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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

#81

Post by seren »

MikeLui wrote: post #3

I appreciate the relevance and importance of posting this to HN, but I also think there’s not much anyone can add to the innate absurdity of the idea and the president’s claims. Additionally, aren’t searches already somewhat regulated e.g. DMCA takedown notices?

I think the more generic questions is how are we going to assess that an algorithm is fair or not.

Since we are going to have our lives more and more influenced by the results of algorithms, should we regulate them or not ? If yes, how ? How do you appeal to a decision made by a machine ?

I don't think there is any easy answer to these questions.

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

#82

Post by 18pfsmt »

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.…

I find it rather depressing that you would be espousing regulations that hurt freedom (of Google, in this case). Please rethink your logic here.

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

#83

Post by stanleydrew »

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…

Yes anybody who doesn't like what they see on Google can go search somewhere else. But that won't stop the other 80% of us from continuing to search on Google and seeing "biased" results, which is what is motivating some political/ideological calls for regulation.

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

#84

Post by roenxi »

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…

Not only that, but the tech companies are starting to take an active role in politics [1]. The amount of power these companies wield should make everyone nervous - there is a comment on this article that "without checks and balances and the protection of the Constitution [the US] would be living under authoritarian dictatorship right now". On reflection, nobody should believe that the US is subject to sudden change but tech companies are somehow immune.

Imagine if the Google shareholders decided that someone like Trump would make a good Google CEO; paralleling the US move from Obama to Trump in one election cycle. It would be very worrying.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/17/google-was-against-trump-now...

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

#85

Post by hprotagonist »

It's well past the point where journalists should, with most Trump tweet articles, note the correspondence between "whatever fox and friends said today" and "whatever he just tweeted".

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1034416321226784768?ref... "The full segment, btw, is on Fox's website. If you're a journalist writing up the president's tweets, you should really explain where the president is getting his ideas."

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

#86

Post by pitaj »

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.

If only the constitution was a little better to start with. The interpretation of the commerce and general welfare clauses hurts my soul.

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

#87

Post by FLUX-YOU »

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.

While this particular instance is dumb, there's definitely conversations in politics that need to happen about algorithmic biases. If this kicks things off, I'm fine with that.

Trump doesn't address other search engines though, which (hilariously) helps Google more than the threat of looming regulations hurts them. Getting attacked by Trump is a badge of honor at this point. Just about any liberal or conservative with a brain will realize only regulating Google's results is a very bad move when there is Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines.

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

#88

Post by pitaj »

seren wrote: post #81
MikeLui wrote: post #3

I appreciate the relevance and importance of posting this to HN, but I also think there’s not much anyone can add to the innate absurdity of the idea and the president’s claims. Additionally, aren’t searches already somewhat regulated e.g. DMCA takedown notices?

I think the more generic questions is how are we going to assess that an algorithm is fair or not. Since we are going to have our lives more and more influenced by the results of algorithms, should we regulate them or not ? If yes, how ? How do you appeal to a decision made by a machine ? I don't think there is any easy answer to these questions.

My easy answer is "No. Don't regulate. Stop considering it. It's a terrible idea. Please, no."

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

#89

Post by liftbigweights »

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.

> The quickness by the administration to attack media, promote propaganda, and now censorship is frightening.

How exactly is trump promoting censorship here? Isn't he doing the exact opposite? Isn't he promoting free speech?

And frankly, I think it's great that the media and the president have an adversarial relationship. The president should attack the media ( free speech ) and the media should attack the president ( free press ). Why would you want the president and the media having a cozy relationship?

I can't think of a greater symbol of democracy and free speech than the president and the media keeping each other in check.

The media and president should be adversaries, not friends. I'd rather the media tell us everything the president is doing wrong and shining the spotlight on him and vice versa. And this isn't just about republicans. I wish the media would be more adversarial with the democrats as well. With all politicians. It's a great way to keep politicians honest.

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

#90

Post by ocdtrekkie »

pitaj wrote: post #78
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing Section 230 immunity should be one of the country's legislative priorities. It's incredible that we've literally given a whole industry a blank check to do what they want and be completely exempt from responsibility for the damage they cause. Without Section 230, companies would be subject to the standard definitions of intent in the law, as to whether their actions were purposely, knowingly, recklessly, etc…

Wow that's incredible short-sided. Section 230 enabled the internet to grow and flourish with moderate freedom (the DMCA etc still exist). Removing it would heavily benefit large companies who can afford expensive monitoring and filtering software, while hurting small companies without enormous legal departments.

On the contrary, Section 230 was a short-sighted action to allow unchecked behavior in an attempt to get that rapid growth, without solid, reliable protections behind that growth. And while rapid growth can be good, we have to come back and put proper regulations in place to keep things from crashing to a screeching halt. The stock market's a great example: You can strip out protections, and yeah, growth will skyrocket, but when you realize what that house of cards is built on, it crashes down and makes everyone bankrupt.

And the suggestion that regulation hurts small companies and helps big ones is a myth generally perpetrated by those large companies. "Don't regulate us, it'll hurt the little guys" is an amazingly frequent scream of big monopolies trying to protect their business models.

Content moderation actually doesn't scale well at all, because nobody's really gotten automated content moderation right. Small companies have little to no problem moderating their comments sections or business relationships, but large tech companies actually can't do this without cutting deeply into their profit margins.

Yes, they'll use "expensive monitoring and filtering software", but those systems tend to suck, which is why so much malware and bad content comes through Google Ads and the Play Store and why Facebook's platform has been gamed in countless ways by bad actors. Automated systems present massively additional liability compared to human employees, and removing that immunity would ensure large companies couldn't just hand off moderation to an algorithm.

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