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‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

washingtonpost.com

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Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#61

Post by creaghpatr »

gameswithgo wrote: post #20
creaghpatr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current bipartisan issue is that the line is invisible and therefore impossible to regulate. Of course, Google has a trade secrets case for the line being invisible. The government makes Coke list the ingredients and nutrition facts, but doesn't make them reveal the secret formula. Maybe there's a similar way to regulate Search?

Why regulate search at all? A soon as you think Google is not giving you good search results you can hop on over to Bing or a host of other options. The free market works very well here. As opposed to the issue of net neutrality, where very many Americans have no ISP they can switch to if they are not happy with the throttling their ISP is doing. Said throttling could also be used to silence or slow conservative news…

Because the greater interests of Google's voting shareholders are not necessarily aligned with the interests of America's voting electorate. Which is really where any regulation of any company comes from, not an untypical case, the government is just late to the party.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#62

Post by senthil_rajasek »

quotemstr wrote: post #47
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #39

I think it's appropriate to quote Vint Cerf here, "The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society." ―Vint Cerf https://icannwiki.org/Vinton_Cerf

Conversely, if you're unsatisfied with yourself, making your mirror distort your reflection will only make things worse. I reserve a special level of contempt for people who think they can "fix" society by using force or authority to control how other people think, speak, and feel.

A distorting mirror is not what Vint is suggesting, the problem is not the mirror it's the subject, fix the subject is what I take out of that quote. Violence or force is not the only answer to fix society I have seen the light of knowledge work miracles on certain societal problems.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#63

Post by 18pfsmt »

sp332 wrote: post #24
econ4all wrote: post #18

Before he was president or even running for office he'd call into a fox news show and say something stupid and other news outlets would pick it up and I remember being annoyed and thinking "why is this news?!" now he's president and everything he says is news and it hurts my soul. Anyway we live in a free country and the government can't dictate what kind of news a search engine should surface. It's ironic though tha…

We live in such a country now but that could change at any time. If the government starts dictating search results then we will not be a free country. Unfortunately causality doesn't go the other way.

As a republic, governed by the US Constitution, the 1st Amendment is clearly written to prevent such stupidity. I can't believe this is even being entertained on HN.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#64

Post by adventured »

econ4all wrote: post #45
jklinger410 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyway we live in a free country and the government can't dictate what kind of news a social media site should surface. But we're doing this one.

The US government is doing that?

Yes, by failing to act against the block of monopolies that entirely control social media, search, etc.

So long as the government fails to act, they're supporting the monopolies in question. So long as those monopolies exist, what they're doing is called censorship. As monopolies they have the direct sanction of the state.

Bring on the trust-busting.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#65

Post by jiojfdsal3 »

erulabs wrote: post #12
jiojfdsal3 wrote: post #7

To me, this is a strong sign of Google manipulating search results. https://www.google.com/search?q=american+inventors https://www.google.com/search?q=american+mathematicians https://www.google.com/search?q=american+scientists Image results: https://www.google.com/search?q=european+art+history&tbm=isc... https://www.google.com/search?q=white+couple&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=white+inventor&tbm=isch

Or it's extremely basic text matching and "African American Inventors" more closely matches "American Inventors" (as it is an exact substring match) than web pages about "Inventors from the United States", which is probably a more common phrasing (see: https://www.google.com/search?q=Inventors+from+the+United+St... ) One of the biggest problems with Google as I see it, and facebook for that matter, is for the end use…

I added more search terms. Here are the results for "white inventor" on Google Images for example.

https://www.google.com/search?q=white+inventor&tbm=isch

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#66

Post by realusername »

adventured wrote: post #32

Gave this search a try - "Donald Trump" - to see how bad it really is (I rarely specifically google anything about Trump). Breitbart is a traffic juggernaut in the US, and Google has Aljazeera ranking on the second page along with dailymail.co.uk. No Breitbart anywhere to be found on the first 15 pages. All the far left results are there of course. IMDB is on page four. Haaretz on page five. France24 is on page five.…

There's no censorship on Trump, he just has a very bad reputation and PR, there's no conspiracy, if you are not convinced, just take a look at his Twitter account and you will understand why almost all the coverage is negative. And Breibart is a very niche far-right newspaper at best.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#67

Post by rpiguy »

lgleason wrote: post #28

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and others were able to grow to the size they did based on Safe Harbor provisions that exempted them from libel laws under the premise that they were neutral platforms that allowed anybody to post content etc.. Newspapers and television stations are held liable for their content. Once they started to editorialize by banning things under subjective pretexts such as "hate speech" they…

Google in particular is vulnerable because of their monopoly-level status on search traffic and search revenue.

Facebook less so, and Twitter even less so. Access to information is vital, access to your cousin's birthday photos and the blatherings of idiots who like to shout out into the ether probably less vital.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#68

Post by aokiji »

enraged_camel wrote: post #27

President Smoothbrains thinks he should regulate Google searches. What is this, China? He can't get his Mexico wall built, so now he will try a "Great Firewall"?

It is exactly the other way around. The tech giants are in bed with China and subverting the United States.

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#69

Post by candiodari »

acomjean wrote: post #8

The internet exists, is way to big to manually curate, and google is just providing a window into it with algorithmic searches. There is always talk about how google promotes this or that by having this search return X and how they should adjust it. They always "adjust the algorithm" or ban sites from their search results entirely. Google's search is better (I've tired and use others..) and thus it wields enormous po…

> The internet exists, is way to big to manually curate, and google is just providing a window into it with algorithmic searches.

You're assuming that because they can't do it, they won't.

You forget that these people are making the laws. They can just vote a law that "the internet must be curated, and uphold standards X and Y".

Then they simply force providers to block anything that isn't perfectly curated at the simple request to a court.

Done/done.

So they can simply force others to do it. They can simply force self-censorship (see GPDR, and why that law is such a horrible thing). Congress can't check food for safety, so they make others do it (e.g. the FDA doesn't check food safety (except where it has already gone wrong), it forces vendors to check it, then does a basic sanity check on the report of said check, same is true in Europe, except for the name of the organization).

Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated

#70

Post by bhauer »

cphoover wrote: post #37

I have no doubt in my mind, if the United States was a country without checks and balances and the protection of the Constitution, we would be living under authoritarian dictatorship right now. The quickness by the administration to attack media, promote propaganda, and now censorship is frightening.

Sure, but to be fair, if we didn't have good checks and balances, things would have been bad a very long time ago. This isn't the first time checks and balances can/will help us avoid bad policy, and it won't be the last.
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