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November, 2001

FACTNet News Opinion/Editorial 11/21/01

Subject: Is Earthlink promoting Church of Scientology in spite of its denials of involvement with the cult?

Do actions speak louder than words? Are the assurances of Earthling executives or Sky Dayton that the Scientology cult is not being promoted or favored by Earthlink to be believed? Do Earthlink customers have the right to know the truth about whether or not their monthly subscription fees are going directly or indirectly to support a dangerous cult?

Factnet has recently disclosed that Scientology is now involved in a new spamming censorship ploy in the search engines. (See our Overture [GoTo] disclosure at http://www.factnet.org/letters/FACTNewsAugust2001.html ). In our ongoing research regarding search engine manipulation we have just discovered that at Earthlink Scientology appears to have a preferential promotional arrangement that would have any reasonable person scratching their head.

When one goes to http://www.earthlink.com for the purposes of doing an Internet search one finds that the Search function is defaulted to "Earthlink". (To search the Internet itself requires one to manually alter the drop-down selection box so that "The Web" is selected.)

If one leaves the default selection to "Earthlink" and searches on the word "scientology" the search engine presents the searcher with results only from websites hosted by Earthlink. (i.e. with a URL starting as http://home.earthlink.net/…etc.)

The interesting part is this:

1. the first 53 results are all pro-scientology. See: http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/EarthlinkScientologyBias.html
2. the first 53 results all seem to be based on a common template. See: http://www.lermanet.com/cos/webspamplan.htm
3. novice or naïve users of the internet are presented with heavily biased results. Is this not a form of preferential treatment for Scientology and censorship of opposing views to the benefit of the Scientology cult?
4. Sky Dayton ( http://home.earthlink.net/~sky/ ), founder and board member of EarthLink, is a Scientologist.

The above introduces new questions that Factnet demands the Board of Directors at Earthlink answer in a written public statement

1. is there any relationship between Sky Dayton being a Scientologist and the skewing of internal search results in Earthlink?
2. if the buck stops with the Earthlink CEO Charles (Garry) Betty, then has this skewing of internal search results in Earthlink occurred with his blessing?
3. The Earthlink internal search engine is run by Overture.com (GoTo.com) yet there are no prices listed in the search results (Overture.com is a Pay-Per-Click search engine service.) Since there are anti-scientology sites hosted by Earthlink and these do not pop up in the first 53 results does this prove that the Scientology search results have been manipulated?

A. Either the pro scientology sites hosted by Earthlink have been boosted by a bid via Overture.com and the bid does not appear, or..
B. there is some other manipulation afoot that is not bid-related.

4. Further investigation has shown that one cannot bid at Overture.com to affect the results of any given search engine. If one places a bid on a term then it will either affect all the Overture.com affiliates or it will affect none of the Overture.com affiliates. So how is it possible that Earthlink internal searches show such biased results?

5. Still further investigation (i.e. Searching on the word "Scientology" at http://www.overture.com/  to see who is bidding on the term) shows that 42 websites are currently bidding on the term "scientology" (11/21/01). Yet only one of them is an Earthlink site. Ergo, it would appear that the skewed search results are not the result of open bidding in Overture.com.

Scientology is globally considered an extremely dangerous cult. It has been banned or restricted in many countries. It is considered by experts on Scientology to fall into the satanic religious category. It is unthinkable that Earthlink customers particularly those with Christian backgrounds might be unknowingly supporting such an organization.

It is time for the executives at Earthlink to rapidly address the questions raised and practices disclosed in this editorial. (For more information on Scientology go to http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/dianetics.html ).

Has Earthlink stopped promoting Scientology?

On 21st November 2001FACTNet posted a Newsletter called "Is Earthlink promoting Church of Scientology in spite of its denials of involvement with the cult?". 

The gist of the article was:

1. the first 53 results are all pro-scientology. See: http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/EarthlinkScientologyBias.html
2. the first 53 results all seem to be based on a common template. See: http://www.lermanet.com/cos/webspamplan.htm
3. novice or naïve users of the internet are presented with heavily biased results. Is this not a form of preferential treatment for Scientology and censorship of opposing views to the benefit of the Scientology cult?
4. Sky Dayton ( http://home.earthlink.net/~sky/ ), founder and board member of EarthLink, is a Scientologist.

FACTNet would like to announce that at this moment (January 25th 2002) searching on the word "Scientology" brings up ZERO results.

We think that this is progress. Even if a little extreme.

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