On one hand, I empathize with Slate writer Evgeny Morozov when he passionately explains why it is bad that search results for whackadoodle anti-vaccination sites are ranked on Google right along with regular sites that provide actual information which has the benefit of being A) true and B) scientifically proven. 

 

I get it, because I too have groaned aloud at the latest "anti-vax" tirade. The king of the anti-vax movement has been as thoroughly dethroned as it is possible to be, but people keep believing his lies. And when they do, children die of preventable disease. Diseases which we, in our wonderful modern time, could probably eradicate if there weren't so many idiots out there letting their kids be vulnerable to measles. 

It's a quixotically First World problem, because in the rest of the world kids are dying of preventable diseases because they can't afford otherwise. Kids die of mosquito bites and bad water, and they can only dream of living in a country so advanced and wealthy that parents have the ability to choose not to vaccinate their kids.

 

But you know what? Kids are dying, either way.

 

That being said, if I could push a big red button that would delete all anti-vax websites and forums now and forever… I wouldn't. Because those sites have just as much right to exist as any other website. I can only hope that most people have enough critical thinking skills to understand that it's the worst kind of fear-mongering. (And clearly they do, because the vast majority of parents quietly vaccinate their kids every year.)

 

Google is not in the business of censorship, or of shaping reality. And if you ask Google to censor websites or shape reality (by determining which information is right and which is wrong), you are on a slippery slope to disaster. The entire point of Google is that it indexes the web without judgment. It maintains the Wikipedia-style ideal of the "Neutral Point of View." 

 

What would Google be, if it were otherwise? It would fall somewhere between "useless" and "actively damaging." You can say that "I would only ask Google to flag sites which are scientifically inaccurate and unproven, like anti-vax and 9/11 truther sites." But the obvious consequence here is that Google would then have to go on to flag any site which is even tangentially about religion, because what is more scientifically inaccurate and unproven than religion? And who decides what is proven and what isn't? The next thing you have is a Digg-style takeover by people with an axe to grind and an itchy "Flag This Site" finger.

 

It's a big world, folks. There's plenty of room for all the ideas in it.