Longtime ago, I made a small installation [1] at an HCI conf about the same larger issue. Increasing Search Engines seem to train people by judging their inherent confirmation bias. I think many recommendation engines also try to do the same to a lower extend by keep the 'subject' happy. It was interesting to see how designers from leading companies present never thought their work actually makes people live in bubbles and they always think it was 'UX friendly'.
Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
271–280 of 309 posts
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#272I don't particularly like Google, but it is obvious that they are in the "Everything you say may be used against you" situation and they cannot simply take the fifth and cut off any communication among employees.
If you need to take into account that every single message sent over internal media may be one day combed by hostile investigators for anything that might be considered your wrongdoing, you need to be careful, regardless of your size.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?
That's horrifying. I was not aware. The horror is hundreds of IBM employees were directly involved in extermination activities; literally maintaining tabulation machines on prem, as it were, in the camps. I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time such à job comes. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879
Holy shit, that's an incredible story. I live right in front of Auschwitz and I had no idea.
Also that quote from the article, from IMB's spokesman:
"We are a technology company, we are not historians."
That's fucking rich. Imagine Bayer saying the same when questioned if their company used to make Zyklon B.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#274The other way around, classic 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it'. Googlespeak can be a crutch in the process, but I don't think it is the root cause.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment is peak HN. Congratulations.
The Just World Fallacy is incredibly strong in this one. Sure, the US imprisoned its citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WWII, a practice approved by its highest court, but they would never imprison Jewish people just for their ethnicity, right?
If I'm committing a fallacy, it's probably just assuming that individual American IBM executives probably wouldn't have actively and knowing facilitated genocidal policies. Also that if German IBM employees did do so, that's on them, not necessarily US execs who may have had no knowledge or awareness of it.
That turns out to be false though, it's seems apparent that US execs had a pretty good idea what their machines were being used to do at last up to 1942. Not in detail, they probably weren't aware of the specific activities happening at say Treblinka, I don't think anyone in the US did, but they were aware that German government policy was the registration and oppression of Jews and other minorities and that IBM machines were facilitating it.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Just World Fallacy is incredibly strong in this one. Sure, the US imprisoned its citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WWII, a practice approved by its highest court, but they would never imprison Jewish people just for their ethnicity, right?
If I'm committing a fallacy, it's probably just assuming that individual American IBM executives probably wouldn't have actively and knowing facilitated genocidal policies. Also that if German IBM employees did do so, that's on them, not necessarily US execs who may have had no knowledge or awareness of it. That turns out to be false though, it's seems apparent that US execs had a pretty good idea what their machines…
You pretty much just hoped something wasn't true, even though references were easily available, so you started making excuses, caveats and assumptions instead of following up on those references. Really what was your comment going to achieve?
Your fallacy is to repeatedly make assumptions in favour of the US without any evidentiary basis. When history is as well studied as it is, there's no need to propagate your assumptions.
Now you're at it again - I just Googled "when was us aware of the holocaust" and found an interesting Time article. There were already rumours of mass killing. And the existence of concentration camps, ie not merely "registration and oppression" but active imprisonment, was very well known. The number of victims was underestimated in the common mind - but IBMs contribution of record keeping systems was to help increase that number.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially when Google is distributing documentation saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of "Market."
IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?
Using area still murk the waters. Some people may be legitimately meaning something other than market when they say area. So it's not really possible to say that every market occurrence can be replaced with market in the internal emails. This is not the definitions section of a contract, it's a guideline. So, it's probably still worth doing. If they don't, then people using market have 100% chance of meaning market, whereas after the guideline, usage of area has less than 100% chance of meaning market and being accepted like so.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#278I was in Google Ads from 2008-2010. At that time, there was a limit of 3 top ads and 8 right-hand-side ads. The top ads generated the vast bulk of the revenue. They were also in blue or yellow (I forget which, but one was WAY more lucrative than the other!) so it was very easy for the user to distinguish an ad from a search result. I just did the canonical $$$ search "flowers" on my Macbook. The entire first page was…
Holy shit. No wonder google doesn't give a shit about adblockers. Those people would be the ones who care about litigation and stopping this shit. Easy to let such a small % of users slide when the other 99% will willingly fall into the ad trap.
This is insane:
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the same time the only apps I cannot select & copy any text from are YouTube and GoogleMaps. The comments people leave there are so valuable for Google?
I just tried it, I seem to be able to copy text just fine from both apps.
Maybe it's because you tried iOS apps? It doesn't work in Android apps.
Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially when Google is distributing documentation saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of "Market."
IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an additional layer of argumentation that “area” is code for “market”. My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue this?
It’s not that complex. Judges aren’t computers, and the words of a law are not an imperative program that judges “execute” against the evidence and arguments. The attempted ruse isn’t that clever, and it’s more likely to piss a judge off than wow him or her.