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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

#91

Post by checkyoursudo »

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 I am not sure how plausible it is that US gets there, it certainly feels like some sort of authoritarian dictatorship is still possible. Democracy is only as good as our institutions, and a lot of institutions seem to be struggling.

Checks and balances require the separate branches to be willing to apply them. With the apparent lack of any meaningful oversight by the legislature, it does not seem like the checks and balances are working very effectively.

I suppose that's a strong reason why many (including myself) prefer divided governments, so that adversaries can keep each other from going too far.

I don't remember where I read it, but something like this rings true: the founders anticipated authoritarians seeking power, but they did not anticipate legislators allowing it.

Edit: I don't mean to say that Trump becoming a dictator in the US is possible; I think that's extremely unlikely. I simply mean that there is a weakness in the US political system when government is controlled entirely by one party, and that this weakness could possibly be exploited some day.

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

#92

Post by wyldfire »

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

It's possible that the bias is from the corpus Google is indexing and not in the algorithm used to index the corpus.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #84
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 b…

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by seren »

pitaj wrote: post #88
seren wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

If you look at the simple but extreme case below (someone named Null) :

https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/

Maybe you want to be able to appeal to a machine made decision and that it should be reviewed by a human at some point ? But maybe not, at some point, changing your name is probably easier.

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

#95

Post by acomjean »

sp332 wrote: post #46
acomjean wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"adjusting the algorithm" is something they do all the time. Then the algorithm is to blame or credit for search rank, they're not choosing winners and losers.

What would be the point of adjusting the algorithm other than picking which results should be surfaced? That's what the algorithm does, that's its whole raison d'être . And in addition to the algorithm, Google has a substantial block list which is different for different regions.

>What would be the point of adjusting the algorithm other than picking which results should be surfaced?

Well I like to think they do want to improve the results.

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

#96

Post by gameswithgo »

creaghpatr wrote: post #61
gameswithgo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no company where the greater interests of the shareholders is aligned with the interests of the voting electorate.

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

#97

Post by gameswithgo »

creaghpatr wrote: post #10
yathern wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this statement. Yes, both conservatives and liberals believe there is an amount of regulation that is acceptable. Conservatives typically aren't anarchists. Liberals typically aren't full-socialists. The disagreement is the amount of regulation, and where to draw the line. Though this is the idealized version of reality. In actuality, there are of course a host of political reasons conservatives ma…

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?

Since my other comment was downvoted, here is another example - today conservative panelists on Fox News were calling for video games, and smart phones, to be regulated/banned to prevent gun violence.

I really don't see any kind of innate difference in the amount of regulation actually preferred by either half of america. If someone who downvoted the other comment would like to offer a thoughtful rebuttal or data to support their view I would be happy to consider it.

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

#98

Post by adventured »

18pfsmt wrote: post #82
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.

I'm hyper socially liberal and when it comes to economics I very broadly support free market policies.

If all of the major platforms - monopolies - for social media and general media reach are aggressively conspiring to limit speech based on politics, what you have is not anything resembling freedom. You have censorship in fact.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Google search = near universal platform control by one political ideology (which they've all admitted to over the years), which is now very openly censoring the right wing of politics. The coordinated censorship isn't subtle, they're almost flaunting it at this point.

It's an extremely dangerous concentration of power into one politically aligned monopoly set of corporations. We're seeing the results of that now, as the desire to directly control and influence politics kicks into gear.

If a platform has a very large monopoly position, then they should be legally forced open as a direct pass-through consequence of the first amendment. They should be required to allow all speech (that doesn't involve threats of violence, which isn't speech), or give up their monopoly position.

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

#99

Post by lgleason »

pitaj wrote: post #60
lgleason wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is only true if you stay completely neutral according to those provisions. But when you curate/moderate content you are editorializing things and it becomes murky. Overall I agree with the original spirit of Safe Harbor. IE: the platforms should not be liable, but they also need to stay neutral, which means that they do not ban, demonetize, down rank anybody based on subjective moral grounds, but instead only do…

I wasn't making a statement on current law. I said "should". As in, I don't think there should be any law pushing liability onto the service providers, regardless of neutrality.

I might agree with you if news outlets and others were held to the same standard. That said it would be be interesting to know how that changed the landscape. Right now you have the powerful choosing the narrative and the little guy being crushed with the current system. All of that being said, libel and slander offer protections against unfounded smear campaigns against individuals and adds accountability which should be there for everyone. There is not one size fits all to fix things, but the current system is majorly broken and the "don't be evil" company has become the monster they claimed to not be.

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

#100

Post by jchw »

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…

This is a weird argument to have. It raises many questions. Like, it's one thing to suggest maybe libel laws should apply to big tech companies. But do we really want to force them to be "politically neutral?" Such a thing literally does not exist, for one thing; but who gets to define it? For example, can the president order that a given news source appear higher in the rankings? Who decides what deserves to be ranked higher?

Further, what happens if Google were to prove that it's search algorithm were completely politically neutral (which is obviously non-sense because that statement doesn't mean anything.) What do we do then?

Should we also look at New York Times? What if they are posting too many liberal viewpoints?

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