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Google Now 'news blacklist' file and its 'high user block rate' section

The leaked file 'news-black-list-site-for-google-now.txt' was a manual list of nearly 500 domains excluded from appearing as stories in Google Now, a mobile news feature. It included piracy and torrent sites, some ordinary commercial sites, a section labeled for 'high user block rate' that included many conservative sites, and a section of hoax sites. The file's existence and contents were widely reported; no on-record Google explanation of this specific list was found.

Aug 14, 2019
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Whose side it served: Neither party

The list excluded piracy, hoax and many conservative sites from one feature; the documented reason given for the conservative entries was user blocking, not party.

What the record shows

TorrentFreak reported the list contained nearly 500 domains, opening with sites such as APKMirror and eBay, followed by torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG and EZTV, and TorrentFreak itself. It reported a section tagged for 'high user block rate' that included quite a few conservative sites, and a section of about a dozen sites flagged for hoax stories. NewsBusters and The Christian Post said they and outlets such as Daily Caller, RedState, Twitchy and Glenn Beck appeared on it. A comment in the file said the manual list excludes sites from appearing as Google Now stories; the list applied to that feature, not to Google Search overall. In a Medium post, Vorhies read the block-rate label to mean users had often blocked the sites, and suggested bad actors exploiting spam-enforcement mechanisms could cause listings. TorrentFreak, NewsBusters and The Christian Post each asked Google for comment and reported no reply.

In their words

“We don't use blacklists, whitelists to influence our search results.”— Karan Bhatia, Google VP for Government Affairs and Public Policy, July 2019 Senate testimony · source
The other side

The document's own label ties many conservative listings to user block behavior rather than editorial judgment, and Google Now let users block sources; critics note it is still a manual exclusion list, despite a Google VP's July 2019 testimony that Google does not use blacklists 'to influence our search results.'

Sources

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