RUSH: By the way, folks, just as I predicted, a bunch of liberals, a bunch of leftists have started learning what is in net neutrality, and they are unhappy. The Wall Street Journal has a headline: “Liberals Mugged by Obamanet — Buyer’s remorse is already setting in for Google and other ‘net neutrality’ proponents.” You know what the one thing that none of these people ever figured on? None of them, none of these leftists ever dreamed Obama would do what they have now discovered is part of net neutrality.
That is: The Regime is going to regulate content.
They all thought the Regime was simply gonna punish the ISPs (the Internet Service Providers) and the telecoms for all of the throttling or for fast-lane preference to the highest-paying customers, and freezing out the little guy trying to stream whatever perversion he’s watching on Netflix tonight. Instead the Regime is going to regular content. Exactly as I, El Rushbo, predicted to you.
Speaking of Google, have you seen what they want to do with their search results now? Google search results now return the most popular results. Like if you go out and search “perversion and depravity in Hollywood,” just to pick a subject — or, in other words, House of Cards. If you go search that, you’ll get a list of articles based on how many clicks those articles have received. So the Google search results have nothing to do with content, per se.
I think they do. The Google guys tinker with this behind the scenes. But nevertheless, what you are seeing in a Google search result is popularity coupled with the Google guys’ preference. I mean, you’re never gonna see RushLimbaugh.com at the top of anything unless I’m in trouble, for example. But Google has now decided to change it. Get this. “Google wants their search results to be based on the sites that are the most factual.” (interruption) No. No, no.
You might think, “Well, hey, Rush, you know it’s about time. Somebody needs to police Internet for what’s right and wrong out there!” Wait a second. Who gets to decide what’s factual? I’ll give you one subject. Look at global warming. I guarantee you that everybody in Google thinks it’s real; that man’s causing it. Google believes every bit of liberal drivel, propaganda about it. By the same token, anybody who doesn’t, anybody considered a “denier,” will never, ever be revealed in a Google search.
If indeed they get to determine what you get returned on a search based on “factual content,” who gets to decide what’s right and wrong? Facts are not facts anymore, particularly in politics. So whose facts? Who gets to determine that? That’s what Google wants to do. Now, it’s not just something I guess they can automatically do. I’ll get into more detail here as the program unfolds. The basic point here is that a bunch of leftists are starting to get it.
It’s slowly starting to dribble out.
They still haven’t released these pages. They still haven’t released the 302 pages of what net neutrality is, but some people who know what’s in there are starting to leak it. So the details are slowly becoming known, and people are getting very, very worried. Like there is the ability for Obama — the Regime, administration, government, regulatory agencies — to regulate content. I knew it. I had a conversation with some people about this years ago.
The big concern from opponents of net neutrality was just that, that what was actually being set up here was a government regulatory agency that would police content and make sure that every point of view had equal access. It would be the same thing as if the government could regulate cable TV. Here’s Fox News at #1, and MSNBC at #25. “Well, that’s not fair! That’s not neutral. That’s not equal.”
So if there were a government agency that could regulate the audiences for Fox News, they would see to it that Fox lost some audience and that MSNBC picked some up. That’s what they want to do with the Internet. That’s what net neutrality is, and none of the proponents even gave that a thought. They all thought it was about getting even with big corporate interests and punishing them. They all thought it was about fast lanes and the last mile and all this gobbledygook about equalizing things for the little guy.
What it really is, is the government empowered to punish points of view it doesn’t agree with, and that is slowly being learned.
It’s being discovered.
It’s trickling out — and they’re very, very much worried about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. We’re gonna start on the phones. Peoria, Illinois. This is Brandon, Brandon, I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Fine. Very well. Thank you.
CALLER: So I just barely caught the tail end of your conversation with the Google search results, and I wanted to weigh in a little bit for you. I am a software engineer out in Peoria here, and —
RUSH: Okay, before you get started, since you caught the tail end, the important thing that I want you to hear, Google wants to change its search results and now wants to rank websites based on facts and not number of links, number of hits.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: Did they explain at all how they determine facts versus —
RUSH: No, they haven’t gotten that far yet. They know that’s an open-ended — facts, who’s gonna define the facts? But they want to set up algorithms for this stuff, obviously.
CALLER: Right, right. What I want to weigh in, I’ve done some research with search algorithms and stuff, and as big as Google is, they literally would not be able to come up with the manpower to determine fact against fact —
RUSH: That doesn’t matter —
CALLER: — algorithms —
RUSH: You’re making the mistake of taking this seriously.
CALLER: As far as?
RUSH: Assuming that Google’s intent here is exactly what they say, to actually rank this by virtue of fact, liberalism would barely show up in the search results if they’re gonna do that. That’s not what this is about.
CALLER: Right. So you’re saying that they’re just basically trying to push their opinions further up the rankings?
RUSH: This is to legitimize a Google effort to police content based on political preference or scientific preference or whatever and to make sure that things they don’t agree with never are seen in a search return.
CALLER: Right. Honestly, doing the research that I’ve done in the past, it will be utterly impossible for them to even accomplish anything of that feat. They can try and try as hard as they want —
RUSH: Let me ask you a question.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Let me ask you a question since you have experience with this.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: Pretend that you have a search site like Google, and that you are an extreme liberal and you don’t want any conservative website returned on any search. And so I go to your search site, I go to the Brandon search and I want to search myself, I put in “Rush Limbaugh,” can you see to it that nothing is returned, that your database has nothing on me, based on the fact — and you say later when somebody says, your search didn’t show anything on Rush Limbaugh. “Well, we have determined that nothing he says is factual, and therefore –“
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Can you do that?
CALLER: Well, the hard part is basically the entire search algorithm is based on keywords. So they’re gonna be searching on Rush Limbaugh. So there’s gonna be thousands of sites out there, Rush Limbaugh said this, which is maybe derogatory, or Rush Limbaugh said this, which is true.
RUSH: Right. And can’t they simply, on a keyword basis, say do not display anything with the name “Rush Limbaugh” in it? One person could do that. You wouldn’t need an army of people to do that.
CALLER: — which they already do with things like piracy and, you know, porn and things of the such.
RUSH: Well, there’s no question they do.
CALLER: But for them to filter out, you know, half of those keywords is where I’m saying it would be literally impossible for them to accomplish, to push their goals.
RUSH: Would it be impossible to do or impossible to get away with? I just want to be clear on what you’re saying.
CALLER: I kind of think a little bit of both, because even if they did find a way to get away with it, when people started searching Rush Limbaugh and find absolutely no results —
RUSH: Well, I take it back. Right. Okay. That was a bit extreme. They wouldn’t return anything positive. It would be, say, Media Matters would be the number one site that would return things. They can do that now. Hell, they do do that now. On me, global warming, you name it, doesn’t take thousands of people; takes one guy to write that line of code. Anyway, Brandon, I appreciate it. I get his point. I really do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You remember when the ChiComs told Google, “Hey, you cannot operate in this country if your search results are gonna show things that are anti the communist government.” And Google said, “Oh, okay, whatever you want,” because China’s such a big market. So Google acquiesced to the ChiComs, the ChiComs run Google search, for the most part. I mean, they don’t control everything, but the point is Google acquiesced to the ChiComs right off the bat. You think they won’t acquiesce to Obama or haven’t already?
I mean, what is this, “miserable failure” as a search term, and the first thing on the list is George Bush and the Bush White House? The search results are already manipulated. I’m sure they are with global warming and all these other things, which makes it kind of curious here that Google wants to now make this whole thing official by claiming search results are now rooted in fact. They want to rank based on whether they think the page contains falsehoods. They want to rank based on factual content rather than popularity, how popular your page is. That’s what most people think a search return is. If you ask any question on a search — it’s interesting, you know, my brother asked me today what time doe Netanyahu’s speech begin tomorrow before Congress, and I didn’t know.
So I thought, you know what, I’m gonna find out how these various search options are. So I tried Siri on my iPhone, I got a list of websites. So I went to Google and I put in the question: What time is Netanyahu’s speech before Congress tomorrow? I got Huffing and Puffington Post, I got CNN, I got websites all anti-Netanyahu. Not one of them told me what time the damn speech was. I just got the latest links on the speech from people who were opposed to it. No matter what I searched or where I went.
So I finally said, “Snerdley, call Louie Gohmert’s office, somebody’s gotta know in there what time.” 11 o’clock tomorrow. Perfect timing. I’m sure that Bibi got together with Boehner and said, “Look, I gotta be finished before Rush starts at noon, and so that’s what’s happened here. So the Netanyahu speech will be 11 o’clock tomorrow morning. It will end sometime prior to noon when the program begins here.