The Google Antitrust Investigations – Learning from Germany’s Facebook Inquiry • Hacker News Board

Re: The Google Antitrust Investigations – Learning from Germany’s Facebook Inquiry

#21

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

Moru wrote: post #19

shadowgovt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if Google decides to favor a side and Bing doesn't, Bing search is just a click away. And if consumers value a politically-unbiased (or other-biased) opinion, they can migrate to Bing, right?

They need to know this bias exist first. And they also need to know that there is alternatives. And then they also need to know how to change. This is a lot to ask from a lot of people I'm affraid. Are you willing to bet your and your countrys future on people switching to bing when someone manages to game Googles algorithm to favor a side in the next election in whatever country you live in?

That's a large and complicated question. To a first approximation: if people aren't smart enough to figure out if they need to do that and how to do that, then my country's future is already in a tailspin because my country is a representative democracy and a minimal amount of collective intelligence and savvy is necessary to maintain such a system of government (hence, the public schools).

Re: The Google Antitrust Investigations – Learning from Germany’s Facebook Inquiry

#22

Post by inlined » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 11:46 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #21

Moru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to know this bias exist first. And they also need to know that there is alternatives. And then they also need to know how to change. This is a lot to ask from a lot of people I'm affraid. Are you willing to bet your and your countrys future on people switching to bing when someone manages to game Googles algorithm to favor a side in the next election in whatever country you live in?

That's a large and complicated question. To a first approximation: if people aren't smart enough to figure out if they need to do that and how to do that, then my country's future is already in a tailspin because my country is a representative democracy and a minimal amount of collective intelligence and savvy is necessary to maintain such a system of government (hence, the public schools).

Arguments about potential political bias are built on some pretty shaky and dangerous hypotheses. At this point, the number of current and former employees who have seen Google’s ranking algorithm and not whistle blown about some political signal makes its existence highly improbable.

Re: The Google Antitrust Investigations – Learning from Germany’s Facebook Inquiry

#23

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

inlined wrote: post #22

shadowgovt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a large and complicated question. To a first approximation: if people aren't smart enough to figure out if they need to do that and how to do that, then my country's future is already in a tailspin because my country is a representative democracy and a minimal amount of collective intelligence and savvy is necessary to maintain such a system of government (hence, the public schools).

Arguments about potential political bias are built on some pretty shaky and dangerous hypotheses. At this point, the number of current and former employees who have seen Google’s ranking algorithm and not whistle blown about some political signal makes its existence highly improbable.

Definitely. To be clear: my previous lines of reasoning here were assuming a political bias from Google and noting that even if it exists, the populace has alternatives. I'm personally of the school of thought "Google seems to have liberal bias in the US because relative to US politics, reality has a liberal bias," and not of the conspiracy-to-delude-the-public school of thought. ;)