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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#154
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…

AFAIK you're missing a crucial point - they're trying to require G/FB to pay out billions to old (read: dying) media publications, which will crush small publications. On the Open Web, ABC News should get the exact same treatment at JoeBloggsYT2020.

> On the Open Web, ABC News should get the exact same treatment at JoeBloggsYT2020.

I legitimately don't understand this point of view. Original reporting of the kind that keeps politicians and corporations in line costs money; investigative journalists aren't cheap. What YouTuber gives you this kind of depth? Will the world be a better place without the Fourth Estate?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#155
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…

interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care.

perhaps because they have inside knowledge that the legislation is a dead duck and the government doesn't intend to follow through but perhaps the government is simply doing this for whatever reasons maybe political points with the population.

I have no doubt that the Australian government and Google play a delicate dance with each other while they both cooperate and see that they both get the outcomes they both want. so the gloss that this is all about consumers, spouted by both sides, I think is false.

anyway, interesting to watch where this goes.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#157
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.

A few months ago, I disabled all of that stuff, so that YouTube only recommends videos based on my subscriptions and liked videos. I guess it's still personalization, but it's personalization that I have control over, which seems to have drastically improved both the privacy and the quality of recommendations.

I don't use Google for search, though, so I can't comment on that.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#158

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 foll…

The claim you're replying to is very specific, and starts off by acknowledging that Google does not live up to "Don't be evil" in general, so I don't think the Medium post (which indeed describes some pretty evil behavior) refutes it.

The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information and not turning it against you than the Australian government - not that they do good things in general.

Yes, they monetize the browsing behavior they collect from you. Yes, they are able to use that to price products at $0 so others can't compete without also finding ways to monetize data. Yes, senior management will gladly take Xi Jinping's money. Yes, senior management will gladly sleep with subordinates. Even so, they are better custodians of user data than the Australian government or the Australian media.

And yes, they cannot protect their data from law enforcement - hence writing this letter telling the Australian voting public that if they don't want Australian law enforcement to compel Google to share certain data, they'd better stop this law.

Let me put this another way - if the Australian government ran a free email service, would you advise every Gmail user in Australia to switch?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#159
between competing commercial entities and the government, I am unsure who is more likely to invoke "the law of un-intended consequences" as an explanation for their behaviour.

Lets just say all of them are likely to do this: Not just note that there is an un-intended consequence, but actually acting to bring it on.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#160

> You trust us with your data and our job is to keep it safe. Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. This corpspeak wording seems very broad. I wonder what Australia is gunning at here, if they are really asking Google/FB to share user insights about users visiting these news sites, that doesn't sit well with me as an user.

Good news! You can replace corpspeak with legalspeak.

https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

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