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Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

bbc.com

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Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#11

Post by ocdtrekkie »

acomjean wrote: post #9
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…

How so? It seems that a search engine would need the internet to have as much information out there in the open to index and give us the results upon searching.. Because they are so dominate they exercise outsized control, but there are still a few others. Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them.

The biggest issue is that Google Search kills its own sources, which is shortsighted. Google constantly steals manually curated quality content, and regurgitates it in Knowledge Graph without attribution, such that the people who did all the work to develop and curate that information aren't compensated.

The end result: As the web Google stole from dies off, Google increasingly has worse, less accurate sources it has to draw from.

Journalists are at the forefront of this, and you can see several countries moving to charge Google for lifting news content to combat this. But there's a lot of other sources on the web that probably won't be so lucky.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#12

Post by ed25519FUUU »

Once a company is large and entrenched, regulation is how you stay in power.

You create enough Byzantine rules that basically only the largest company can hire the lawyers and comply. It’s an effective way to kill off competition.

Google is ready to start encouraging regulation.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#13

Post by iratewizard »

bsmith0 wrote: post #10
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…

These are the most predictable HN comments

Google has actively replaced the free and open internet with one that is more convenient and brand flattering as soon as mass media started to fight against becoming a legacy product.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#15

Post by Consultant32452 »

acomjean wrote: post #9
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…

How so? It seems that a search engine would need the internet to have as much information out there in the open to index and give us the results upon searching.. Because they are so dominate they exercise outsized control, but there are still a few others. Data behind paywalls/logins is useless to them.

When they hide data you're obviously and explicitly looking for they are making the internet less open.

Look at the google vs duckduckgo search results for this: "How a Convicted Terrorist used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Website to Identify Targets"

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#16

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

m1sta_ wrote: post #14

I do hope that people read the article and comment on its contents rather than just getting stuck in a loop of "Google bad".

Nobody likes to challenge their own beliefs - especially when it's a negative belief.

(I could provide links to studies, but I like to think the downvotes prove my point for me)

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#17

Post by ditonal »

bsmith0 wrote: post #10
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…

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 predictable Hacker News snark, downvote the PR "submarine" pieces from the front page, because there's nothing of value in this article and "predictable" critique is the best it deserves.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#18

Post by thr0w72594 »

The criticism here is entirely self-serving and hypocritical. Why should Google be able to undemocratically decide which parts of the internet it allows, yet deride governments for doing the same thing? At least the governments ostensibly have the best interests of their people in mind. And even the worst "authoritarian" governments need to answer to their population enough to keep legitimacy.

There is no free and open internet, and Google is part of the group of corporations that help prop up the big tech cartel that help kill off each others' competitors, share employee blacklists, and intentionally sacrifice the quality of their product to push their Bay Area bourgeoisie politics around the globe.

Re: Sundar Pichai warns of threats to internet freedom

#20

Post by renewiltord »

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…

So, in theory, you have some metric that places Google up at #1. For that to be non-trivial, you must have more than one member of the set evaluated. And for it to be meaningful, maybe you have a top ten or you have evaluated less than ten.

All right, then, enlighten us with your top ten. And if you haven’t already, I’d like to see where on the top ten you’ve put regimes like the Chinese government and the US government.

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