Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

[nonsequitur]

This is terrifying.

Wasn't sure if it was it was to go in the politics or tech forum, went with tech instead because it would probably get washed away with the other politics stuff.

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search | Technology | The Guardian

He’s surprised too. “I thought they stopped offering autocomplete suggestions for religions in 2011.” And then he types “are women” into his own computer. “Good lord! That answer at the top. It’s a featured result. It’s called a “direct answer”. This is supposed to be indisputable. It’s Google’s highest endorsement.” That every women has some degree of prostitute in her? “Yes. This is Google’s algorithm going terribly wrong.”

I contacted Google about its seemingly malfunctioning autocomplete suggestions and received the following response: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.”

Google isn’t just a search engine, of course. Search was the foundation of the company but that was just the beginning. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, now has the greatest concentration of artificial intelligence experts in the world. It is expanding into healthcare, transportation, energy. It’s able to attract the world’s top computer scientists, physicists and engineers. It’s bought hundreds of start-ups, including Calico, whose stated mission is to “cure death” and DeepMind, which aims to “solve intelligence”.

And 20 years ago it didn’t even exist. When Tony Blair became prime minister, it wasn’t possible to Google him: the search engine had yet to be invented. The company was only founded in 1998 and Facebook didn’t appear until 2004. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are still only 43. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is 32. Everything they’ve done, the world they’ve remade, has been done in the blink of an eye.

But it seems the implications about the power and reach of these companies is only now seeping into the public consciousness. I ask Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, whether it was the recent furore over fake news that woke people up to the danger of ceding our rights as citizens to corporations. “It’s kind of weird right now,” she says, “because people are finally saying, ‘Gee, Facebook and Google really have a lot of power’ like it’s this big revelation. And it’s like, ‘D’oh.’”

MacKinnon has a particular expertise in how authoritarian governments adapt to the internet and bend it to their purposes. “China and Russia are a cautionary tale for us. I think what happens is that it goes back and forth. So during the Arab spring, it seemed like the good guys were further ahead. And now it seems like the bad guys are. Pro-democracy activists are using the internet more than ever but at the same time, the adversary has gotten so much more skilled.”

 

[nonsequitur]

There's a related article in the New Yorker: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum - The New Yorker

Like Brexit, the election of Donald Trump has focussed attention on the sense that globalization has eroded the real prospects and hopes of the working class in this country. Globalization is a proxy for technology-powered capitalism, which tends to reward fewer and fewer members of society.

My hope is that we in the technology industry will look up from our smartphones and try to understand the impact of whiplashing change on a generation of our fellow-citizens who feel hopeless and left behind. Instead, I read the comments of Balaji Srinivasan, the C.E.O. of the San Francisco-based Bitcoin startup 21 Inc., telling the Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims that he feels more connected to people in his “Stanford network” around the globe than to those in California’s Central Valley: “There will be a recognition that if we don’t have control of the nation state, we should reduce the nation state’s power over us.”

It’s hard to think about the human consequences of technology as a founder of a startup racing to prove itself or as a chief executive who is worried about achieving the incessant growth that keeps investors happy. Against the immediate numerical pressures of increasing users and sales, and the corporate pressures of hiring the right (but not too expensive) employees to execute your vision, the displacement of people you don’t know can get lost.

However, when you are a data-driven oligarchy like Facebook, Google, Amazon, or Uber, you can’t really wash your hands of the impact of your algorithms and your ability to shape popular sentiment in our society. We are not just talking about the ability to influence voters with fake news. If you are Amazon, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding the retail sector, which employs many people in this country. If you are Airbnb, no matter how well-meaning your focus on delighting travellers, you are also going to affect hotel-industry employment.

Otto, a Bay Area startup that was recently acquired by Uber, wants to automate trucking—and recently wrapped up a hundred-and-twenty-mile driverless delivery of fifty thousand cans of beer between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. From a technological standpoint it was a jaw-dropping achievement, accompanied by predictions of improved highway safety. From the point of view of a truck driver with a mortgage and a kid in college, it was a devastating “oh, shit” moment. That one technical breakthrough puts nearly two million long-haul trucking jobs at risk. Truck driving is one of the few decent-paying jobs that doesn’t require a college diploma. Eliminating the need for truck drivers doesn’t just affect those millions of drivers; it has a ripple effect on ancillary services like gas stations, motels, and retail outlets; an entire economic ecosystem could break down.

Whether self-driving cars and trucks, drones, privatization of civic services like transportation, or dynamic pricing, all these developments embrace automation and efficiency, and abhor friction and waste. As Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, told MIT Technology Review, “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.” It is, he said, “the great paradox of our era.”

 

[ChocolateMoose123]

[MENTION=5076]nonsequitur[/MENTION]

Good links. When the call for fast food workers to make $15 an hour only to have automation replace those jobs, I remember how "ha-ha" it was. But it was indicative of what is happening in middle America. Although, not discussed greatly.

Low education level/decent wage jobs are the same kind of jobs that are being removed due to globalism. Technology has a very direct link to this and even if these jobs come back? Technological advances may still mean they are obsolete.

Something I have considered. Kind of depressing, really.

 

[Merced]

Okay, I read a good chunk of the first article and I do not want to read the second article (at least not yet) because of how angry it's made me.

Look, you value your freedom of speech, right? You like being able to speak your mind? Guess what? That right applies to everyone. That means the country bumpkin down the street can say whatever he wants. The diehard conservative at church can say whatever she wants. People you dislike because of their views, no matter how bigoted, can say whatever they want. Hate speech is protected by the first amendment. Yeah, it sucks, but there are parts of freedom that suck. Google suggestions work off an algorithm. The results you get when you type 'Are women...' and 'Are jews...' aren't preselected. They are just the most common searches. Is it fucked up? Sure! But don't blame Google, blame the people using Google. Especially when you can turn off instant predictions.

Not to get off topic, but articles like these are why the 2016 election has spiked my blood pressure. This 'Everyone should have a voice (except people I don't want to speak)' mentality is infuriating. Liberals have been damning Trump so hard that it makes me grossed out to identify as liberal because that implies that I want to silence anyone who doesn't agree with me. The world isn't an echo chamber! There are some people who believe differently and it is not your job to censor them because you feel your ideals are superior. It's not fair. It's not just. It's not American.

Google is a private company who has the right to do whatever the hell they want. Don't like it? Use a different service. Use bing or yahoo. Quit treating issues like this as black and white.

 

[nonsequitur]

Okay, I read a good chunk of the first article and I do not want to read the second article (at least not yet) because of how angry it's made me.

Look, you value your freedom of speech, right? You like being able to speak your mind? Guess what? That right applies to everyone. That means the country bumpkin down the street can say whatever he wants. The diehard conservative at church can say whatever she wants. People you dislike because of their views, no matter how bigoted, can say whatever they want. Hate speech is protected by the first amendment. Yeah, it sucks, but there are parts of freedom that suck. Google suggestions work off an algorithm. The results you get when you type 'Are women...' and 'Are jews...' aren't preselected. They are just the most common searches. Is it fucked up? Sure! But don't blame Google, blame the people using Google. Especially when you can turn off instant predictions.

Not to get off topic, but articles like these are why the 2016 election has spiked my blood pressure. This 'Everyone should have a voice (except people I don't want to speak)' mentality is infuriating. Liberals have been damning Trump so hard that it makes me grossed out to identify as liberal because that implies that I want to silence anyone who doesn't agree with me. The world isn't an echo chamber! There are some people who believe differently and it is not your job to censor them because you feel your ideals are superior. It's not fair. It's not just. It's not American.

Google is a private company who has the right to do whatever the hell they want. Don't like it? Use a different service. Use bing or yahoo. Quit treating issues like this as black and white.

This is the main point of the article:

Last week Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina, published the first detailed research on how rightwing websites had spread their message. “I took a list of these fake news sites that was circulating, I had an initial list of 306 of them and I used a tool – like the one Google uses – to scrape them for links and then I mapped them. So I looked at where the links went – into YouTube and Facebook, and between each other, millions of them… and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“They have created a web that is bleeding through on to our web. This isn’t a conspiracy. There isn’t one person who’s created this. It’s a vast system of hundreds of different sites that are using all the same tricks that all websites use. They’re sending out thousands of links to other sites and together this has created a vast satellite system of rightwing news and propaganda that has completely surrounded the mainstream media system.

He found 23,000 pages and 1.3m hyperlinks. “And Facebook is just the amplification device. When you look at it in 3D, it actually looks like a virus. And Facebook was just one of the hosts for the virus that helps it spread faster. You can see the New York Times in there and the Washington Post and then you can see how there’s a vast, vast network surrounding them. The best way of describing it is as an ecosystem. This really goes way beyond individual sites or individual stories. What this map shows is the distribution network and you can see that it’s surrounding and actually choking the mainstream news ecosystem.”

Like a cancer? “Like an organism that is growing and getting stronger all the time.”

It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This has nothing to do with popularity. It's a system, using social media and search engines, to strategically manipulate the social atmosphere (which are a black box even to most of google itself). This, this has absolutely nothing to do with the first amendment or freedom of speech. It's not about what the average person is saying. It's about how our digital lives shape our consciousness, and how the digital landscape - the most common tools and apps that everyone uses - can be manipulated by special interest groups on the right or left. This is what is terrifying to me.

Even if I don't use google (I use duckduckgo), it doesn't change the fact that most of the population uses google. It doesn't change the fact that social engineering is underway in a digital medium with real-world consequences, and few are even aware of it. This is why the article is important. It's a brave new world and we're all in a giant social/psychological experiment that has never been run before. Think about the giant uproar when facebook admitted that it had been trying to manipulate its users' emotions based on what they put on the feeds. That's what this is about. This is scary shit. I quit facebook years ago, but its power over all of the social structrues around me is something that is still unavoidable.

 

[nonsequitur]

Good links. When the call for fast food workers to make $15 an hour only to have automation replace those jobs, I remember how "ha-ha" it was. But it was indicative of what is happening in middle America. Although, not discussed greatly.

Low education level/decent wage jobs are the same kind of jobs that are being removed due to globalism. Technology has a very direct link to this and even if these jobs come back? Technological advances may still mean they are obsolete.

Something I have considered. Kind of depressing, really.

It's something that many of my peers (and I) have been talking about for a while - there's this article here about the probability of a certain job being automated within the next 10-20 years What Jobs Will the Robots Take? - The Atlantic

I'm in the "highly skilled" group, but even so, I can see where aspects of my job can be replaced by computers - in fact, I can see many areas where the computer would do a better job that I ever could because of big data. It's a whole new challenge and the stress to adapt and create a niche that can't be automated is huge. There's not much point in celebrating a certain factory "keeping" 10,000 jobs when automation can replace 2,000,000 jobs. What about amazon? They employ packers at minimum wage or lower, and squeezing everything out of them for a profit margin - all the while out-competing brick-and-mortar retailers on price and putting them out of business. Think of what happened with auto factories when everything was done by machines. There's even robotic surgery that has lower risk than "ordinary" surgery now. How will all of these technologies reshape the job market, and what does that mean for education and training systems that were designed for the 80s?

These are things that I've been thinking about for quite a while now. There's no point in blaming people for not keeping up - I personally feel like I'm barely keeping apace with the advances, and I'm hardly what one would call "uneducated" or "unskilled".

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Silicon Valley today is about finding a monopoly not competition. The goal is destruction of existing industries and exteacting monoploy profits.

Uber is a great example. It has $13 billion from investors but loses $2 billion a year. Its model cannot compete, but only can work at a loss until it destroys local competitors. It can not compete with taxis without heavily subsidizing the operations (hence the large losses). So, after it kills taxi companies, prices will jump. Already driver wages are declining and the drivers really didn't make anything more than they would as a taxi driver.

Most other tech plays are about finding a monopoly as well, so as to extract monoploy profits. Peter Thiel wrote in the Wall Street Journal that capitalism and competition are enemies. "Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away."

Monopoly is extremely dangerous and corrupts society and government. Antimonopoly policies free up competition and prevent widespread prosperity.

Tech currently provides modest improvements at huge costs offering the illusion of a better life.

Having fewer employees does not improve the general welfare and instead is a recipe for economic turmoil.

 

[nonsequitur]

Silicon Valley today is about finding a monopoly not competition. The goal is destruction of existing industries and exteacting monoploy profits.

Uber is a great example. It has $13 billion from investors but loses $2 billion a year. Its model cannot compete, but only can work at a loss until it destroys local competitors. It can not compete with taxis without heavily subsidizing the operations (hence the large losses). So, after it kills taxi companies, prices will jump. Already driver wages are declining and the drivers really didn't make anything more than they would as a taxi driver.

Most other tech plays are about finding a monopoly as well, so as to extract monoploy profits. Peter Thiel wrote in the Wall Street Journal that capitalism and competition are enemies. "Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away."

Monopoly is extremely dangerous and corrupts society and government. Antimonopoly policies free up competition and prevent widespread prosperity.

Tech currently provides modest improvements at huge costs offering the illusion of a better life.

Having fewer employees does not improve the general welfare and instead is a recipe for economic turmoil.

Yes, it's all about building oligarchies. It's not just Uber. Amazon and netflix also run huge losses as investors patiently wait for their market monopoly to pay off further down the road. Pharma has also been doing this since forever.

On the ground level, we have deliveroo and food panda here - online food delivery services. One of my close friends who runs a restaurant with her dad says that with rising rent prices/wages, they were barely making a profit. They looked into these "convenience" app-based services, whose terms said that basically, they take a 30% cut of your listed price. They also specified that you can't list different prices for online/offline menus. That means that my friend loses market share at her local store if she goes in to raise the price, for an uncertain potential gain in market share and a chance to compete against others who have been listed a long time ago. These 2 apps are a duopoly here and have exactly the same terms. Worse, we know how much they're paying their drivers. A lot of money is going into the hands of very few. My friend is stuck in a dilemma because she knows that the way her shop is run is unsustainable - she's being squeezed out by the convenience of the apps - and yet signing on might be the death knell for the business.

It's not just the employees who lose their jobs - it's also small business that collapses. All of this is very worrying.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Yes, it's all about building oligarchies. It's not just Uber. Amazon and netflix also run huge losses as investors patiently wait for their market monopoly to pay off further down the road. Pharma has also been doing this since forever.

On the ground level, we have deliveroo and food panda here - online food delivery services. One of my close friends who runs a restaurant with her dad says that with rising rent prices/wages, they were barely making a profit. They looked into these "convenience" app-based services, whose terms said that basically, they take a 30% cut of your listed price. They also specified that you can't list different prices for online/offline menus. That means that my friend loses market share at her local store if she goes in to raise the price, for an uncertain potential gain in market share and a chance to compete against others who have been listed a long time ago. These 2 apps are a duopoly here and have exactly the same terms. Worse, we know how much they're paying their drivers. A lot of money is going into the hands of very few. My friend is stuck in a dilemma because she knows that the way her shop is run is unsustainable - she's being squeezed out by the convenience of the apps - and yet signing on might be the death knell for the business.

It's not just the employees who lose their jobs - it's also small business that collapses. All of this is very worrying.

Exactly. Traditionally, only small business creates new jobs. An ideal economy for a democracy has no huge businesses and lots of small business. I have never seen an industry improve much once an oligarchy takes over.

Dictatorships love oligarchy and cronyism.

Classical liberalism was about weakening concentrated power. Unfortunately, the alleged heirs of classical liberalism, the libertarians, have forgotten that part and worship the free market no matter the social or cultural or political cost.

"Free markets" only can exist when power is not concentrated in the hands of the few. Mom and pop stores, the backbone of a democratic society, can't compete with multinational big box stores or online plays.

Fighting monoploy may be the most important action in the world for those treasure personal freedom.

 

[PeaceBaby]

From the article: "Google is knowledge."

No.

Google is math. Google is a gatekeeper. And as soon as Google became popular, the human focus turned to gaming that system, including Google playing that game too and profiting handsomely along the way. This in and of itself is part of the issue and the same reason Facebook has turned more to the dark side too -- the need to be profitable AND good citizens. Turn to a profit model and suddenly competing interests are at war with each other.

I know people who run currently PBNs with hundreds of sites to influence search in an unnatural way and evade Google's penalties for doing so. Internet marketers have scoured copywriter secrets and introduced a preponderance of writing techniques designed to make you push buttons and buy stuff -- writing techniques that once had only a marginal opportunity to influence you are now seen every minute of every day. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge and time to make this happen can do so. Typical internet consumers have no idea what influencers have done to push everything from your opinions to your decisions to profit their causes or pocketbook or both.

The article mentions Bing and Yahoo but they're not more "pure" because they showed different search results -- to SEO they're practically irrelevant, so no one cares about influencing these search engines like they care about ranking well in Google.

What Google needs is competition, which it does not currently have. Not even close. Because ultimately, the problem is people, and a monopoly always foments discord. Google's motto is "Don't be evil." The only way to ensure such a thing is when balance exists and people have choice.

I could write tons on this topic, but it wearies me to contemplate. If I was capable of writing a search algorithm that could gain the same kind of popularity and protect it from abuse I would have already done so.

 

[Abendrot]

There's a related article in the New Yorker: Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum - The New Yorker

So it seems that the middle class is being eliminated by outsourcing on the one hand and automation on the other. There is a synergy here: these two cover each other's blind spots. The logical conclusion I see is a feudal technocracy. I doubt that empathy can solve such an intractable problem.

 

[Eilonwy]

So, I just tried typing in "are jews" and "are women" into google and the offensive auto completes don't show up. Google works fast.

 

[nonsequitur]

Exactly. Traditionally, only small business creates new jobs. An ideal economy for a democracy has no huge businesses and lots of small business. I have never seen an industry improve much once an oligarchy takes over.

Dictatorships love oligarchy and cronyism.

Classical liberalism was about weakening concentrated power. Unfortunately, the alleged heirs of classical liberalism, the libertarians, have forgotten that part and worship the free market no matter the social or cultural or political cost.

"Free markets" only can exist when power is not concentrated in the hands of the few. Mom and pop stores, the backbone of a democratic society, can't compete with multinational big box stores or online plays.

Fighting monoploy may be the most important action in the world for those treasure personal freedom.

So more jobs get crushed when small business collapses too. Between the "too big to fail" banks, media corporations and tech giants, power/wealth/jobs are getting concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. I don't believe that communism is practical or an answer, but there is definitely an argument to be made for Europe-style anti-trust laws.

As it is, technology is shaping business, media, economics, finance, and even how issues are perceived in the world. We can't begin to speak of personal freedom if our own perceived reality and economics are being shaped by invisible forces.. Which is why I posted the article. I don't see it as a problem with globalisation per se, but a problem with social/government laws being unable to keep up with the rate of change, and people who see the opportunity to make a buck step in to exploit the new spaces created by tech. This is done without consideration of the bigger picture and implications for the future.

From the article: "Google is knowledge."

No.

Google is math. Google is a gatekeeper. And as soon as Google became popular, the human focus turned to gaming that system, including Google playing that game too and profiting handsomely along the way. This in and of itself is part of the issue and the same reason Facebook has turned more to the dark side too -- the need to be profitable AND good citizens. Turn to a profit model and suddenly competing interests are at war with each other.

I know people who run currently PBNs with hundreds of sites to influence search in an unnatural way and evade Google's penalties for doing so. Internet marketers have scoured copywriter secrets and introduced a preponderance of writing techniques designed to make you push buttons and buy stuff -- writing techniques that once had only a marginal opportunity to influence you are now seen every minute of every day. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge and time to make this happen can do so. Typical internet consumers have no idea what influencers have done to push everything from your opinions to your decisions to profit their causes or pocketbook or both.

The article mentions Bing and Yahoo but they're not more "pure" because they showed different search results -- to SEO they're practically irrelevant, so no one cares about influencing these search engines like they care about ranking well in Google.

What Google needs is competition, which it does not currently have. Not even close. Because ultimately, the problem is people, and a monopoly always foments discord. Google's motto is "Don't be evil." The only way to ensure such a thing is when balance exists and people have choice.

I could write tons on this topic, but it wearies me to contemplate. If I was capable of writing a search algorithm that could gain the same kind of popularity and protect it from abuse I would have already done so.

You're right that on a personal level, using Bing and Yahoo doesn't make a difference. It's not only the search results. It's that most people use aggregators like google, so whether we choose to participate or not, the conversation around us is already being shaped by this digital reality. It's marketing in the extreme.

I'm not sure that competition will do anything for google, to be honest. Google's motto is "don't be evil", and they have gone to great lengths to live up to it - including implementation of the "black box" around their search algorithms, so no one person, even within the company, can see all of it, have "control" or manipulate it. That's a manifestation of the idea of de-centralisation and self-regulation isn't it? It's also why many have accused the company of abdicating its responsibility and accountability. If all of the power is de-centralised, it's easy to sit on your hands and not do anything, to leave it "to the free market" and "the reality of the numbers", and hide behind this.

But when you have stuff like this happening: The city getting rich from fake news - BBC News It begs the question if this is really free speech, if google is really "impartial", and if our perception of the digital space is what we think it is.

So it seems that the middle class is being eliminated by outsourcing on the one hand and automation on the other. There is a synergy here: these two cover each other's blind spots. The logical conclusion I see is a feudal technocracy. I doubt that empathy can solve such an intractable problem.

I agree, empathy has limited use here. Such topics aren't being discussed for good reason, it will likely lead to despair. A job is not merely a means of keeping one fed; it provides purpose, a source of esteem, a definition for one's identity. That's why social/emotional instability shows up when unemployment/under-employment is a problem. They're all linked.

So, I just tried typing in "are jews" and "are women" into google and the offensive auto completes don't show up. Google works fast.

Google removes 'are Jews evil' suggestion from autocomplete feature

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Google is actually engaged in pretty bad stuff.

This article from a couple years ago was pretty scary. Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

Google is a part of the surveillance state military industrial complex. It works with the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and State Department. Eric Schmidt was the #1 visitor to the White House.

Google is too big and too powerful and is engaged in unlawful leveraging of its various monopolies. Other tech companies are just as dangerous....

It is probably too late.....

 

[nonsequitur]

Google is too big and too powerful and is engaged in unlawful leveraging of its various monopolies. Other tech companies are just as dangerous....

It is probably too late.....

Is it unlawful though? That's the question. I find it hard to believe that there would be laws written specifically against such anti-competitive behaviour, and leveraging to take advantage of it.

I don't know if it's too late but I do know that if people don't know about it, they can't do anything to fight it.

 

[Merced]

This is the main point of the article:


It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This has nothing to do with popularity. It's a system, using social media and search engines, to strategically manipulate the social atmosphere (which are a black box even to most of google itself). This, this has absolutely nothing to do with the first amendment or freedom of speech. It's not about what the average person is saying. It's about how our digital lives shape our consciousness, and how the digital landscape - the most common tools and apps that everyone uses - can be manipulated by special interest groups on the right or left. This is what is terrifying to me.

Even if I don't use google (I use duckduckgo), it doesn't change the fact that most of the population uses google. It doesn't change the fact that social engineering is underway in a digital medium with real-world consequences, and few are even aware of it. This is why the article is important. It's a brave new world and we're all in a giant social/psychological experiment that has never been run before. Think about the giant uproar when facebook admitted that it had been trying to manipulate its users' emotions based on what they put on the feeds. That's what this is about. This is scary shit. I quit facebook years ago, but its power over all of the social structrues around me is something that is still unavoidable.

But is this a problem with Google and Facebook and other major websites, or is this a problem with the ignorance of their users? Google and Facebook are private companies. Are we supposed to be angry at companies for making money?

 

[PeaceBaby]

But when you have stuff like this happening: The city getting rich from fake news - BBC News It begs the question if this is really free speech, if google is really "impartial", and if our perception of the digital space is what we think it is.

It is free speech, but Google is not impartial in any way, never has been. Partiality is integrated into the very design of how the ranking algorithm sorts search engine results for any particular keyword. One of the known key factors is based on the idea of popularity, of both quality and quantity of links to pointing to any particular web property. Since when is popularity a high probability of quality in any environment, after all? Oh sure, Google blathers on about high quality content, but they happily raked in the cash on "made for Adsense" sites for years. Now they have imposed some higher bars for quality, since it suits them, and they continue to generate massive revenue too from the Adwords program showing you paid results at the top and bottom of your search engine results. hehe impartial Google is not.

Thinking that Google has high quality search engine results has been a fiction for a very long time. When Google introduced the concept of Adsense back in 2003 it was very apparent then that profits were going the key motivators from that point forward. Facebook joined the party and social scores from these sites started to infiltrate the algorithm as well. The city you link in the article above no doubt generates most of their revenue here, since Facebook has been allowing (what I have seen as) far lower quality scores for ads they permit to be seen on the platform -- and for the last year in particular. It's the almighty buck that drives the car and is basically the equivalent of Google profitting from their paid ads platform for all of these years. Who cares about quality while you amass revenue? Then, after the money's been raked in to provide stability, well, let's worry about a little integrity once the dust has settled.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Is it unlawful though? That's the question. I find it hard to believe that there would be laws written specifically against such anti-competitive behaviour, and leveraging to take advantage of it.

I don't know if it's too late but I do know that if people don't know about it, they can't do anything to fight it.

Antitrust law actually prohibits using one monopoly to get another, colluding with competitors, price fixing, and many things that Google and other major tech firms do. Plus Too Big To Fail is too big to exist.

Real antitrust enforcement would break up major tech companies, prohibit mergers, and such. Political will to do so has been lacking, except in the EU.

And antitrust began as antimonopoly. Every monopoly is inherently dangerous to a democracy and should be banned or highly controlled.

Again, it may be too late, unless the Donald smacks tech down (which he might).

Schmidt built Hillary a custom AI, called Ada, for the election. It made almost every decision for the campaign, from campaign commercials.

A slapping down of tech through antitrust would actually free tech from the oligarchs....

 

[PeaceBaby]

But is this a problem with Google and Facebook and other major websites, or is this a problem with the ignorance of their users? Google and Facebook are private companies. Are we supposed to be angry at companies for making money?

Here's an example: what if, when you went to the library, you were met with ads at the door, that the librarians were paid incentives to recommend to you one book over another but you didn't know that, and that some of the books on the easiest shelves to reach or on the first floor were the ones that paid the most money to be there? That you didn't realize some people used every advantage they could, even those against the "rules" to make sure their books were the ones you saw? And every time you saw those books, never mind checked them out of the library, they made money from that too. And that no one actually checked that any of these so-called "best books" were true or accurate in any way?

That's kinda the environment social media most profits from, and although Google has supposed quality scores, they profit from this model as well. All of those websites too that you see linked on FB, the ones that make you click 5 pages to view the whole story, with some garbage feel-good content or "controversial" news story -- they generate revenue on a CPM (cost per thousand) model, meaning someone gets paid just because you potentially SAW the ad, never mind clicked on it.

Lots of people have no awareness of how this works or how deep targetting and retargetting works based on your seach history. All data-mined and every penny squeezed out of the study of human patterns.

 

[nonsequitur]

But is this a problem with Google and Facebook and other major websites, or is this a problem with the ignorance of their users? Google and Facebook are private companies. Are we supposed to be angry at companies for making money?

It's not anger that I'm feeling, but horror at the amount of power that they have and lack of checks and balances. There are ways to make money, and there are ways to make money that are not anti-competitive and do not destabilise civil democracy. Anger does nothing, and writing this off as "just something that corporations do" is also unhelpful. It suggests that this is the way that things have always been and always will be - which we know is historically untrue.

It is free speech, but Google is not impartial in any way, never has been. Partiality is integrated into the very design of how the ranking algorithm sorts search engine results for any particular keyword. One of the known key factors is based on the idea of popularity, of both quality and quantity of links to pointing to any particular web property. Since when is popularity a high probability of quality in any environment, after all? Oh sure, Google blathers on about high quality content, but they happily raked in the cash on "made for Adsense" sites for years. Now they have imposed some higher bars for quality, since it suits them, and they continue to generate massive revenue too from the Adwords program showing you paid results at the top and bottom of your search engine results. hehe impartial Google is not.

Thinking that Google has high quality search engine results has been a fiction for a very long time. When Google introduced the concept of Adsense back in 2003 it was very apparent then that profits were going the key motivators from that point forward. Facebook joined the party and social scores from these sites started to infiltrate the algorithm as well. The city you link in the article above no doubt generates most of their revenue here, since Facebook has been allowing (what I have seen as) far lower quality scores for ads they permit to be seen on the platform -- and for the last year in particular. It's the almighty buck that drives the car and is basically the equivalent of Google profitting from their paid ads platform for all of these years. Who cares about quality while you amass revenue? Then, after the money's been raked in to provide stability, well, let's worry about a little integrity once the dust has settled.

I'm in agreement here. Google is not impartial in any way, though they take pains to portray themselves that way. What I take issue with is their using that "impartial" image as a shield to abdicate responsibility. Which leads to the question: What, if any policy, could be used to address this? Putting aside the question if there's any political impetus to implement it, what can be done to prevent such fiddling while Rome burns?

Antitrust law actually prohibits using one monopoly to get another, colluding with competitors, price fixing, and many things that Google and other major tech firms do. Plus Too Big To Fail is too big to exist.

Real antitrust enforcement would break up major tech companies, prohibit mergers, and such. Political will to do so has been lacking, except in the EU.

And antitrust began as antimonopoly. Every monopoly is inherently dangerous to a democracy and should be banned or highly controlled.

Again, it may be too late, unless the Donald smacks tech down (which he might).

Schmidt built Hillary a custom AI, called Ada, for the election. It made almost every decision for the campaign, from campaign commercials.

A slapping down of tech through antitrust would actually free tech from the oligarchs....

Yes, there's been conversation about breaking up such large companies.. but as far as I can see, it doesn't happen. We know that people like Zuckerberg didn't start off as oligarchs but grew rapidly into power. There's also the question of VCs and their role in this. We know that many VCs are also actively involved in politics and lobbying - so when start ups (who later grow into large corporations) accept such money in order to survive, it's also accepting the whole can of worms.. Where does it stop?