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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#131

Post by BLKNSLVR »

jojobas wrote: post #123
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talking to Google or News Corp? You're flipping a single-sided coin. Heads you lose, and that's the only option.

Is News Corp pretending it doesn't turn any profit by offsetting it to an Irish entity? I always understood it's deliberately run at about breakeven, it's a political tool, not a money-making enterprise.

> deliberately run at about breakeven, it's a political tool, not a money-making enterprise.

Well, that's worse, or at least no better, and makes it much harder to defend the writing of new laws to protect it (except when you're the one both writing the laws and using the tool). Just writing that makes my skin crawl.

Admittedly, that's a different topic to tax avoidance though.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#132

Post by darawk »

zmmmmm wrote: post #101

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be…

> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage.

Because then people would game it.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#133

Post by uluyol »

darawk wrote: post #132
zmmmmm wrote: post #101

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be…

> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage. Because then people…

Exactly, the ranking needs constant tweaking to deal with spam/SEO.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#134

Post by spacehunt »

jojobas wrote: post #123
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talking to Google or News Corp? You're flipping a single-sided coin. Heads you lose, and that's the only option.

Is News Corp pretending it doesn't turn any profit by offsetting it to an Irish entity? I always understood it's deliberately run at about breakeven, it's a political tool, not a money-making enterprise.

https://www.afr.com/rear-window/is-news-corp-still-paying-ze...

> ... there’s the withholding tax [News Australia Holdings] pays on interest it pays to a News Corp associate offshore, which News likes to lump in with income tax.

(AFR is Fairfax / Channel 9, take that what you will.)

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#135

Post by ignoramous »

discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

(rant)

> they behave much better...

https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-inter...

> decent custodians of their users data

They cannot protect that data from law and enforcement no matter what. De-anonymized, aggregated, ephemeral... no matter which way you look at it, data they collect is a ticking time-bomb. And because they amass so much, others that have similar business models are forced to follow suit, so much so that it has heralded us into an era where companies like Facebook [0], FourSquare [1] build and promote spyware without remorse or regret.

Smartphones have only added to the problem. It is madness to claim anyone in big-tech is "well behaved". I'd wager that they're well-behaved only when it is convenient [2].

> I trust Murdoch less than the government, much much less than Google

Peak Silicon Valley?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19341079

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#136

Post by spacehunt »

stirlo wrote: post #126
neumann wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no Fairfax since 2018, and even then Gina Reinhart owned 20% then. Now, it's channel 9, and having Peter Costello at the helm. So... Yeah, we don't really have a balanced or neutral media landscape. The ABC, The Guardian and a small selection of boutique papers and websites are alone in putting journalism before explicit political narratives now. And well, even the first two in that list heavily rely on clic…

Fairfax still produces daily newspapers with a large readership in Australia's 2 largest cities. To say they don't exist just because their ownership changed is a misnomer.

There's been a very noticeable drop in quality in The Age's reporting though. And then there was this back in June:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/14/journalists-at...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/18/age-editor-ale...

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#137

Post by BLKNSLVR »

deminature wrote: post #49
iamshs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid if Sky News corners a prominent real estate in my Youtube results, they are already atrocious and have insufferable comments.

Sky News is almost more virulently ignorant and hateful than Fox News. I'm shocked Australia - a generally 'nice' country - is capable of producing something like this.

Australia is 'nice' when the powerful are winning all their arguments.

Terrorism, climate change, the challenge to single-narrative media, gay marriage, and a number of other examples of recent societal change are shifting the ground underneath the powerful, and they're not winning 'naturally' as often as they'd like, so they're resolving to win 'unnaturally', which very quickly degenerates from a position of 'nice'.

Sky News is what it is because of chasing popularity. Unfortunately it has a suitably sized audience to maintain it's virulently ignorant and hateful narratives. It's representative of a distilled version of a Australia's hopes and dreams for the future. Oh so sadly.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#138

Post by wutbrodo »

zmmmmm wrote: post #101

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be…

> Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment

I don't see how this follows: this regulation isn't precipitated by "unfair treatment" of news media, nor are the gov't and media pretending it is. Quite the opposite: this is a plea for giving news media an unfair advantage.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#139

Post by dongvsascript »

stirlo wrote: post #52
reaperducer wrote: post #43

To all the people (hopefully Australians) who paint this as the government propping up legacy media: Isn't it better to have control of your media in local, Australian-owned and regulated megacorps, rather than some faceless megacorp in another country?

^ This. I'm hearing heaps of people crying "Murdock" and "Newscorp" but how about local jobs and ownership vs a global conglomerate that doesn't give 2 f#%ks about our tiny 25 million population and takes $4.8 billion offshore while paying only $100 million tax[1]. The Australian Associate Press recently went bankrupt and needed a bailout from philanthropists[2]. As much as you dislike one particular section of old m…

so, i'm not getting this. they take revenue, not profit offshore. profit meaning global profit. you want to tax the money they make in your country, without them first paying expenses in other countries?

so if i have developers and research in america, and software sales in australia, my australian costs are $0, and all revenue is taxable profit. yeah, that seems fair. double fair for australia.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#140

Post by chottocharaii »

mgraczyk wrote: post #18
ImaCake wrote: post #6

Link to the draft law is below [0]. Quoted from that page: >The code also includes a set of ‘minimum standards’ for: >providing advance notice of changes to algorithmic ranking and presentation of news; appropriately recognising original news content; and >providing information about how and when Google and Facebook make available user data collected through users’ interactions with news content. This sounds great to…

As somebody who works on ranking and personalization products, I can confidently assure you that you would not prefer a less personalized experience. You don't have to take my word for it though, you can opt-out of personalization on Google here: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols Try it for a month and see if you prefer it.

Lol, you can ‘confidently assure’ huh?

Clicking that link, turns out I’ve had all of those personalisation features switched off for nearly a year.

Don’t be so confident that your ranking/personalisation products are universally appreciated

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