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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

#121

Post by iron0013 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #109

They (FAANG) have moved from "interesting startups" to "essential utility". The thing about essential utilities is they are always regulated. The question is not should Google be regulated (as a new form of utility) but who should regulate it, and under what terms of reference. An American regulator? European? Chinese ? A new form of UN based regulator for new forms of multi national company? Should it be laissez fai…

The very fact that so many people happily use DuckDuckGo instead of Google is proof enough that Google isn't an essential utility. The same story is true for all the rest: I'm sure you know people who have left Facebook completely behind without any ill effects--in fact, everyone I know who has left FB has heartily recommended it to anyone who will listen. No stretch of the imagination is going to put these websites on the same footing as gas, water, and electric.

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

#122

Post by threatofrain »

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…

Are Google results actually worse for "conservatism"? Like if you go on Bing, Baidu, or DuckDuckGo, you're going to get better results? I'm really dubious about that.

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

#123

Post by senthil_rajasek »

mikeash wrote: post #118
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

The internet is a reflection of the most extreme (and thus crazy) parts of our society. It’s basically what you’d get in a democracy if you could just vote over and over again. Nutcases with too much time on their hands would spend all day voting, because they’re true believers or just for the lulz. Ordinary people might vote a few times, but they have other stuff to do. When they realize they have no real power agai…

I think this is where Google (search) and Facebook ( social media ) are different. Google was based on the strength of an algorithm that filters out less relevant content. Providing/promoting relevant content is one thing society can do to separate the crazy.

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

#124

Post by jklinger410 »

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?

Why else did we have Zuckerberg waste all of his time talking to those know-nothing congress people?

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

#125

Post by jamie_ca »

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…

Yeah, try "US inventors" and the list of faces at the top you need to get to #9 before they're not white males.

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

#126

Post by stanleydrew »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #112
stanleydrew wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship isn't the best word for this, but he's certainly not promoting free speech here. Promoting free speech would mean acknowledging that Google can do whatever it wants, and say whatever it wants to say via its search results, whether the government likes the results or not. Regarding the media, there's nothing wrong with the president and the media having an adversarial relationship and in fact I think that's…

> Promoting free speech would mean acknowledging that Google can do whatever it wants, and say whatever it wants to say via its search results, whether the government likes the results or not. What if Google holds a monopolistic position in the search market, and its actions are detrimental to its users? What if what the government is doing is enforcing anti-trust rules?

Whether Google is a monopoly in search or not is a determination the anti-trust division of the justice department would have to make, which I don't believe is what the current administration is actually suggesting they are going to pursue since they are generally pretty unorganized and that sounds like a lot of work.

Anyway even if that were found to be the case (and arguably there's a good case) I don't know if the likely remedy would be to allow the government to control search results.

If the government wants to meddle with search results the better approach might be from the FCC which could claim Google needs to operate under some kind of common carrier status I guess.

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

#127

Post by Youden »

jchw wrote: post #119
Youden wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Just a naive idea but personally, I'd say a platform is politically neutral if it takes no action to prioritise or remove content unless required by law. This puts what should and shouldn't be on the platform in the hands of lawmakers, who, theoretically at least, represe…

It's worse than that. Let's say a far right conspiracy blog is posting a conspiracy about a school shooting before any information is really available. Suddenly, it's on top of Google and being surfaced prominently on Facebook. People don't like this because these neutral companies are now promoting fake, definitely potentially harmful stories. But if you penalize them for this, from one viewpoint, you are suppressin…

Ideally in this case, legislators would introduce a change encouraging deprioritization of information that is provably not factual.

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

#128

Post by root_axis »

malvosenior wrote: post #80
beams_of_light wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't produce news, though. It aggregates it based on user preferences and history. Complaining that the aggregate of news doesn't cast you in a good light is more of a reflection of who you are than what the aggregator is, as a public figure.

It also filters some sources and promotes other sources based on opaque criteria that many suspect to have political bias.

So what? If you don't like how the algorithm sorts search results then use one of the many competitors. If you think the competition is inferior then you're by definition saying that the google algorithm is preferable to the competition despite whatever political bias you see in the results.

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

#129

Post by malvosenior »

root_axis wrote: post #128
malvosenior wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also filters some sources and promotes other sources based on opaque criteria that many suspect to have political bias.

So what? If you don't like how the algorithm sorts search results then use one of the many competitors. If you think the competition is inferior then you're by definition saying that the google algorithm is preferable to the competition despite whatever political bias you see in the results.

It's good to call for transparency. Google has an effective monopoly on search so it's not just about me as an individual switching to ddg or something. Google can make and break media properties based on what are currently hidden and seemingly editorialized levers.

I'm not a fan of regulation but as a consumer I'm absolutely within my rights to ask Google tough questions.

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

#130

Post by tdb7893 »

jiojfdsal3 wrote: post #65
erulabs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's pretty easily explained by the fact that people really only use the term "white inventors" when talking about black inventors (honestly "white inventors" would probably have racist connotations in most other contexts).
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