World Socialist Web Site
The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is the website of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It describes itself as an "online newspaper of the international Trotskyist movement". The WSWS publishes articles and analysis of news and events from around the world, updated daily. The site also includes coverage of the history of working-class political and organized labor movements. About. The WSWS was established on February 14, 1998. The site was redesigned on October 22, 2008, and then again on October 1, 2020. The WSWS supports and helps campaign for the Socialist Equality  Parties in elections. The site has no advertisements, except for material from Mehring Books, the ICFI's publishing arm. Instead, it sustains itself through the donations of readers and supporters. David North serves as Chairman of the site's International Editorial Board. Content. The WSWS publishes articles on politics, finance and economics, culture, police violence, racism, war, media and information technology, corporate power, history, and labor issues. It also regularly reviews films, television and online series, music, art and artists, and books and authors. The WSWS periodically undertakes focused political campaigns, during which numerous articles, videos, interviews, and perspectives are  published on the topic. Campaigns undertaken include defending Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, civil rights and free speech, and the opposition to utility shutoffs and bankruptcy in Detroit. Demotion in Google searches. According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, in July 2017 the WSWS began to oppose new Google search algorithms, which it believes is a form of censorship by Google, and says that the changes are intended to remove "fake news". Using evidence from SEMrush, an analytics suite for search engine optimization, the WSWS has alleged that several socialist and anti-war news sites had received reduced  traffic from Google due to changes in its search algorithm. According to the WSWS, between late April 2017 and the beginning of August 2017 its Google search traffic fell by 67%. Google said that it had not deliberately targeted any particular website, and Google vice-president Ben Gomes wrote that Google had "adjusted [its] signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content." According to WSWS, the documentary film-maker John Pilger offered his support to a webinar involving David North and Chris Hedges about the issue because he said the website, along with WikiLeaks, Consortium News , GlobalResearch, Democracy Now, and "CounterPunch", were increasingly being tagged as "offensive" by Google.