Former Scientologist: CoS Told Brin It Wanted Only "Good" Search Results 205
An anonymous reader writes "Former Scientologist at the highest level Geir Isene reveals that he was brought in to educate top Scientology officials about the Internet, and learned that they had met personally with Google's Sergey Brin (YouTube video), asking him if it were possible for the search giant to filter results so that only positive information about the church would be returned on the word 'Scientology.' You can imagine how that went over. Isene also says that he begged the church's officials to give him a full day to explain the Internet to them before they met with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had regularly criticized the church for its stands against Internet freedom. Apparently, the church is missing Isene's counsel, because just a few days ago, the EFF put the Church of Scientology into its 'Takedown Hall of Shame.' Last month Geir published his journey 'From Independent Scientologist to Just Me' under the GPL v3 license, recognising how being an open source advocate helped with that."
never forget (Score:5, Informative)
Those bastards shut down Julf Helsingius anon.penet.fi remailer back in '96 and we'll never forgive them for that! The internet is not in any way new to them!
CoS is a cult ... (Score:5, Informative)
The 'Church' of scientology was started by a bad science fiction writer who said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."
It's a complete sham and a fraud.
We're somehow supposed to believe there's thousands of alien souls occupying us? This magic machine you have is going to cure my problems when it has no basis in science?
Seriously, just look at Tom Cruise and his claims that anti-depressants don't work. You think Katie Holmes went running away because of any other reason than the idiocy there?
The CoS is a joke, and how any country has still given them tax exempt status is beyond me. Those idiots standing outside offering you a 'personality test' are just recruiting for the cult, and should be punched in the nose.
Posting as AC to keep these whack-jobs the fuck away from me.
Re:I try to keep an open mind... but it's hard (Score:5, Informative)
The Xenu story *is* no sillier than Christianity. But the difference between the Scientologists and the Christians is that the latter won't send lawyers after you if you post the Bible on the internet or make a webpage saying "The Pope is a dickbag". Silliness is perfectly fine; silliness that attempts to impose itself via lawyers on others is not.
Re:CoS is a cult ... (Score:5, Informative)
It's a complete sham and a fraud.
So is every other religion.
Re:two words (Score:5, Informative)
Google is more then happy to shape search results to meet various institution's preferences if you ask the right way.
Cite?