as,

'the worldwide industrial complex that enables research and development, as well as design, production, delivery, and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts, to meet U.S. military requirements'.

The Defense Industrial Base provides,

'products and services that are essential to mobilize, deploy, and sustain military operations.'

Does it include regular commercial services purchased by the US military?

No. The definition specifically excludes the purchase of regular commercial services. Whatever makes Google a 'key member of the Defense Industrial Base,' it is not recruitment campaigns pushed out through Google AdWords or soldiers checking their Gmail…

Google's geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy agenda of the world's largest superpower.

 

As Google's search and Internet  service monopoly grows, and as it enlarges its industrial surveillance cone to cover the majority of the world's population... and racing to extend Internet  access in the global south, Google is steadily becoming the Internet  for many people.

Its influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history.

 

If the future of the Internet is to be Google, that should be of serious concern to people all over the world... for whom the Internet  embodies the promise of an alternative to US cultural, economic, and strategic hegemony."

 



 Decentralization is key - And it's coming

Just as Larry Sanger realized a decentralized system is the best way to create a new, more bias-resilient version of Wikipedia, 45 others have realized a decentralized Web is the answer to Google's monopoly, growing censorship and rapidly deteriorating privacy online.
A June 3, 2019 article 46 on Mediapost.com presents the ideas of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf and Brewster Kahle - three early web inventors - who are actively trying to devise ways to,

"protect and rebuild the open nature of the web."

Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web, had originally envisioned it as an open source space.

 

Realizing how private corporations have locked it down, he's now working on another, decentralized, Internet  solution. 47

 

As reported by Mediapost.com: 48

"'We demonstrated that the web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done,' Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair.

The web has,

'ended up producing - [through] no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform - a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.'

So, they're out to fix it, working on what they call the Dweb. The 'd' in Dweb stands for distributed.

 

In distributed systems, no one entity has control over the participation of any other entity. Berners-Lee is building a platform called 'Solid,' designed to give people control over their own data.

Other global projects also have the goal of taking take back the public web.

  • Mastodon is a decentralized alternative to Twitter.

  • Peertube is a decentralized alternative to YouTube.

This July 18-21, web activists plan to convene at the Decentralized Web Summit in San Francisco...

Last year's Dweb gathering convened more than 900 developers, activists, artists, researchers, lawyers, and students.

 

Kahle opened the gathering by reminding attendees that the web used to be a place where everyone could play.

'Today, I no longer feel like a player, I feel like I'm being played. Let's build a decentralized web, let's build a system we can depend on, a system that doesn't feel creepy' he said..."

 



Boycott Google and support decentralized initiatives

Why does Google and its allies fear Mercola.com (and other "inconvenient" websites) and feel the need to censor the information it is provided?

 

I believe the Wikipedia page created about and held hostage by detractors offer strong hints at the parties that would like to shut me up by shutting me down.

In the end, it's going to come down to a battle between those wanting to concentrate power against those trying to decentralize it.

 

If we work together to boycott them, Google will crumble under its own colossal weight.

  • Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:

    • Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo 26 and Startpage 27
       

    • Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. 28 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
       

    • If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as ProtonMail, 29 an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
       

    • Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives 30
       

    • If you're a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

  • Sign the "Don't be evil" petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly

 

 

 

How to find Mercola.com articles moving forward

As mentioned in part 1 far above, you can no longer get any of my articles using keyword searches only in a Google-based search engine.

 

You can also see the impact over the years in the graph below.

 
 


To find my articles, you have to add "Mercola.com" (or "Bibliotecapleyades.net" if it is the case) to your search term (example: "Mercola.com heart disease" or "Mercola.com Type 2 diabetes").

 

Even skipping the ".com" will minimize your search results.

 

So, moving forward, here are a few suggestions for how to stay connected:

  • Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure you'll stay up to date on important health and environmental issues.

     

    NB: Become a subscriber too, to Biblioteca Pleyades newsletter.
     

  • If you have any friends or relatives who are seriously interested in their health, share important articles with them and encourage them subscribe to our newsletter.
     

  • Nearly all major search engines except Yahoo! and Bing use Google as their primary engines, so if you use them, be sure to type mercola.com in your search query. This way, you will still find our deeply buried content. Remember, relevant Mercola.com articles will NOT show when you're using a keyword search alone anymore.
     

  • Use the internal Mercola.com search engine when searching for articles on my site.

     

    NB: Use the internal Biblioteca Pleyades search engine when searching for articles in B. Pleyades.

 

 

 

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Sources and References