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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#201

Post by cyphar »

triceratops wrote: post #165
cyphar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I vocally opposed that piece of legislation (and are included in the public comments collection), that is not an accurate description of the law. The government that can force you to add backdoors in certain circumstances, and you cannot tell people about it. Yes that is utterly abhorrent, but that isn't the same as "government mandated backdoors in every software product" -- though funnily enough, the US Senat…

Sorry, you're right. The government that can demand backdoors in any software product. That's a lot better. /s I didn't say the US Senate is a lot better, but to be completely fair there isn't a backdoor law in the US yet . It's possible Australia was the testing ground for that type of legislation though.

I didn't say it was better, I said that the description wasn't correct. If we're going to criticise something, we should describe it accurately -- otherwise our opponents can simply say "they're being hysterical and don't know what they're talking about".

Heck, that's exactly what the ASD did when the vast majority of people were screaming about employees being individually targeted by the legislation (which wasn't accurate). Now, the ASD also did misrepresent the legislation too -- but now it's less obvious to the general public who is actually being sincere.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#202

Post by CamperBob2 »

sthnblllII wrote: post #168
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to parent commenters [0] link, this is the story that got a journalist's home raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) because she received leaked information (that turned out to be 100% correct) that the Department for Home Affairs was planning to allow the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to spy on Australian citizens. Directly quoting from the linked article: ASD powers have been a source of co…

> this seems to be the Government that the Australian people want. I can assure you it’s not. The problem with Republics is that “one man one vote” does not translate into the majority getting what it wants. The loudest and most well organized political forces will get their way, even ones small in number or popular support. State security services have a long history of involvement in politics and media in the Anglo…

The problem with Republics is that “one man one vote” does not translate into the majority getting what it wants.

You can say that again, mate. -- USA

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#204

Post by FridgeSeal »

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.

And having disabled personalisation on a lot of products for as long as I can remember, I can confidently assure you that yes, I do in-fact prefer the non-personalised experience.

I don't want it to display what some service _thinks_ I want, I want it to display what I'm asking for. No more, no less.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#205

Post by sthnblllII »

ehsankia wrote: post #200
sthnblllII wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that just be Google manipulating coverage for Google’s benefit? I don’t think Google should be blessing any publishers with special “news section” status. Let websites compete organically. Any media with finance capital backing is going to be biased in favor of wars and against labor.

There's a difference between giving special treatment and fully de-listing, kinda like what happened in Germany and Spain with Google News. This is a direct and targeted attack by NewsCorp, abusing their influence in australian politics to force a bill that benefits them. Why should Google help someone that is trying their best to attack them?

Being a neutral platform for speech is not ‘helping’ anyone. It helps the ideas the public agrees with the most, which is why Google and Newscorp are fighting to control internet media with backroom ‘partnerships’ rather than giving viewpoints that are actually popular a fair playing field.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#206

Post by FridgeSeal »

option wrote: post #40
awalton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confidently assure you that I've had that feature off for ages and could not possibly be happier about it.

as another person who worked on personalization I can assure you that way over 90% of users prefer personalization. Decades of A/B tests have proven that. And yes, some people, myself included turn it OFF because of privacy concerns. But we are in a really small minority.

"When we A/B tested users against different kinds of personalisation, we consistently found that they liked personalisation"

If your non-personalised experience is stunted in functionality because the core UX of the product is biased towards personalisation, it will be unsurprising if people "prefer" personalisation.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#207

Post by wombatmobile »

Obviously the Australian government is trying to make google pay just because Murdoch told it to. But the pretense is bizarre - that google has to pay Murdoch because it steals his content.

Google doesn't republish News Corp content! It just lists headlines with URLs that readers click to go through to News Corp! Google is giving News Corp 70% of its traffic.

Bizarre.

What's to stop google from simply ceasing to index News Corp at all?

The fact that it doesn't, and instead runs a scary PR campaign, tells me there's something going on that I don't understand. But what?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#208

Post by ehsankia »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #50
mgraczyk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally, I don't like personalization. I had a friend in middle school who was into rabbits for about a year. For the next several years, she got tons and tons of random rabbit stuff from people she knew who didn't know what else to buy her. That's what personalization feels like to me. I can never find what I'm looking for because the algorithm is trying to pin me down into a category it thinks it understands, an…

There's a bunch of anecdotal stories about personalization goes wrong, but I don't see how any of that is a strong enough point. Should you be equally given news about every local news from every city in the world? Should be equally given news about every sport and sport team? What if you don't even like any sports?

Does personalization sometimes go overboard temporarily? Sure. But there's more and more levers to try and fix it. Generally you can mention you're not interested in a specific topic, and while it's not foolproof nor instant, it's still overall much better than getting complete random news.

I currently get plenty of cool articles about fairly niche things that I'm into and don't expect any other "average" person to ever get, such as Python news, animal crossing tips, indie game releases or updates on my favorite TV shows.

Again once in a while I'll get updates for a show I was just looking for but have no interest in, but that's honestly a much smaller price to pay than having zero personalization.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#209

Post by harha »

shakna wrote: post #33
mgraczyk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get more relevant results from DuckDuckGo. Who doesn't do the personalisation to begin with. I have found personalisation doesn't work for any search product. YouTube's ranking engine won't get me what I'm looking for. Google's personalised search doesn't get me what I'm looking for, and the de-personalised whilst better, only gets me halfway there because it still tries to geo-bubble me. I am aware that what I sea…

Being able to control the geo is one of the great features of DDG for me, especially back when I traveled a lot. The search engine doesn’t know the context I’m in (and I’m happy about that, I don’t think it should be guessing something this personal and then limiting the options for me).

It also helps me search for content vs for listings, sometimes I want information on a product and not the local merchant, with Google the closest I would get was switching to news search (also not optimal).

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#210

Post by jp0d »

spacehunt wrote: post #80
jp0d wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why my comment got down voted. But yes, as one of you have pointed out, it's just my opinion. And I don't think the original draft of this law as much to do with giving your data to the govt, but more about Google/Fb being more transparent with the conditions under which, our data will be used by them. I'm not a legal expert and I may have misunderstood some of it. It's my opinion that big monopoli…

The context you're missing is that in Australia, the "big monopoly" is News Corp and not FAANG.

Thanks mate. Yes that's true.
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