16 ms·

Angela Merkel: internet search engines are 'distorting perception'

116 points by azuajef 10y ago

lucian1900 10y ago
That would be entirely impractical. Search engines heavily rely on obscurity to fight SEO and spam in general.
- matt4077 10y ago
  So that argument is ok to protect the integrity of your SERPS, but people get all red in the face when it's used for safekeeping the nuclear launch codes?
  - jasode 10y ago
    I don't believe gp was talking about security by obscurity[1] and it would be wrong to frame it that way. Instead, it's ranking and weighting by obscurity and it's a valid position to prevent gaming by bad actors. Statistical weighting is not the same topic as security such as closed-source cryptography. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
- reacweb 10y ago
  Maybe SPAM should be fought more seriously.
matt4077 10y ago
I'm all for it, but only because I'd love to poke around in the google-brain. For the problem of filter bubbles, I don't really see how it would actually help? I mean, I know Facebook will avoid showing me articles from breitbart, and google knows that 'python' is a mostly a language for me, and not a snake. Both companies have said that, repeatedly. Opening the algorithm would help if there were a secret conspiracy to influence people via search ranking, but nobody is seriously alleging that.
m3ta 10y ago
Merkel seems to be conflating the issue of search engine algorithms with social network algorithms. Search engine algorithms do their best to find what you are probably looking for -- it is a self-selecting filter bubble and they are working as intended. Additionally, there are numerous search engines, unlike Facebook and Twitter which have effective monopolies over social media news sites. In the case of social networks, Zuckerberg is 100% on the money on this one. Anecdotally, I've noticed my Twitter and Facebook feeds are extremely diverse in opinion and philosophy. The articles linked to and discussions had on each of my home pages are wildly different than what I would find if I were only searching through the news sites I habitually visit.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > Search engine algorithms do their best to find what you are probably looking for Actually, Google is heavily using personalized results nowadays, and especially with the news search. Depending on who you personally support, you might only get results confirming your PoV on any topic you Google.
  - arzt 10y ago
    I would agree it is more a matter of reflexivity - personalization increases and feeds on personal bias. Embodied here: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/09/16/on-research/ http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/09/16/on-research/
  - m3ta 10y ago
    I think Google's personalization of search is good for filtering out noise in most day-to-day searching. If an individual finds personalization of search to be a barrier to finding diversified news, they could always use incognito and search among many different search engines for the most diversified results. Merkel's solution to the problem is to add another roadbump via government intervention. The real solution is already in the users' hands.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > If an individual finds personalization of search to be a barrier to finding diversified news, they could always use incognito and search among many different search engines Few people will do those things. Most people do not understand Icognito and won't look at the second page of search results, much less use multiple search engines. I wonder how many are even aware of other search engines. The reality is that the search engines' personalization algorithms determine what users see.
aqp 10y ago
When I want to read a contrary view, I don't subscribe to a new magazine or type in the address of a blog I've never seen. How would I know which one to look at? So I Google it. I don't want the algorithms released to the public where spammers can read them. That won't help diversity, I'll just get articles from the best spammers. I wonder if Merkel already knows better but thinks this statement helps her politically somehow.
Kinnard 10y ago
Same goes for other ranking sites like HN.
- khattam 10y ago
  Correct. At least Microsoft[1] and Clinton Camp[2][3] have been known to use it on reddit. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-comments-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-com... 2. http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-correct-the-record/ http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-... 3. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/141 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/141
  - ksk 10y ago
    There was no evidence of your claims in your citations.
    - khattam 10y ago
      I am not here to provide evidence for someone else. If you need evidence, look for it.
      - ksk 10y ago
        I see, then you seem to be a person who makes wild claims and pastes random links in their comments unrelated to anything. In that case its easier to just ignore you. Thanks for clarifying that.
Cpoll 10y ago
I'm reminded of the argument in 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' that the predominant medium shapes the culture. It presents the argument as a juxtaposition between a pre-telegraph textual culture and a modern-day visual one: The textual culture encourages slow reasoning, contemplation and logic, the visual culture encourages sound bytes and de-emphasizes contemplation and reasoning; a TV show simply won't give you enough time for thought before it moves to the next idea. I think the point I'm trying to make is that all media has a "selection algorithm" that distorts reality - TV and the news are great examples of this.
- lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
  I hear that line of reasoning frequently and Im not sure it has a leg to stand on. Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? My personal hypothesis (although Im not as familiar with more rigorous investigation into the subject) is reactionary culture in the "first world" is less to do with content accessibility and more to do with availability of time as compared to the signal to noise ratio of our information sources. It's not that people are becoming less informed than the past, just that we have many more tools at our disposal to find conflicting information. It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. Which is beside the point, since the parent talks of a pre-telegraph terse text culture, not a telegraph one. >And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? No, the idea is that there was deeper involvement into the available information -- instead of always skimming it, which ends up not delving enough into anything. >It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past. It's even more dangerous to think of history as a kind of monotonic progress across all sectors (as opposed to just the technological one).
alva 10y ago
dupe : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805481
cheriot 10y ago
>The term, coined by activist Eli Pariser, refers to the algorithms on social media sites and search engines that show users information based on things they have previously liked or searched for. As a result, many people who follow news in social media are exposed to a world view similar to their own, without being shown opposing views. People happily segment themselves by only watching newsertainment they agree with. A lecture series on search algorithms won't change a thing.
kuschku 10y ago
The big question is this: People end up more and more segmented into their filter bubbles. This has led to extreme behaviour during the US elections already. We really really don’t want to repeat that horrible situation with the federal election in Germany 2017. The question is how we can prevent that. ________________________ My personal suggestion would be to require Google to only use non-personalized ranking for all news and political articles, and to require Facebook to add fact-checking previews to every single article posted discussing a topic on which a fact-check exists. So that if someone posts a Trump tweet on Facebook, in the preview it’d also display a short fact-check from both sides of the political spectrum, and any longer article would also always be presented together with an opposite point of view. The traditional media have been required to present multiple points of view on topics, and to fact-check political statements for ages, such a solution might be useful for the modern media, too. ________________________ But to go back to the start: If there’s one thing we don’t want to repeat, it’s Trump, or the AfD, or any other populists propelled to power through misinformation and propaganda.
- sidlls 10y ago
  Perhaps unintentional, but your examples are extremely biased. More than one politician has distorted reality and played fast and loose (to be charitable) with facts. Moreover, who checks the fact checkers? Politifact and other sites aren't unbiased themselves, after all, and we certainly have seen that the news media in America are easily manipulated (c.f. the tons of free media Trump gets and the collusion explicit in email dumps from the DNC hack). We don't have high quality, (mostly) neutral fact checkers in this country. That's a big contributing factor to the state of our current election, where the highest office is contested by a bigoted, stupid clown and a corrupt, deceitful and likely criminal woman, both of whom are likely to engage in terrible and aggressive foreign wars, while just about anything down-ticket of these two is ignored unless it intersects with the Presidential race or involves some completely irrelevant and salacious sex scandal.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > We don't have high quality, (mostly) neutral fact checkers in this country. I disagree. The leading news sources, including the NY Times, Washington Post, and others, do a very good job. In case you think the Times is biased, remember that they broke the Clinton email server story.
Kurtz79 10y ago
It is an interesting and valid point, but hasn't this been always the case ? Media distort perception almost by definition, the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television. I'm not saying that it is an improvement upon the old status-quo, but let's not pretend that before it was much different.
- the_other 10y ago
  Perception distorts perception. The problem of media compounds the problem that individuals create their own perceptions out of a combination of incoming stimuli, prior experience and emotion. Science and philosophy (and other metaphysics like religion) all dispute the implied corollary of one objective reality, and as far as I know they also fail to prove any such happenstance. I don't mean to deny your point, instead try to widen it out with an aim to finding a more useful general solution.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > hasn't this been always the case ? No media organizations in history have had anything approaching the influence of Google and Facebook, unless you count state-controlled media in totalitarian countries. > the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television. I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook.
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    > I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook. Remember it was only a couple of decades ago that the CIA was caught mass infiltrating news networks (e.g. Armstrong, etc) and that since then a number of intelligence officials, family members and military allies have filled their board positions and editorial positions. There’s also the ‘trade’ for access to off-the-record context and stories, suggestions for story edits by the intelligence community on everything related to national security (e.g. Dilanian), the collaboration between the intelligence community and journalists to break stories important for policy positions even if they are specifically disinformation (e.g. Judith Miller and justification to invade Iraq), broadcasting influence centered in the BBG (for instance the hundreds of advertisements in US news supporting the Iraq war that were out of the Kenneth Tomlinson led BBG), the membership of the National Security personnel on the curators of the domestic and international news wire service, and the huge amount of money from US government press centers to news organizations to report on specific items (‘free press’ means press on whatever you can get paid for), and media imbedding rules that prevent journalists from reporting freely on war (rules that we would criticize where they practiced by any other nation). Josh Earnest, the Press Secretary for President Obama, has bragged about creating echo chambers in the domestic media. Propaganda protections are widely overestimated in this country. When you look at the legislation and you look at the practice you begin to understand how the law is interpreted and practiced.
billy8988 10y ago
I ask a dude standing on a corner to give me directions to a place. Now,the dude is supposed to publish his logic as to how he arrived at those steps in the directions?
lambdaphagy 10y ago
Meanwhile, what this is really about: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-m...
- krona 10y ago
  If only I had a dime for each time a politician tried to explain their own downfall through supposed distortions of reality, or people's inability to swallow a particular narrative.
jerf 10y ago
Broadly speaking, the search engines aren't disclosing these algorithms because we know then people will abuse them. Disclosing them publicly may have the paradoxical effect of introducing even more distortion into the system. The only solution I can see is just ensuring there's more competition, and even that isn't a perfect one.
- awinter-py 10y ago
  yes -- for most topics, the curated information in a wikipedia article is better than the first page of G results. This is partly because curation still works in 2016, but also because G results are easier to monetize. A significant portion of web content is some form of clickbait, i.e. ad-supported pages with no new information on their topic. For now, viral content seems like a bigger threat to search results than abuse by the index operators. (Though that can change in a hurry; some studies have shown that search rankings can be used to influence get-out-the-vote numbers).
  - honkhonkpants 10y ago
    For most topics the Wikipedia entry is the top result.
- ksk 10y ago
  >Broadly speaking, the search engines aren't disclosing these algorithms because we know then people will abuse them That sounds like an argument that would apply against open sourcing anything.
  - mc32 10y ago
    How? Open sourcing most things don't lead to "gaming" systems in a malicious manner.
    - ksk 10y ago
      Its the argument that the source must be hidden or else people will release exploits for it. e.g. The fact that Linux is open source has caused people to release exploits for it.
zzzcpan 10y ago
So, politicians have trouble influencing people through social media, search engines and decided to openly demand influence there. It's good, it means they were not able to persuade them privately.
EJTH 10y ago
> Merkel and the EU army of lawyers actually pulls this off > Google and everybody else release algorithms > SEO "experts" and other blackhats now have the holy grail to good ranking, defeating the purpose of said algorithm In reality, I am not really so sure that Angela Merkel in particular would like Google to expose how they attempt to distort reality, history or politics...
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  She should have demanded measures against "terrorism" and "pedophiles", like other governments. People seem to be ok with censorship presented this way.
andrewclunn 10y ago
Government surveillance programs are destroying privacy. Get your own house in order first before we'll trust you to regulate the internet.
- FrancoDiaz 10y ago
  Yeah, it's always the public at large, or companies that need to be "transparent", but when it comes to the government it's "do as I say, not as I do".
- idlewords 10y ago
  Commercial surveillance is far more intrusive and damaging to privacy than anything Western governments are doing.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
Angela Merkel is extremely upset that the population management techniques she is familiar with from East Germany are no longer effective when people are able to search out opposing points of view. That's why she's leaning so heavily on tech companies to implement censorship apparatuses, with the threat of "audits" and "transparency" monitoring should they not comply. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-m...
- vetinari 10y ago
  The "population management techniques" are not working on East Germans, because they are inoculated (see Saxony). Wessies do not have that experience and cannot read between lines yet.
elpocko 10y ago
What is actually distorting perception is pressuring Facebook to delete free speech without any legal basis, because the government defines it as "hate speech". No one knows the exact definition of "hate speech" though. Political correctness to the extreme. She's not exactly a fan of freedom of expression.
- brutos 10y ago
  Please do not assume that US-American ideals are universal. Germany has a complicated history, which it has and will always struggle with. Restricting hate speech and symbols is completely legal and also seen as an important and good thing. The modern German constitution was built especially to defend its democracy even against a majority hostile towards it (Artikel 20). Germany has learned its own lessons from history.
  - elpocko 10y ago
    I'm actually german and I do not agree with those laws at all. I'm not even affected by them, I just happen to think that free and unrestricted speech is most important and should apply to everyone and anyone, regardless of what is being said. Private law is a different matter though. If the speech Facebook is forced to delete is illegal, there must be criminal investigation, by law. So it can't be illegal, which means the government is actually suppressing freedom of speech. > Restricting hate speech and symbols is completely legal "But it is legal" is not exactly a helpful response to criticism of a law.
    - brutos 10y ago
      > If the speech Facebook is forced to delete is illegal, there must be criminal investigation, by law. I agree with that. Facebook should not be the instance deciding what is to be deleted or not. The german judicial system should be involved and offenders be prosecuted within the judicial system.
  - throwaway7312 10y ago
    We tried shame and humiliation as good things and governance tools in Germany before, between 1919 and 1933. We know how well that worked the first time. Yet, it's become the governance tool of choice there again. For years, whenever I talk to German friends, the fear and timidity about discussing the German past from them is palpable. They just do not want to discuss it. All you have to ask them is, "So what do you think about World War II?" and you will see them start to sputter, slip into a kind of trance, and recite a spiel about how Germany did some very bad things. Even outside their country. They can't even talk about what is happening now. When I was in Berlin this year, in a very nice place in a very nice part of town, my host told me to make sure to lock up because there had been a steep rise in break ins and robberies in that part of town. I could tell he wanted to say "because of the migrants", but he caught himself and held his tongue. To point out the emperor's lack of clothes is verboten in Deutschland. And now, again, we see the stirrings of strong, proud nationalist elements in response to all this, as what were previously fringe parties gain steam yelling about the Lugenpresse, and more and more Germans listen. Hasn't this all happened before? I'm not sure when political parties and other interested parties will figure out that shame and humiliation are terrible governance tools that only build up resentment and cause reactance in humans. Because they sure haven't figured this one out yet.
drivingmenuts 10y ago
Are people really interested in seeing how the sausage is made or just politicians? Sure, the average slightly-more-technical-than-thou person gripes about Google and Facebook being biased, and in some cases they're right, but ... would they actually be capable of discerning the truth correctly? Or would they just be more overloaded with more information?
idlewords 10y ago
This belief that there is an always an understandable algorithm you could look at is an interesting one. More and more decisions are being made by systems that are opaque even to their designers, who can only shrug and point to the training data. Among other things, it's a very effective way to disclaim responsibility.
hackuser 10y ago
Merkel may not say it directly, but a very serious risk is if Google, Facebook or Twitter's leadership decides to try to influence public affairs by hiding some things and showing others. You may think the current leadership of those organizations wouldn't do that, but they are human beings. * What if a powerful business partner, such as the Chinese or Indian governments or a large company, wants search results 'made more fair and balanced' in return for their business? Hollywood studios, Bloomberg, and (IIRC) Fox already have censored themselves for the Chinese government. Advertisers' influence on the news is well-known. * What if one of the big platform's leaders feels very strongly about an issue, feels attacked, or thinks they are doing the right thing? IIRC, Jimmy Wales used his power to alter articles in Wikipedia to suit his preferences and to cover up the changes. What if a highly critical, maybe even partly false story about Zuckerberg or his wife goes viral? Will it get treated the same as other such stories? * What happens when a big platform's leadership changes? Maybe the new people will be highly politicized. Maybe the Koch brothers or Fox/Murdoch (or Peter Thiel?) or another politicized investor will buy in - precisely to gain that influence, as many have done before. These platforms have the responsibilities of journalists, without the institutional or professional norms and training, and with far more power than any news organization ever had. Rush Limbaugh, Fox, CNN or the NY Times each (or even together) have nothing compared to the breadth and depth of influence of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, in the U.S. and around the world.
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  Many tech engineers are extremely principled, to the point where it would be impossible to pull something like that off without someone finding out about it and blowing the whistle.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Many very bad things have happened in large organizations, and have persisted for years or decades without someone blowing the whistle. The Catholic Church, intelligence agencies, and many police forces come to mind. I don't think engineers are more principled than others, and thinking we are exceptional is, IMHO, the number one way to expose ourselves to these human frailties.
honkhonkpants 10y ago
I take it that in Germany when I go to the news stand I hand over my money and the shopkeeper gives me a randomly selected newspaper? Or do I still get to distort my perception by choosing my favorite newspaper? Are the daily editorial meetings of German newspapers subject to government oversight?
cromwellian 10y ago
Since Google uses RankBrain now as a signal which is trained on the web itself, how would the outputs of this be described as an algorithm? I think politicians are imagining that search is like some step by step recipe when it's incredibly complex now. I don't think even Google engineers fully understand DNN results on such a large corpus.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
DominikR 10y ago
Angela Merkel is right for once here, these companies can and do influence public perception and even elections. This is seen in the current US election where all except for Facebook quite overtly try to suppress the conservative viewpoint. But my big issue with what she is stating (aside from the refugee invite to the EU) is that she wants governments to control what kind of message is put out. With private control and ownership we still have at least some media that presents an alternative viewpoint to the current left leaning mainstream. (I'm talking about big corporations) With government control it could easily be 100% percent biased in one direction. It's bad enough already but this would be even worse.
jwtadvice 10y ago
There's a reason the US military put a psychological operations center next to the Googleplex. Merkle is absolutely on the right track. It's been shown study after study and history after history that information providers - be they news, aggregators or indexers - have an incredible amount of power over large populations. I'm just afraid that what Merkle means is that they could 'distort perception' away from the perception she'd like to see people have and that this may justify working with these companies to "undistort perception".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- SilasX 10y ago
  >There's a reason the US military put a psychological operations center next to the Googleplex. Wait, what center are you referring to here?
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    https://goo.gl/maps/PQeunyb77Y72 https://goo.gl/maps/PQeunyb77Y72 Trying to redetermine the Psyops Unit positioned there. Keep coming up with Fort Bragg units, and I'm on an (ending) lunchbreak.
    - jwtadvice 10y ago
      The 63th Regional Support Command (linked above) hosts the 12th and 14th Psychological Operations Battalions out of the 7th Psychological Operations Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Psychological_Operations_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Psychological_Operations_G...
      - agency 10y ago
        That page seems to suggest the facility has been around a half a century longer than the Googleplex...
vkou 10y ago
Of course, so are newspapers.
payne92 10y ago
In the US, I would expect this to run afoul of the First Amendment. The freedom of speech is protected, and you cannot be compelled to explain how you decided to say what you said.
elcapitan 10y ago
How will google respond, send Angela Merkel a link to the Wikipedia page about machine learning, saying "here's our algorithm"?
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Google is not supposed to respond. The demand is addressed towards the public, not Google. It's kind of a form of pressure, they are showing they are ready to escalate and are hoping later on Google would be more willing to cooperate with the government and so on.
zizzles 10y ago
If Angela Merkel had it her way with search engine algorithms, every news source within the first 50 pages of Google.com would paint Germany in a positive-light (especially her barbaric open-door immigration policy) But we all know the actual reality: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UoJIDgTKc6k/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UoJIDgTKc6k/maxresdefault.jpg This isn't about making informed decisions or having an "expanse of information", anybody who buys that for even a split-second is under an illusion.
aaron695 10y ago
This is simply bullshit. Because of the internet people are finally hearing the news without a filter. They are no longer getting news they don't care about or don't want to hear. So they are actually controlling the politicians as they want. Not as the old news/system told them to. This is what is actually scary. Having the peoples voices heard isn't the utopia we thought it would be.
- Neeek 10y ago
  I don't think it's as clear as you're making it out to be. Any kind of targeted content grooming is inevitably going to form a bubble of advertising and news that, according to the algorithm, fits your profile the best. Is that not altering the way people perceive the world? Intentional or not, it's still self reinforcing; is that not creating a sort of bias?

116 points by azuajef 10y ago

lucian1900 10y ago

That would be entirely impractical. Search engines heavily rely on obscurity to fight SEO and spam in general.

matt4077 10y ago
So that argument is ok to protect the integrity of your SERPS, but people get all red in the face when it's used for safekeeping the nuclear launch codes?
- jasode 10y ago
  I don't believe gp was talking about security by obscurity[1] and it would be wrong to frame it that way. Instead, it's ranking and weighting by obscurity and it's a valid position to prevent gaming by bad actors. Statistical weighting is not the same topic as security such as closed-source cryptography. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
reacweb 10y ago
Maybe SPAM should be fought more seriously.

matt4077 10y ago

I'm all for it, but only because I'd love to poke around in the google-brain. For the problem of filter bubbles, I don't really see how it would actually help? I mean, I know Facebook will avoid showing me articles from breitbart, and google knows that 'python' is a mostly a language for me, and not a snake. Both companies have said that, repeatedly. Opening the algorithm would help if there were a secret conspiracy to influence people via search ranking, but nobody is seriously alleging that.

m3ta 10y ago

Merkel seems to be conflating the issue of search engine algorithms with social network algorithms. Search engine algorithms do their best to find what you are probably looking for -- it is a self-selecting filter bubble and they are working as intended. Additionally, there are numerous search engines, unlike Facebook and Twitter which have effective monopolies over social media news sites. In the case of social networks, Zuckerberg is 100% on the money on this one. Anecdotally, I've noticed my Twitter and Facebook feeds are extremely diverse in opinion and philosophy. The articles linked to and discussions had on each of my home pages are wildly different than what I would find if I were only searching through the news sites I habitually visit.

kuschku 10y ago
> Search engine algorithms do their best to find what you are probably looking for Actually, Google is heavily using personalized results nowadays, and especially with the news search. Depending on who you personally support, you might only get results confirming your PoV on any topic you Google.
- arzt 10y ago
  I would agree it is more a matter of reflexivity - personalization increases and feeds on personal bias. Embodied here: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/09/16/on-research/ http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/09/16/on-research/
- m3ta 10y ago
  I think Google's personalization of search is good for filtering out noise in most day-to-day searching. If an individual finds personalization of search to be a barrier to finding diversified news, they could always use incognito and search among many different search engines for the most diversified results. Merkel's solution to the problem is to add another roadbump via government intervention. The real solution is already in the users' hands.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > If an individual finds personalization of search to be a barrier to finding diversified news, they could always use incognito and search among many different search engines Few people will do those things. Most people do not understand Icognito and won't look at the second page of search results, much less use multiple search engines. I wonder how many are even aware of other search engines. The reality is that the search engines' personalization algorithms determine what users see.

aqp 10y ago

When I want to read a contrary view, I don't subscribe to a new magazine or type in the address of a blog I've never seen. How would I know which one to look at? So I Google it. I don't want the algorithms released to the public where spammers can read them. That won't help diversity, I'll just get articles from the best spammers. I wonder if Merkel already knows better but thinks this statement helps her politically somehow.

Kinnard 10y ago

Same goes for other ranking sites like HN.

khattam 10y ago
Correct. At least Microsoft[1] and Clinton Camp[2][3] have been known to use it on reddit. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-comments-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-com... 2. http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-correct-the-record/ http://correctrecord.org/barrier-breakers-2016-a-project-of-... 3. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/141 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/141
- ksk 10y ago
  There was no evidence of your claims in your citations.
  - khattam 10y ago
    I am not here to provide evidence for someone else. If you need evidence, look for it.
    - ksk 10y ago
      I see, then you seem to be a person who makes wild claims and pastes random links in their comments unrelated to anything. In that case its easier to just ignore you. Thanks for clarifying that.

Cpoll 10y ago

I'm reminded of the argument in 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' that the predominant medium shapes the culture. It presents the argument as a juxtaposition between a pre-telegraph textual culture and a modern-day visual one: The textual culture encourages slow reasoning, contemplation and logic, the visual culture encourages sound bytes and de-emphasizes contemplation and reasoning; a TV show simply won't give you enough time for thought before it moves to the next idea. I think the point I'm trying to make is that all media has a "selection algorithm" that distorts reality - TV and the news are great examples of this.

lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
I hear that line of reasoning frequently and Im not sure it has a leg to stand on. Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? My personal hypothesis (although Im not as familiar with more rigorous investigation into the subject) is reactionary culture in the "first world" is less to do with content accessibility and more to do with availability of time as compared to the signal to noise ratio of our information sources. It's not that people are becoming less informed than the past, just that we have many more tools at our disposal to find conflicting information. It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Telegrams by their nature are going to be terse and infrequent certainly not a ponderous essay you can mull over. Which is beside the point, since the parent talks of a pre-telegraph terse text culture, not a telegraph one. >And are we seriously arguing that in the, comparatively, "larger" world of the early 20th century where many communities could be completely isolated from differing ideas there was some how greater access to a wider variety of information? No, the idea is that there was deeper involvement into the available information -- instead of always skimming it, which ends up not delving enough into anything. >It's certainly a dangerous thing to put on the rose colored glasses and look to the past. It's even more dangerous to think of history as a kind of monotonic progress across all sectors (as opposed to just the technological one).

alva 10y ago

dupe : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805481

cheriot 10y ago

>The term, coined by activist Eli Pariser, refers to the algorithms on social media sites and search engines that show users information based on things they have previously liked or searched for. As a result, many people who follow news in social media are exposed to a world view similar to their own, without being shown opposing views. People happily segment themselves by only watching newsertainment they agree with. A lecture series on search algorithms won't change a thing.

kuschku 10y ago

The big question is this: People end up more and more segmented into their filter bubbles. This has led to extreme behaviour during the US elections already. We really really don’t want to repeat that horrible situation with the federal election in Germany 2017. The question is how we can prevent that. ________________________ My personal suggestion would be to require Google to only use non-personalized ranking for all news and political articles, and to require Facebook to add fact-checking previews to every single article posted discussing a topic on which a fact-check exists. So that if someone posts a Trump tweet on Facebook, in the preview it’d also display a short fact-check from both sides of the political spectrum, and any longer article would also always be presented together with an opposite point of view. The traditional media have been required to present multiple points of view on topics, and to fact-check political statements for ages, such a solution might be useful for the modern media, too. ________________________ But to go back to the start: If there’s one thing we don’t want to repeat, it’s Trump, or the AfD, or any other populists propelled to power through misinformation and propaganda.

sidlls 10y ago
Perhaps unintentional, but your examples are extremely biased. More than one politician has distorted reality and played fast and loose (to be charitable) with facts. Moreover, who checks the fact checkers? Politifact and other sites aren't unbiased themselves, after all, and we certainly have seen that the news media in America are easily manipulated (c.f. the tons of free media Trump gets and the collusion explicit in email dumps from the DNC hack). We don't have high quality, (mostly) neutral fact checkers in this country. That's a big contributing factor to the state of our current election, where the highest office is contested by a bigoted, stupid clown and a corrupt, deceitful and likely criminal woman, both of whom are likely to engage in terrible and aggressive foreign wars, while just about anything down-ticket of these two is ignored unless it intersects with the Presidential race or involves some completely irrelevant and salacious sex scandal.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > We don't have high quality, (mostly) neutral fact checkers in this country. I disagree. The leading news sources, including the NY Times, Washington Post, and others, do a very good job. In case you think the Times is biased, remember that they broke the Clinton email server story.

Kurtz79 10y ago

It is an interesting and valid point, but hasn't this been always the case ? Media distort perception almost by definition, the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television. I'm not saying that it is an improvement upon the old status-quo, but let's not pretend that before it was much different.

the_other 10y ago
Perception distorts perception. The problem of media compounds the problem that individuals create their own perceptions out of a combination of incoming stimuli, prior experience and emotion. Science and philosophy (and other metaphysics like religion) all dispute the implied corollary of one objective reality, and as far as I know they also fail to prove any such happenstance. I don't mean to deny your point, instead try to widen it out with an aim to finding a more useful general solution.
hackuser 10y ago
> hasn't this been always the case ? No media organizations in history have had anything approaching the influence of Google and Facebook, unless you count state-controlled media in totalitarian countries. > the difference is that now there are new actors and technologies, which are mostly outside of governments' influence, unlike traditional newspapers and television. I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook.
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  > I don't see how German or U.S. news media are more under government influence than Google and Facebook. Remember it was only a couple of decades ago that the CIA was caught mass infiltrating news networks (e.g. Armstrong, etc) and that since then a number of intelligence officials, family members and military allies have filled their board positions and editorial positions. There’s also the ‘trade’ for access to off-the-record context and stories, suggestions for story edits by the intelligence community on everything related to national security (e.g. Dilanian), the collaboration between the intelligence community and journalists to break stories important for policy positions even if they are specifically disinformation (e.g. Judith Miller and justification to invade Iraq), broadcasting influence centered in the BBG (for instance the hundreds of advertisements in US news supporting the Iraq war that were out of the Kenneth Tomlinson led BBG), the membership of the National Security personnel on the curators of the domestic and international news wire service, and the huge amount of money from US government press centers to news organizations to report on specific items (‘free press’ means press on whatever you can get paid for), and media imbedding rules that prevent journalists from reporting freely on war (rules that we would criticize where they practiced by any other nation). Josh Earnest, the Press Secretary for President Obama, has bragged about creating echo chambers in the domestic media. Propaganda protections are widely overestimated in this country. When you look at the legislation and you look at the practice you begin to understand how the law is interpreted and practiced.

billy8988 10y ago

I ask a dude standing on a corner to give me directions to a place. Now,the dude is supposed to publish his logic as to how he arrived at those steps in the directions?

lambdaphagy 10y ago

Meanwhile, what this is really about: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-m...

krona 10y ago
If only I had a dime for each time a politician tried to explain their own downfall through supposed distortions of reality, or people's inability to swallow a particular narrative.

jerf 10y ago

Broadly speaking, the search engines aren't disclosing these algorithms because we know then people will abuse them. Disclosing them publicly may have the paradoxical effect of introducing even more distortion into the system. The only solution I can see is just ensuring there's more competition, and even that isn't a perfect one.

awinter-py 10y ago
yes -- for most topics, the curated information in a wikipedia article is better than the first page of G results. This is partly because curation still works in 2016, but also because G results are easier to monetize. A significant portion of web content is some form of clickbait, i.e. ad-supported pages with no new information on their topic. For now, viral content seems like a bigger threat to search results than abuse by the index operators. (Though that can change in a hurry; some studies have shown that search rankings can be used to influence get-out-the-vote numbers).
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  For most topics the Wikipedia entry is the top result.
ksk 10y ago
>Broadly speaking, the search engines aren't disclosing these algorithms because we know then people will abuse them That sounds like an argument that would apply against open sourcing anything.
- mc32 10y ago
  How? Open sourcing most things don't lead to "gaming" systems in a malicious manner.
  - ksk 10y ago
    Its the argument that the source must be hidden or else people will release exploits for it. e.g. The fact that Linux is open source has caused people to release exploits for it.

zzzcpan 10y ago

So, politicians have trouble influencing people through social media, search engines and decided to openly demand influence there. It's good, it means they were not able to persuade them privately.

EJTH 10y ago

> Merkel and the EU army of lawyers actually pulls this off > Google and everybody else release algorithms > SEO "experts" and other blackhats now have the holy grail to good ranking, defeating the purpose of said algorithm In reality, I am not really so sure that Angela Merkel in particular would like Google to expose how they attempt to distort reality, history or politics...

zzzcpan 10y ago
She should have demanded measures against "terrorism" and "pedophiles", like other governments. People seem to be ok with censorship presented this way.

andrewclunn 10y ago

Government surveillance programs are destroying privacy. Get your own house in order first before we'll trust you to regulate the internet.

FrancoDiaz 10y ago
Yeah, it's always the public at large, or companies that need to be "transparent", but when it comes to the government it's "do as I say, not as I do".
idlewords 10y ago
Commercial surveillance is far more intrusive and damaging to privacy than anything Western governments are doing.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

Angela Merkel is extremely upset that the population management techniques she is familiar with from East Germany are no longer effective when people are able to search out opposing points of view. That's why she's leaning so heavily on tech companies to implement censorship apparatuses, with the threat of "audits" and "transparency" monitoring should they not comply. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-m...

vetinari 10y ago
The "population management techniques" are not working on East Germans, because they are inoculated (see Saxony). Wessies do not have that experience and cannot read between lines yet.

elpocko 10y ago

What is actually distorting perception is pressuring Facebook to delete free speech without any legal basis, because the government defines it as "hate speech". No one knows the exact definition of "hate speech" though. Political correctness to the extreme. She's not exactly a fan of freedom of expression.

brutos 10y ago
Please do not assume that US-American ideals are universal. Germany has a complicated history, which it has and will always struggle with. Restricting hate speech and symbols is completely legal and also seen as an important and good thing. The modern German constitution was built especially to defend its democracy even against a majority hostile towards it (Artikel 20). Germany has learned its own lessons from history.
- elpocko 10y ago
  I'm actually german and I do not agree with those laws at all. I'm not even affected by them, I just happen to think that free and unrestricted speech is most important and should apply to everyone and anyone, regardless of what is being said. Private law is a different matter though. If the speech Facebook is forced to delete is illegal, there must be criminal investigation, by law. So it can't be illegal, which means the government is actually suppressing freedom of speech. > Restricting hate speech and symbols is completely legal "But it is legal" is not exactly a helpful response to criticism of a law.
  - brutos 10y ago
    > If the speech Facebook is forced to delete is illegal, there must be criminal investigation, by law. I agree with that. Facebook should not be the instance deciding what is to be deleted or not. The german judicial system should be involved and offenders be prosecuted within the judicial system.
- throwaway7312 10y ago
  We tried shame and humiliation as good things and governance tools in Germany before, between 1919 and 1933. We know how well that worked the first time. Yet, it's become the governance tool of choice there again. For years, whenever I talk to German friends, the fear and timidity about discussing the German past from them is palpable. They just do not want to discuss it. All you have to ask them is, "So what do you think about World War II?" and you will see them start to sputter, slip into a kind of trance, and recite a spiel about how Germany did some very bad things. Even outside their country. They can't even talk about what is happening now. When I was in Berlin this year, in a very nice place in a very nice part of town, my host told me to make sure to lock up because there had been a steep rise in break ins and robberies in that part of town. I could tell he wanted to say "because of the migrants", but he caught himself and held his tongue. To point out the emperor's lack of clothes is verboten in Deutschland. And now, again, we see the stirrings of strong, proud nationalist elements in response to all this, as what were previously fringe parties gain steam yelling about the Lugenpresse, and more and more Germans listen. Hasn't this all happened before? I'm not sure when political parties and other interested parties will figure out that shame and humiliation are terrible governance tools that only build up resentment and cause reactance in humans. Because they sure haven't figured this one out yet.

drivingmenuts 10y ago

Are people really interested in seeing how the sausage is made or just politicians? Sure, the average slightly-more-technical-than-thou person gripes about Google and Facebook being biased, and in some cases they're right, but ... would they actually be capable of discerning the truth correctly? Or would they just be more overloaded with more information?

idlewords 10y ago

This belief that there is an always an understandable algorithm you could look at is an interesting one. More and more decisions are being made by systems that are opaque even to their designers, who can only shrug and point to the training data. Among other things, it's a very effective way to disclaim responsibility.

hackuser 10y ago

Merkel may not say it directly, but a very serious risk is if Google, Facebook or Twitter's leadership decides to try to influence public affairs by hiding some things and showing others. You may think the current leadership of those organizations wouldn't do that, but they are human beings. * What if a powerful business partner, such as the Chinese or Indian governments or a large company, wants search results 'made more fair and balanced' in return for their business? Hollywood studios, Bloomberg, and (IIRC) Fox already have censored themselves for the Chinese government. Advertisers' influence on the news is well-known. * What if one of the big platform's leaders feels very strongly about an issue, feels attacked, or thinks they are doing the right thing? IIRC, Jimmy Wales used his power to alter articles in Wikipedia to suit his preferences and to cover up the changes. What if a highly critical, maybe even partly false story about Zuckerberg or his wife goes viral? Will it get treated the same as other such stories? * What happens when a big platform's leadership changes? Maybe the new people will be highly politicized. Maybe the Koch brothers or Fox/Murdoch (or Peter Thiel?) or another politicized investor will buy in - precisely to gain that influence, as many have done before. These platforms have the responsibilities of journalists, without the institutional or professional norms and training, and with far more power than any news organization ever had. Rush Limbaugh, Fox, CNN or the NY Times each (or even together) have nothing compared to the breadth and depth of influence of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, in the U.S. and around the world.

oh_sigh 10y ago
Many tech engineers are extremely principled, to the point where it would be impossible to pull something like that off without someone finding out about it and blowing the whistle.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Many very bad things have happened in large organizations, and have persisted for years or decades without someone blowing the whistle. The Catholic Church, intelligence agencies, and many police forces come to mind. I don't think engineers are more principled than others, and thinking we are exceptional is, IMHO, the number one way to expose ourselves to these human frailties.

honkhonkpants 10y ago

I take it that in Germany when I go to the news stand I hand over my money and the shopkeeper gives me a randomly selected newspaper? Or do I still get to distort my perception by choosing my favorite newspaper? Are the daily editorial meetings of German newspapers subject to government oversight?

cromwellian 10y ago

Since Google uses RankBrain now as a signal which is trained on the web itself, how would the outputs of this be described as an algorithm? I think politicians are imagining that search is like some step by step recipe when it's incredibly complex now. I don't think even Google engineers fully understand DNN results on such a large corpus.

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DominikR 10y ago

Angela Merkel is right for once here, these companies can and do influence public perception and even elections. This is seen in the current US election where all except for Facebook quite overtly try to suppress the conservative viewpoint. But my big issue with what she is stating (aside from the refugee invite to the EU) is that she wants governments to control what kind of message is put out. With private control and ownership we still have at least some media that presents an alternative viewpoint to the current left leaning mainstream. (I'm talking about big corporations) With government control it could easily be 100% percent biased in one direction. It's bad enough already but this would be even worse.

jwtadvice 10y ago

There's a reason the US military put a psychological operations center next to the Googleplex. Merkle is absolutely on the right track. It's been shown study after study and history after history that information providers - be they news, aggregators or indexers - have an incredible amount of power over large populations. I'm just afraid that what Merkle means is that they could 'distort perception' away from the perception she'd like to see people have and that this may justify working with these companies to "undistort perception".

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SilasX 10y ago
>There's a reason the US military put a psychological operations center next to the Googleplex. Wait, what center are you referring to here?
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  https://goo.gl/maps/PQeunyb77Y72 https://goo.gl/maps/PQeunyb77Y72 Trying to redetermine the Psyops Unit positioned there. Keep coming up with Fort Bragg units, and I'm on an (ending) lunchbreak.
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    The 63th Regional Support Command (linked above) hosts the 12th and 14th Psychological Operations Battalions out of the 7th Psychological Operations Group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Psychological_Operations_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Psychological_Operations_G...
    - agency 10y ago
      That page seems to suggest the facility has been around a half a century longer than the Googleplex...

vkou 10y ago

Of course, so are newspapers.

payne92 10y ago

In the US, I would expect this to run afoul of the First Amendment. The freedom of speech is protected, and you cannot be compelled to explain how you decided to say what you said.

elcapitan 10y ago

How will google respond, send Angela Merkel a link to the Wikipedia page about machine learning, saying "here's our algorithm"?

zzzcpan 10y ago
Google is not supposed to respond. The demand is addressed towards the public, not Google. It's kind of a form of pressure, they are showing they are ready to escalate and are hoping later on Google would be more willing to cooperate with the government and so on.

zizzles 10y ago

If Angela Merkel had it her way with search engine algorithms, every news source within the first 50 pages of Google.com would paint Germany in a positive-light (especially her barbaric open-door immigration policy) But we all know the actual reality: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UoJIDgTKc6k/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UoJIDgTKc6k/maxresdefault.jpg This isn't about making informed decisions or having an "expanse of information", anybody who buys that for even a split-second is under an illusion.

aaron695 10y ago

This is simply bullshit. Because of the internet people are finally hearing the news without a filter. They are no longer getting news they don't care about or don't want to hear. So they are actually controlling the politicians as they want. Not as the old news/system told them to. This is what is actually scary. Having the peoples voices heard isn't the utopia we thought it would be.

Neeek 10y ago
I don't think it's as clear as you're making it out to be. Any kind of targeted content grooming is inevitably going to form a bubble of advertising and news that, according to the algorithm, fits your profile the best. Is that not altering the way people perceive the world? Intentional or not, it's still self reinforcing; is that not creating a sort of bias?