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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#381

Post by mcv »

berkes wrote: post #373
mcv wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand what you mean. Are you saying that the Chinese situation, where the government is the entity that decides on access to the news, is a good one? I think it's vitally important that press can exist and publish completely independently from the government. Yes, that does mean there need to be laws protecting the press from censorship and subtler forms of manipulation. But this particular piece o…

Sorry for more confusion. I think the Chinese situation is bad. But that was not my point. The point was that a government is the entity to protect, enable and allow free speech; a private entity is not. The Chinese example shows that when a government does not allow, or protect free speech, the private entity cannot solve it either. Google cannot enable free speech in China: only the Chinese government could do that…

> "The point was that a government is the entity to protect, enable and allow free speech; a private entity is not."

This is true in the ideal case. In practice, governments don't always enable and protect free speech. Even the idea that governments should do this is fairly recent, and constantly under attack.

> "Google cannot enable free speech in China"

This is true. But Google can warn people when free speech is under attack. And some companies do have a habit of fighting for free speech.

In the end, there is no single entity that can and should bear the entire responsibility of protecting free speech; it's up to everybody.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#382

Post by program_whiz »

Surprised no one is saying this. Every generation has to relearn what many have realized over the centuries: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only way to avoid people "abusing" other people is to make that situation impossible (both parties having power that other cannot take). If you create a situation with the tools of power just sitting in the open, and only one party can use it, then you will have abuses.

This logic applies to governments, corporations, and ordinary people (think of the tyrannical managers we've all had at some point). Its an unchangeable facet of human nature. As long as the weapon/tool is on the table, and there are enough people, someone who is a bit more sociopathic, greedy, or has more emotional turmoil will pick it up and wield it against other people for their own gain.

For examples see: all of history whenever a person / civilization had any advantage over another person / civilization and sufficient time elapsed.

Its kinda crazy but everyone always thinks that some new power / invention that creates a one-sided situation like this will "only be used for good", imagining that the people using these tools will be benevolent (for all people who could use the tool, and all the time the tool exists).

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#383

Post by zentiggr »

inopinatus wrote: post #289
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may sound like a technicality, but what I said was that this is the Government that the Australian people want. Reason being that they voted it in … again. It's not as if the current government have changed their stripes since the election before last. Australians have become, in my view (happy to be proven wrong), very conservative because of the fact we've had it so good for so long, and therefore are a bit we…

Giving me a choice of two or three mendacious, self-serving, incompetent cliques and then saying the one I grudgingly picked as the temporarily least appalling is what I /wanted/, is a bit of a long bow to draw.

Is there an option to call an election void if no candidate gets enough votes? Have to rerun a special election, and maybe get a solid percent for a writein who actually has a different plan?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#384

Post by ignoramous »

geofft wrote: post #158
ignoramous wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 goo…

> 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?

False dichotomy? I think, as a technologist you'd agree we could do better than Gmail?

> The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information

I concur, though (imo), it is a folly to assume Google would continue to uphold highest data-handling standards or could even keep all of the data secure despite employing world-class cryptographers and security researchers. [0] They may be better than most but their enormous cache is both a liability and a disaster waiting to happen.

If such laws mean they collect less data because they cannot stomach sharing it (nevermind whether for privacy or business reasons), that is a win? I think, we'd find out they don't care about privacy after all... just their bottom line.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22235756

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#385

Post by joncrane »

rokweom wrote: post #331
thu2111 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law is the latest iteration of newspaper's attempts to turn Google into an ATM for the industry. The first attempt was in Germany. The law said search engines must pay newspapers to index their content. However it didn't specify what the price should be, so Google simply negotiated a fee of zero and the law was in effect nullified. The second attempt was in Spain. It is the same law, but this time they added a c…

How can government tell you what services you must provide? That's ridiculous.

It's Australia. Try looking into some of the weird and gross stuff the Federal government does.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#386

Post by tetrometal »

neiman wrote: post #233
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…

> Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it.

Interpreting your comment charitably, I assume you intended hyperbole when using the word force here, and in your comparison to actual force with respect to theft of private property.

Still, I think we should be careful with our words, especially lately as words are being redefined out of apparent expedience.

So, tedious or pedantic as it may be, I feel obligated to gently push back and point out that no force is being used in this circumstance, and that this situation is indeed not comparable to one in which actual aggressive force is being used, as in your bike theft example.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#387

Post by rokweom »

ath0 wrote: post #372
rokweom wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can government tell you what services you must provide? That's ridiculous.

In the Americans with Disabilities Act, US law states that if you're going to create a place of public accommodation, there are certain minimum standards you must adhere to, to support those with disabilities. So you must install ramps and elevators for the mobility-impaired, offer audio-only interfaces for the blind, sign for the hearing impaired, and so on. These apply pretty broadly. We can argue whether Australia…

There's a difference between having to comply to certain standards when opening a new service, and being forced by government to retain a service that is unprofitable.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#388

Post by ricardo81 »

saalweachter wrote: post #342
ricardo81 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, same as the phone book for AAA Plumbers. Playing devil's advocate, gaming search engines used to be about keywords then it became more about links. SEOs nowadays talk about "EAT", expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It's still possible for marketers to mimic quality signals but it's less easy. It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a…

> It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of…

Seems like that's one major ingredient they'd like to add to their algo as intent/authority is otherwise measured much more indirectly.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#389

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

ehsankia wrote: post #208
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes what you describe is what I want. When I search I don't want my search influenced by search terms that are invisible to me and that I can't influence.

If I want to know about a particular sports team or niche, I will either include that search term, or I will subscribe to a pubsub feed for information about that topic. That way I can unsubscribe or filter as needed based on the feed.

What I never want is for an algorithm to try to figure out what I like and subscribe me to topics based on that.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#390

Post by blaser-waffle »

thelastname wrote: post #355
thu2111 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an anglo-centric perception. Which countries has Google News been banned in? Spain. China. Germany briefly until Google told the news orgs they'd never pay, so could license their content for free or disappear from News and search. Newspapers trying to screw Google out of money by pressuring politicians is not an Australia or News Corp specific problem. It's happening everywhere. Really, all it reveals is how…

I don't know why this gets a so downvoted, it's correct. There was/is a huge pressure made by French and German media owners.

You're not wrong, but News Corp doesn't hold a lot of power in FR or DE.

Meanwhile Fox News is still poisoning minds in the US, and basically calling the shots in Australia. Plus all the UK hacking, etc.

I'll give a shit about what AFP or Deutsche Welle are doing when they start becoming a tool of the US GOP that openly pushes for invading Iran.

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