Adam Smith Institute

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We thoroughly approve of this action by The Observer

A week ago we were somewhat dismissive of Carole Cadwalladr's attempts to be allowed to censor Google search results. Today we must praise her actions upon the same subject:

And still, anyone searching for information about the Holocaust – if it was real, if it happened, if it was a hoax, if it was fake – was being served up neo-Nazi propaganda as the top result.

Until Friday. When I gamed Google’s algorithm.

.....

How did I achieve this impossible feat? Not through writing articles. Or shaming the company into action. I did it with the only language that Google understands: money. Google has shown that it will not respond to outrage or public sentiment or any sense of morality or ethics. It does not accept that leading people with a genuine inquiry about whether the Holocaust happened to a neo-Nazi website is grossly irresponsible or that it demeans the memory of the six million Jews who died. But it was prepared to take my cold, hard cash.

This is excellent. Of course, Ms. Cadwalladr rather spoils it all by going on to demand that something must be done. Missing the point that she has already achieved what must be done.

She desires that the world be a slightly different, and by her lights slightly better, place. We may agree or not with her desired end state, as we may or may not agree with the desires of anyone else out there. But we entirely agree with he method employed here. You want the world to change then off you go, using your own resources, and change it. Rather than demanding that the resources of everyone else are consumed through the medium of the State, or regulation, or the law, to alter it to your desired shape. 

And the very best of British to you and all who sail in your particular little ship.

Your resources are indeed yours to deploy as you wish--as ours are ours and as theirs are theirs. And think how much better The Observer would be as a newspaper if all their solutions accorded to this principle? That this problem or other should be solved by me doing something rather than by my demanding that them over there have to pay for it?