Jeffrey Rosen Google Gatekeepers

Google gatekeepers The article “Google gatekeepers” was published on New York Times Magazine on 28 November 2008 by the author Jeffrey Rosen (professor of Law at George Washington University). The article directed to the American reader is meant to raise awareness about the fact of how internet is being regulated and by whom. By playing the role of an “investigator” journalist the author tries to get the reader’s attention by showing that their personal information are being filtered and stored into permanent hard drives. A rightful question is raised “Can the worldwide public trust a corporation which has the power to decide what information they are allowed to have access to?” Billions of people access internet through Google,

The ones who are responsible for storing and controlling these account records are Google- gatekeepers. The problem seems to be much more concerning than just storing some information. The article makes it clear to the public that not only Google is storing info but also every single search made by anyone in every country possible. On the other side every upload and download is being recorded and allowed to be published for as long as it raises the market share of Google. Many countries have started having issues with Google publications. The author talks about a recent dispute between Goggle and the government of Turkey about a video they find offending. They officially asked YouTube to put a stop to some videos or otherwise they will not allow any more the use of YouTube in their country. After investigating Google agreed to remove access to those videos for the IP’s coming inside the territory of

After reviewing the videos Wang and her colleagues removed some of them but not all of them leaving senator Lieberman unsatisfied. Wang refused to remove all of them saying that YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express their points of view. Clearly this comes in contradiction with them removing Malkins video “First they came”, a video that contained neither hate speech nor graphic violence. By showing this fact the author is presenting Google as a company not to be trusted in their claim that they do this because they support free speech. The key idea in this article is that Google is based on peoples trust and they are using this trust the way they like. The information is being fed to the public by a bunch of people called the gatekeepers who control the flow of internet. Google owns 63 percent of world’s internet providers and it has given Nicole Wang the central role of the decider. More of an “enabler” role as she likes to call it. Wang and her colleagues have the power on deciding what material does or doesn’t appear on the