Google doesn’t like liars.
Mark Twain wrote, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on.”
Our friend the Google is now erasing this disparity. And as Internet usage escalates, this disparity may well disappear completely.
Bad news for liars. Good news for everyone else.
A nice example of this is found at the Canadian website, DeSmog, which is devoted to climate change and to exposing the efforts of various polluting industries to spread disinformation about the scientific evidence which underlies climate change.
The folks at DeSmog came across a recent letter to the Canadian Government signed by 60 scientists who state their disbelief in the entire reality of global warming and climate change.
And with a little fact-checking using the Google and other tools, DeSmog has discovered that these 60 scientists are not quite the seekers of objective, untainted truth and quality science they outwardly profess to be. More precisely, they are a gaggle of industry shills.
The point here is not that various fossil fuel industries would stoop to creating an elaborate disinformation campaign using a false-front group of allegedly objective, disinterested scientists to tell mistruths, half truths and outright lies. We expect that.
The point is that with the Google and the exponential proliferation of the Internet, it is becoming much more difficult for strategies of disinformation to have a long enough shelf-life for them to achieve their intent.
