Wait, I thought that Kudlow was a free-marketeer who didn’t want the government “picking winners”?
‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
51–60 of 138 posts
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#52Gave 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.…
Where is the non-anecdotal proof? Do you have any substantiated accounts from whistle-blowers? leaked documents?
Just because you did a google search, and a lot of anti-Trump stuff came up isn't proof of anything, other than proof that Trump has a lot of negative news surrounding him, and has for quite some time.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#53Google, 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.
That is only true if you stay completely neutral according to those provisions. But when you curate/moderate content you are editorializing things and it becomes murky. Overall I agree with the original spirit of Safe Harbor. IE: the platforms should not be liable, but they also need to stay neutral, which means that they do not ban, demonetize, down rank anybody based on subjective moral grounds, but instead only do so if federal laws etc. have been broken that force them to.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#54Trump is basing this off an article[1] that categorizes the best news outlets in America and abroad (New York Times, the New Yorker, Bloomberg, LA Times, NPR, the BBC, CNN) as being on the far left[2]. (There's also a few strange inclusions like ESPN. I was unaware that ESPN was part of the liberal media conspiracy).
If your premise is that Breitbart and the New York Times have equal "quality" as news reporting organizations, and are equally partisan, and the only thing separating them is their political bent, then yes, it looks like Google is stacking the deck in favor of news organizations that you've categorized as leftist.
In reality, what's happening is that Google's algorithm favors trustworthy news sources over untrustworthy ones, and the right has branded "factual news we don't like" as partisan.
[1] https://pjmedia.com/trending/google-search-results-show-perv...
[2] https://static.pjmedia.com/trending/user-content/51/files/20...
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#55Before 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…
When a company has a near-monopoly market position and is using it to harm the public and restrain trade, the government absolutely can dictate a number of things to a business, according to antitrust law.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#56Gave 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.…
1) How many popular sites point back at Breitbart? At least initially, Google's search algorithm appeared to be based on the number of such backlinks. I imagine it still does to a certain extent. I doubt very much that the net traffic to a given site plays an important role in Google's search algorithm.
2) Have you tried to do the same search with other search engines?
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#57I 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.
Indeed, Google's administration scare me also.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#58Google, 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…
Removing Section 230 immunity should be one of the country's legislative priorities. It's incredible that we've literally given a whole industry a blank check to do what they want and be completely exempt from responsibility for the damage they cause. Without Section 230, companies would be subject to the standard definitions of intent in the law, as to whether their actions were purposely, knowingly, recklessly, etc. harmful. Tech companies have opted not to handle their platforms responsibly because it's more profitable not to.
Section 230 is how a company can make billions selling ads for malicious sites, and not be held liable for it because they didn't technically write the malicious ads themselves. Not only would moderating the content of the ads these companies sell cost them money, but refusing to sell malicious ads would cut off profit options for them.
If Section 230 was removed, they'd have to actually take care of the business they engaged in, as they'd be responsible for promoting and participating in illegal activity.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#59To me, this is a strong sign of Google manipulating search results. https://www.google.com/search?q=american+inventors https://www.google.com/search?q=american+mathematicians https://www.google.com/search?q=american+scientists Image results: https://www.google.com/search?q=european+art+history&tbm=isc... https://www.google.com/search?q=white+couple&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=white+inventor&tbm=isch
Could be a bug. If you look at wikipedia for a category american inventors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_inventors There is a sub category called "African American inventors". Since the sub category also match the search terms, it is possible that for some reason they are displayed in priority. edit : the post of econ4all about "us+inventor" tend to confirm that it is an issue with "american" being…
Also there's the fact that lists of famous African Americans are probably more common than general lists of famous Americans (and many will appear on both lists). The bias here seems pretty obviously to align with a general bias to what people put on the Internet. The funny thing about the position they are in is that there is no way to make everyone happy seeing as there doesn't seem an objective way to judge bias so it's inherently subjective.
Re: ‘We’re taking a look’ at whether Google searches should be regulated
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is only true if you stay completely neutral according to those provisions. But when you curate/moderate content you are editorializing things and it becomes murky. Overall I agree with the original spirit of Safe Harbor. IE: the platforms should not be liable, but they also need to stay neutral, which means that they do not ban, demonetize, down rank anybody based on subjective moral grounds, but instead only do…
I wasn't making a statement on current law. I said "should". As in, I don't think there should be any law pushing liability onto the service providers, regardless of neutrality.