The internet has always been designed as a free and open place to share ideas. Anyone can share their stories and opinions, and anyone can read them. But times are changing, and the free, open internet that we’ve come to know is slowly going extinct.
Most of us assume that when we go online, we are in charge. Need a new recipe? DMV hours? Settling a debate about when William Shakespeare died? Just google it. But as it turns out, the websites and search engines you use are guiding your internet time more than you think.
The Monopoly on Information
A few days ago, a House Judiciary Subcommittee held a hearing in which they questioned tech giants Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google about their potential threats to competition. Subcommittee chairman David Cicilline said that the internet has become “increasingly concentrated, less open, and growingly hostile to innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Unlike other antitrust investigations, in which sales and real estate are often at the forefront, we’re currently facing a potential monopoly on information. Facebook owns 4 of the top 6 social media platforms, including the top two messenger apps. The average American home has more than 2 Apple devices, and Apple’s web browser Safari was the second most popular browser used last year.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and owns the world’s biggest cloud service. Products containing Alexa (Amazon’s AI program) are in millions of homes and are now HIPPA compliant, signaling moves into the pharmaceutical sector. Even the name “Google” is synonymous with searching for information. It is far and away the most widely used search engine in the world, and its Chrome browser is the most popular globally. Over a billion people use Gmail every month.
But companies like Google are under increasing scrutiny as they acquire more and more of the information space. Because contrary to what you may think, the results you find on Google are no longer unbiased – or based on user data.
Recent “core updates” have drastically changed the way we see search results.
The Internet Has Changed
It used to be that search results were based on relevance and popularity; the more people visited a site, the higher it ranked on the search results. Same with autofill. If you type in “where should,” Google gives suggestions based on the most popular searches. “Where should I eat?” “Where should I live?” “Where should I land in Fortnite?”
Sure, there were always some promoted results at the top of the page, but these were clearly labeled. Most of us grew accustomed to simply skipping down a few lines. This was also fair. Any website could climb through the rankings based on keywords and site traffic. The more people that visited your site, the higher you climbed in the rankings.
It’s important to remember that under this system, YOU were still in charge of your search for information. You knew what you were looking for and how things were ranked. But Google released two updates that have put the search engine in the driver’s seat.
A core update is a change to Google’s algorithm. It essentially changes the way that searches return results and pages are ranked. There were 3 core updates in 2018. The second one, in August, was nicknamed the “Medic Update” because it mostly impacted health and medical sites. Primarily, it was sites offering natural health and alternative therapies that were hit.
But many of the larger sites were able to hang on. In fact, The Truth About Cancer still generated tens of thousands of users via organic search (people who googled us to get to the site).
This year, Google has rolled out two more core updates. In March, another update was released that seemed to primarily impact sites in the medical and health world.
What’s interesting is that some saw growth while others saw decline. The Truth About Cancer lost about half of our organic traffic, though we were still ranking well in search results overall. Other natural health sites took hits as well.
Then came the June core update.
The Truth About Cancer Disappears
In addition to rolling out video carousel searches (which increased YouTube’s visibility by 25% almost instantly), the update seemed to target news and information once again. Google has been extremely secretive regarding their parameters for reliable information, but they do use a system called E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness).
Unfortunately, these guidelines often favor conventional trends backed by industry. The CDC says vaccines are safe and effective, so anyone who doubts them must be crazy. The agricultural industry says GMOs are totally fine for consumption, so anyone questioning them must be a quack. Secretary of Agriculture’s Sonny Perdue says glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer, so it must be true.
When it comes to our page, the June 2019 core update hit HARD. Our organic search went from the tens of thousands to almost zero. Go ahead and search for “the truth about cancer” on Google.
You won’t find “thetruthaboutcancer.com” at the top of the list anymore. Sure, you may find a few promoted links to our documentaries, or a third-party site mentioning our company. You’ll almost certainly find defamatory articles accusing us of peddling “misinformation”. But our website? Virtually gone.
When pharmaceutical companies Merck and Sanofi joined forces to release a 6-in-1 vaccine called Vaxelis, we were among the first to cover the news. Specifically, we focused on the scanty clinical trials conducted before its approval, the risks it posed to infant immune systems, and the fact that several children died after receiving the vaccine. When searching for “vaxelis,” we were among the top 5 results.
Information on the studies came directly from the manufacturers, and yet our article can no longer be found among the search results. This is despite nearly 90 thousand social shares and massive interaction online. Now, searching for ‘vaxelis” will give you results from Merck and Sanofi, the CDC, the FDA, and others who insist that the drug is “safe and effective” despite harrowing injury and death during the clinical stage.
And we aren’t alone. Many search results and suggestions have changed to a seemingly biased tune.
Is Big Tech in Bed with Big Pharma?
And there could be a reason for this. Big tech has been involved in a steady censorship campaign for some time now – especially when it comes to vaccines. But other news has been censored as well. Google essentially controls what you see when you search now. Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Google owns Chrome and YouTube. Amazon’s owner also owns the Washington Post. These massive tech companies have almost exclusive say over what information you can find online.
And there’s more. Did you know that both Amazon and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are now pharmaceutical companies?
I’ll say it again: AMAZON AND GOOGLE ARE NOW IN THE BUSINESS OF SELLING DRUGS.
That’s right. Amazon, in addition to its use of Alexa in the medical industry, recently announced that it will be acquiring PillPack, a company that sends prescription medication to patients and manages patient information on its own unique software platform. The company that knows how to best market to consumers now has microphones in our homes, owns a major news outlet, and is starting to collect our medical records.
Google is even worse.
Alphabet now has two “life sciences” companies: Verily and Calico. Calico has been around since 2013 and is headed by former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson. The company mostly works with other pharma companies to develop new drug therapies.
Verily is another drug developer, headed by Andy Conrad. Conrad made a fortune by co-founding and selling a genetic laboratory before befriending David Murdock. He served on the boards of Murdock’s companies – Dole Foods, Castle & Cooke, and NovaRx – before joining Alphabet and becoming CEO of Verily.
Verily is deeply intertwined with Big Pharma. The company currently collaborates with Novartis, Sanofi, Otsuka, and Pfizer. They claim that their intent is to revolutionize the way clinical trials are conducted by using technology to target patients.
Clinical trials haven’t changed much since the 1960′s,” said Pfizer’s chief development officer Rod MacKenzie. “We’ve been thinking about modernizing them for some time.”
Earlier last month, Google announced a partnership with Sanofi that is meant to “harness emerging data technologies” to get a clearer understanding of patients and diseases. But like many technological advances in patient data, the result is a system that can find, track, and market to patients like any other retailer.
This may explain the sudden “crackdown” on sites that promote the truth. After all, why would Google continue to allow sites like ours to be seen when they’re in bed with the very companies we’ve set out to expose?
Google is also working with GlaxoSmithKline and Vaccitech, further cementing their relationship with the vaccine and pharma industry. There are also allegations that Google and other companies have been attempting to control the flow of information in a way that could influence election results. Last week, the White House held a social media summit, denouncing big tech companies for censoring conservative channels.
And while there was some disagreement to the validity of these claims, antitrust hearings in the United States and European Union suggest that the bias of these companies may have a significant effect on public access to information.
Competition is healthy in the marketplace, but when a single company controls the vast majority of the world’s search queries, it’s important that they are transparent about any bias.
Can We Live Without Google?
There are alternatives, but it can be hard to compete against such a massive foe. The New York Times recently ran an article about a small search engine called DuckDuckGo. The company handles around 40 million searches a day and is based on the idea of privacy; your online data will never be tracked or used for targeted advertising.
Founder Gabriel Weinberg has grown the company to include 65 employees and raised roughly $13 million over two rounds of fundraising. To put that in perspective, Google handles about 80 times more search queries each day and makes more money each hour than Mr. Weinberg has raised since the company’s conception.
Facebook has been open about its intentional effort to block “fake news” and “misleading health claims.” Pinterest and YouTube have already begun to purge sites that don’t stay in line with the agenda of Big Pharma. Now Google is altering your search results and autosuggestions to make sure you see the information they want you to see.
All of this comes down to money. The tech industry is in bed with the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical and agricultural industries are in bed with the regulatory bodies. All of them are working with politicians to ensure that laws and policies don’t get in the way. And they’re all searching for new and better ways to trick you. Trick you into buying their products. Trick you into believing their lies. Trick you into voting for dolts who are bought and paid for by special interests.
When it comes to finding the truth, are you using the internet, or is the internet using you?
The websites and search engines you use are guiding your internet time more than you think.
Companies like Google are under increasing scrutiny as they acquire more and more of the information space.
Recent “core updates” have drastically changed the way we see search results.
The Truth About Cancer’s website is virtually gone.
Amazon and Google have entered the pharmaceutical industry.
A small search engine called DuckDuckGo is a good alternative to Google.