I hope he tries, because all the facile anti-tech rhetoric on the left will probably go away if he does.
‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
31–40 of 138 posts
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#32Gave this search a try - "Donald Trump" - to see how bad it really is (I rarely specifically google anything about Trump).
Breitbart is a traffic juggernaut in the US, and Google has Aljazeera ranking on the second page along with dailymail.co.uk. No Breitbart anywhere to be found on the first 15 pages. All the far left results are there of course.
IMDB is on page four. Haaretz on page five. France24 is on page five. TMZ, People.com, PageSix, UrbanDictionary, PopSugar are all there....
Along with this glorious headline on page six of results: "What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987? - NYMag"
There's very obvious bias across the board. Every platform is simultaneously conspiring (ie working together) to throw far right voices off their sites while leaving their counterpoints on the far left entirely alone (even when those people blatantly violate the platform terms of service). Just another good reason to begin very aggressively regulating the monopolists.
So long as they possess monopolies, they are in fact committing censorship. And when they all act as a group politically to censor, even more so. It's time for the government to act.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#33Google, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and others were able to grow to the size they did based on Safe Harbor provisions that exempted them from libel laws under the premise that they were neutral platforms that allowed anybody to post content etc.. Newspapers and television stations are held liable for their content. Once they started to editorialize by banning things under subjective pretexts such as "hate speech" they…
As soon as they implemented algorithmic feeds they forfeited their neutrality as a service.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#34Google, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and others were able to grow to the size they did based on Safe Harbor provisions that exempted them from libel laws under the premise that they were neutral platforms that allowed anybody to post content etc.. Newspapers and television stations are held liable for their content. Once they started to editorialize by banning things under subjective pretexts such as "hate speech" they…
No platform should be liable for content users post. Only if it is employees of the company doing the posting on company time should the company be held liable.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#35Before he was president or even running for office he'd call into a fox news show and say something stupid and other news outlets would pick it up and I remember being annoyed and thinking "why is this news?!" now he's president and everything he says is news and it hurts my soul. Anyway we live in a free country and the government can't dictate what kind of news a search engine should surface. It's ironic though tha…
Before he was president he proclaimed that the unemployment stats are a fraud. Now that he is president the same stats suddenly show a "Trump boom".
I am surprised that anyone is still listening to that guy.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#36The internet exists, is way to big to manually curate, and google is just providing a window into it with algorithmic searches. There is always talk about how google promotes this or that by having this search return X and how they should adjust it. They always "adjust the algorithm" or ban sites from their search results entirely. Google's search is better (I've tired and use others..) and thus it wields enormous po…
> Good luck with that. The US government is able to enforce sanctions on other governments , crushing their economies and major businesses. It's able to acquire private property and businesses through eminent domain. "Good luck with that" is a bit shortsighted. The tools exist for the US to exert these forces, and they have been used successfully.
That was a bit glib. I removed that line.
The US tends to treat its own companies with kid gloves and tends not to put the hammer down on billion dollar companies with their all important lobbyists.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#37I have no doubt in my mind, if the United States was a country without checks and balances and the protection of the Constitution, we would be living under authoritarian dictatorship right now. The quickness by the administration to attack media, promote propaganda, and now censorship is frightening.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#38Google, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon and others were able to grow to the size they did based on Safe Harbor provisions that exempted them from libel laws under the premise that they were neutral platforms that allowed anybody to post content etc.. Newspapers and television stations are held liable for their content. Once they started to editorialize by banning things under subjective pretexts such as "hate speech" they…
It's also possible that they consciously decided to stop being neutral (e.g. Zuckerberg's statement in Congress about being like a publisher) which would ultimately lead to regulation and thus reduce competition against them and "outsource" all the drama against them over to Congress.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#39I think it's appropriate to quote Vint Cerf here,
"The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society." ―Vint Cerf
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#40The internet exists, is way to big to manually curate, and google is just providing a window into it with algorithmic searches. There is always talk about how google promotes this or that by having this search return X and how they should adjust it. They always "adjust the algorithm" or ban sites from their search results entirely. Google's search is better (I've tired and use others..) and thus it wields enormous po…
I can't put together your first paragraph with your second. Why do you say "good luck with that" while also acknowledging that it already happens?
"adjusting the algorithm" is something they do all the time. Then the algorithm is to blame or credit for search rank, they're not choosing winners and losers.