Is the internet being censored?

Question

I asked this question already once before but it seems as if some people did not understand my question. I am a college student and I am always researching subjects on the internet, lately I have noticed large amounts of information disappearing. What do I mean by that, Lets say for example I was researching apples, and I was using google search engine to find the topic "apples with worms frozen" and about thirty two web sites and six hundred hits came back, Then one day I went back to check up on any updates their might be and they were all removed, Like the subject never even existed. Now I am just using this as an example and I am not researching apples but I have definitely seen this happen a number of times in many different fields. So my question to you is what do you make of this, any ideas about what might be going on that would cause this kind of activity?

Lots of people are all ready getting off track, remember their are thirty two different web sites, none of them related to one another at all, with six hundred results, then all at one time no results. Don't tell me that all thirty two web sites were shut down or removed all at the same time, this is too great of an outlier as we would put it in statistics class.

As for all the information provided, yes I know how web sites work and I know how domain name registrations work, I have had web sites in the past, do not assume that I am ignorant about how the internet works, my G.P.A. is 3.8 so I'm competent of understanding logic, thank you.

Answer 1

good question,I've never really noticed that before but I would imagine that they do monitor the internet. Hope you find the answer.

Answer 2

The internet is not being censored but some people choose to remove information from their sites or completely remove the site altogether, so some of the information does go away. No the internet is not being censored by the goverment or anything. No one controls the internet not even the goverment. Some people are actually paying for their websites to be on the web so maybe they can no longer afford it.

Answer 3

Have you tried the search on a different computer on a different network? The reason I say this, is its very possible for whatever ISP (or college) you are using to use a filter. For example, some schools prevent acess to myspace.

The internet can be censored by governements. China goes to great lengths to censor what information is avaliable to its citizens via the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_mainland_China

If the sites that are disappearing are of questionable legal nature (i.e. warez, cracks, or other illegal material) then they very well may have been taken down. They could be taken down by an isp or by some sort of legal action.

If something has edited your hosts file, then lots of things can appear to be censored. Some spyware edits your host file to prevent access to antivirus companies web sites.

Answer 4

"apples with worms frozen" gives 0 hits apples with worms frozen (without the quotes ) gives 614,000 hits and 614,000 for apples+with+worms+frozen..Also some sites put norobots.txt to stop the searches . So its all about who you use the key word search .Unless you are in a country which filters searches or are searchs for something you should not be then google would not have the ability to filter anything . except if you are in china or saudi arabia for eg

Answer 5

Domain names may cease and websites may have been taken offline. Many web page sites sell a domain name and website for a fixed time, say 12 months, once the 12 months is up and you don't renew, off goes the page!

Answer 6

Google is being censored in China, as you probably know.

As for your example: that is probably just people taking down their website or the particular page that about apples with worms frozen. Or they made that page anew and the new page hasn't been indexed by google yet.

In this case you should look into how google works. I think you go at it wrong with your hypothesis of censorship.

Answer 7

At the present time there is zero censorship. Copyright infringements would be removed if the author found it out there. You're probably seeing data aging, where sites/content comes and goes because of site availability, sponsorship, maintaining/paying for private websites, etc.

Answer 8

Never suspect conspiracy where incompetence is an easy answer. The internet is not permanent, and any portion of it is subject to change at any time by the owner of the participating node.

Answer 9

Terrorism is causing a lot of upsets to our lives.
I have heard that blogs were being used to exchange messages and therefore banned from some places.
This may be the reason.

Answer 10

The web is being monitored more than ever. Because of terrorism, fraud, etc and can now be altered for political reasons. A lot of prople are protesting, including me!