Public Radio East serves Eastern North Carolina by providing news, fine arts, and informational programming that challenges, stimulates, educates, and entertains an intellectually curious audience.

© 2026 Public Radio East

Public Radio East
800 College Court
New Bern, NC 28562

EIN 56-1802728
Public Radio For Eastern North Carolina 89.3 WTEB New Bern 88.5 WZNB New Bern 91.5 WBJD Atlantic Beach 90.3 WKNS Kinston 89.9 W210CF Greenville
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
US

Redirecting Googlers To Sites They're Not Searching For Can Have Benefits — And A Dark Side

Patrick Berlinquette talks about his New York Times' Op Ed titled "I Used Google Ads for Social Engineering. It Worked." (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)
Patrick Berlinquette talks about his New York Times' Op Ed titled "I Used Google Ads for Social Engineering. It Worked." (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)

In 2016, Google created “The Redirect Method,” a web programming technique created to redirect searchers looking for extremist content to opposite content — about diffusing radical ideologies.

When that campaign was over, Google released its blueprint for redirecting so that other programmers could use it. Among those was certified Google partner Patrick Berlinquette (@WarmSpeakers) who used it to successfully direct suicidal Googlers to a help hotline. He wrote about the experience in a recent New York Times opinion piece.

Here & Now‘s Robin Young talks to Berlinquette about his use of the redirect, and about the issues he says redirecting presents.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

US