Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 256 posts

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#41

Post by neolog »

travoc wrote: post #35
bpodgursky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't distort the meaning of words. PR "submarine" pieces are a very real thing, but they are exactly what the phrase suggests — an article put out by a corporate PR department for publication. This was literally an interview by a real reporter, edited into an article. You might not like that the interviewer wasn't antagonistic (let's be real — most aren't!), but this is not a "PR submarine piece" by any sane…

Reprinting a single person’s viewpoints without critique or counterpoint isn’t news or “real reporting.” It’s still just a PR piece.

That's true but parent is complaining about the use of "submarine", which I agree isn't an accurate description.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#42

Post by Karrot_Kream »

travoc wrote: post #35
bpodgursky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't distort the meaning of words. PR "submarine" pieces are a very real thing, but they are exactly what the phrase suggests — an article put out by a corporate PR department for publication. This was literally an interview by a real reporter, edited into an article. You might not like that the interviewer wasn't antagonistic (let's be real — most aren't!), but this is not a "PR submarine piece" by any sane…

Reprinting a single person’s viewpoints without critique or counterpoint isn’t news or “real reporting.” It’s still just a PR piece.

Would you argue that any interview without an interview of a contra opinion is also just a PR piece?

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#44

Post by MattGaiser »

denkmoon wrote: post #34
MattGaiser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahead of all the regulation happy governments, the walled gardens, and spam/trolls making areas of the web that are not resourced largely unusable?

Governmental incompetence exceeds their ability to regulate. Google have the capacity to pull off a lot more than Governments. Google would have a walled garden if they could afford to lose the users and manufacturers that would revolt against it.

Google's main product is letting people find stuff on the web. What benefit would a walled garden be to them unless everything was on Google infrastructure? They would need to control everything.

They lose the most if the internet balkanizes.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#45

Post by saurik »

ditonal wrote: post #17
bsmith0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the most predictable HN comments

The article is a fluff piece that's comically uncritical of Google. There's obvious hypocrisy for a company that's done all sorts of user-antagonistic things to internet users as Google has, from Google AMP stealing traffic, to PRISM actively violating the 4th amendment, to Dragonfly explicitly enabling censorship. Google's gotten away with the hypocrisy due to a relentless PR engine. Maybe if you don't like predicta…

If you want to try on a positive spin for AMP, it was Google's awkward attempt to defend against Facebook Instant Articles (which the feature set of AMP almost at times felt like a direct rip-off of) in a world where people preferred to read news articles inside of the Facebook app instead of a browser; which, in comparison, AMP was massively more open than. The issue is that, in the end, Google always feels like they get to decide the response of the web--with their search engine and browser standing in somewhat for the walled garden social network and app of something like Facebook--and then it all gets twisted to benefit them in some unique way, which sucks :/.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#46

Post by threatofrain »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
Sophistifunk wrote: post #2

From where I sit the #1 risk to the free and open internet these days is Google. Edit: two reasons: 1) Because adtech is destroying society. Surveillance is never good. Ads as funding smears absolutely everything with perverse incentives that act consistently against both the explicit wishes and implicit best-interests of the viewers, and (it seems moreso every year) society at large. 2) Google is doing everything it…

Google is literally the only tech giant with an interest in the open internet. Facebook scored the mortal wound on the web — they reinvented a bigger, badder AOL closed garden.

Google also seems to be one of the few entities in the world capable of building kick-ass web apps.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#47

Post by marcodiego »

Combine this with "the coming war on general purpose computing"[0] , IME, DRM, difficulty to repair devices and computers that user has no control even on their car and soon we'll be living like on the dystopian essay "The right to read".

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#48

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ditonal wrote: post #17
bsmith0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the most predictable HN comments

The article is a fluff piece that's comically uncritical of Google. There's obvious hypocrisy for a company that's done all sorts of user-antagonistic things to internet users as Google has, from Google AMP stealing traffic, to PRISM actively violating the 4th amendment, to Dragonfly explicitly enabling censorship. Google's gotten away with the hypocrisy due to a relentless PR engine. Maybe if you don't like predicta…

> There's obvious hypocrisy for a company that's done all sorts of user-antagonistic things to internet user

Does this mean any article about Google that does not criticize Google deserves this snark? Fwiw the snark is annoying not because folks disagree with it, but that saying it again and again and doing nothing is a trite form of internet me-too-ing or signalling. That Google depends on an ethically dubious set of assumptions is obvious; now how do we fix it and why are we talking about this here?

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#49

Post by javajosh »

What is (was) the free and open internet?

I'd argue its people running their own servers - traditionally an x86 (plus RAM, disk, modem pipe and power) running a POSIX kernel running httpd, smptd, ftpd and maybe ircd. A static IPv4 address from ARIN (via an ISP) and a DNS name from ICANN (via a registrar).

These are the necessary ingredients you must have, as an individual or a group, to participate in the "free and open internet".

I'd argue that Facebook is just a natural extension of AWS, Digital Ocean or Github pages. Facebook takes away the DNS name, and they take away your content and put it behind an algorithm, which you can bribe to let your stuff through. I'd consider a difference of degree, not kind.

Even those who go to the trouble of running their own physical server still use services like Google Analytics, which violate the privacy of every data consumer. Maybe not as bad as putting your data behind someone else's paywall and then paying them to expose it, but it's pretty bad. Since we use the web for literally every application now, it's a particularly worrying trend.

My point is that if you want a 'free and open internet' then you need to make it easy for people own, understand and run ALL of these ingredients. Like, provide them by all by default for everyone's smartphone, and run servers on your smartphone! And give them reasonable defaults, with a first-year-free DNS name. A free static IPv6 address block. Default, svelte, little mobile friendly server daemons. Then let people make crazy HTML documents with their voice and self-publish them like in the old days!

All the components are there, we just need to DO it.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#50

Post by ignoramous »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #2

From where I sit the #1 risk to the free and open internet these days is Google. Edit: two reasons: 1) Because adtech is destroying society. Surveillance is never good. Ads as funding smears absolutely everything with perverse incentives that act consistently against both the explicit wishes and implicit best-interests of the viewers, and (it seems moreso every year) society at large. 2) Google is doing everything it…

To be fair, Pichai's quote is taken out of context. In his capacity as Alphabet CEO, he worries about neutrality of the interconnects. TFA goes:

> And, when I asked about whether the Chinese model of the internet - much more authoritarian, big on surveillance - is in the ascendant, Pichai said the free and open internet "is being attacked". Importantly, he didn't refer to China directly but he went on to say: "None of our major products and services are available in China."

Google does run at least one semi-independent group to tackle such censorship, disinformation, propaganda, and abuse https://jigsaw.google.com/

Post reply on HN