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If this account is even remotely accurate, this goes well beyond "quashing ideas it doesn't like" and into chilling effects on reporting public-interest informa

If this account is even remotely accurate, this goes well beyond "quashing ideas it doesn't like" and into chilling effects on reporting public-interest information. The New America affair was ostensibly about Lynn's opinion of an event that was already public knowledge (and, by extension, the opinionated policy stance of the organization). In this case Google was seemingly trying to keep questionable marketing tactics out of the public eye altogether.

IBM 9y ago
It's not questionable marketing tactics they were trying to keep out of the public eye, it was the suggestion that they're abusing their dominance in search to enter a new market (in this case social networks).
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Aren't (or weren't) Facebook share buttons also likely figured into Google's ranking algorithm? Not an SEO guy but think I remember reading something on that. So why would giving points for including links to their own social network (that ultimately didn't go anywhere) be unsavory if it's treated essentially the same as others? My guess is this more the tone of what was implied rather than "If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer." (Although substantially the outcome may be the same).
vacri 9y ago
s/chilling/humdrum/ Go to google, get google's view on things. Go to facebook, get facebook's view on things. Go to X, get X's view on things. Powerful companies using their influence on the media is business-as-usual. Regardless of the moral position in this incident, journalism has always been under such pressures - it's not being 'chilled'.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Not at all. Or at least, there has long been an expectation that owners won't bias news reporting. They can legitimately express their views through editorials, of course. The Wall Street Journal remains an excellent example of this.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Media bias has existed since the early days of the printing press. Scroll to the history section at this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias The whole article is worth reading.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Thanks. I get that's there's always been bias. But there have also long been principals of press freedom and unbiased reporting. What I was objecting to is the normalization of censorship and biased reporting.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        While there are some fine examples of journalism with integrity, I don't see any evidence of that being the norm or traditionally the norm. For every Pulitzer Prize winner, there are thousands of articles about Bat Boy and $politician being a baby eating demon. A good example would be the New York press. Most of their papers, of which there were many, were owned/operated by political parties - according to the documentary series called, simply, New York. I suspect your vision of these principles is subjected to some sort of bias? I'm not sure what it is called. It might be survivorship bias, or maybe confirmation bias? I don't want to speculate, as that's not my domain. However, I don't actually think those principles have ever really existed - as a general rule. Again, there are examples of such, but it doesn't appear to be the norm. If you get bored, go down to your local library and have them dig you out some old microfiche. This is nothing new. Censorship and biased reporting have been a known problem and already is the norm. To be clear, I agree it is a problem. It's a horrible problem. However, it's not new and it's aleady normalized. That's why I constantly speak out to support the freedom of expression. That's why I recently, in HN, spoke out to support the Nazis right to express themselves and why I decried Google taking away their domain name. I don't like Nazis. I like free speech. Nazis are pretty deplorable, after all. As for censorship, it comes in various forms. Soft censorship is most common, in the Western world. I can relate a time when it happened to me, if you want. I was a freelance journalist back in my university days.
- x0x0 9y ago
  It's not about biasing news. It's about using their market share in two businesses (search/news and ads) to force their way into social networking. ie the threat that if Forbes didn't play ball with Google+, search placement (ie traffic) and hence ad revenue would dry up.
ehsankia 9y ago
I don't get it. Google is under no "obligation" to fund something. Sure, using funding a way to convince people to do things is shitty, but at the same time, you can't really make someone fund something they don't want to. It's not like it's their duty to keep funding New America. And honestly, we should not trust something funded by X to be unbiased towards X anyway, that's just common sense.
- SFJulie 9y ago
  So what is ycombinator biased towards? Unless you have not noticed a lot of news are being censored systematically on HN when they touch certain topics, some of them is giving SV/IT a bad PR, or poor work conditions in IT , political POV... references: http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ (use all button) http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    If you want more evidence of HN censorship, I maintain a website that tracks title changes, deleted posts, and score/comments/rank over time here: http://hn.0x2237.club http://hn.0x2237.club There's definitely solid evidence of censorship, at some point I'm going to collect the main points into a blog post.
    - kikimaru 9y ago
      ... huh. TIL
- staticelf 9y ago
  The issue is that they try to use convince people that monopolies are bad except when they are doing it. It's generally considered bad taste and hypocritical to preach something and not abide to what you preach yourself. In my country a lot of media people are for example writing about embracing immigration and slander anyone who disagrees but studies have shown that the people who work in these media outlets does not live in areas affected negatively by increased immigration to a large extent. There is a reason why people hate that kind of shit and that's because it stinks and is used by people in power to shit on people without power.

IBM 9y ago

It's not questionable marketing tactics they were trying to keep out of the public eye, it was the suggestion that they're abusing their dominance in search to enter a new market (in this case social networks).

mythrwy 9y ago
Aren't (or weren't) Facebook share buttons also likely figured into Google's ranking algorithm? Not an SEO guy but think I remember reading something on that. So why would giving points for including links to their own social network (that ultimately didn't go anywhere) be unsavory if it's treated essentially the same as others? My guess is this more the tone of what was implied rather than "If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer." (Although substantially the outcome may be the same).

vacri 9y ago

s/chilling/humdrum/ Go to google, get google's view on things. Go to facebook, get facebook's view on things. Go to X, get X's view on things. Powerful companies using their influence on the media is business-as-usual. Regardless of the moral position in this incident, journalism has always been under such pressures - it's not being 'chilled'.

mirimir 9y ago
Not at all. Or at least, there has long been an expectation that owners won't bias news reporting. They can legitimately express their views through editorials, of course. The Wall Street Journal remains an excellent example of this.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Media bias has existed since the early days of the printing press. Scroll to the history section at this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias The whole article is worth reading.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Thanks. I get that's there's always been bias. But there have also long been principals of press freedom and unbiased reporting. What I was objecting to is the normalization of censorship and biased reporting.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      While there are some fine examples of journalism with integrity, I don't see any evidence of that being the norm or traditionally the norm. For every Pulitzer Prize winner, there are thousands of articles about Bat Boy and $politician being a baby eating demon. A good example would be the New York press. Most of their papers, of which there were many, were owned/operated by political parties - according to the documentary series called, simply, New York. I suspect your vision of these principles is subjected to some sort of bias? I'm not sure what it is called. It might be survivorship bias, or maybe confirmation bias? I don't want to speculate, as that's not my domain. However, I don't actually think those principles have ever really existed - as a general rule. Again, there are examples of such, but it doesn't appear to be the norm. If you get bored, go down to your local library and have them dig you out some old microfiche. This is nothing new. Censorship and biased reporting have been a known problem and already is the norm. To be clear, I agree it is a problem. It's a horrible problem. However, it's not new and it's aleady normalized. That's why I constantly speak out to support the freedom of expression. That's why I recently, in HN, spoke out to support the Nazis right to express themselves and why I decried Google taking away their domain name. I don't like Nazis. I like free speech. Nazis are pretty deplorable, after all. As for censorship, it comes in various forms. Soft censorship is most common, in the Western world. I can relate a time when it happened to me, if you want. I was a freelance journalist back in my university days.
x0x0 9y ago
It's not about biasing news. It's about using their market share in two businesses (search/news and ads) to force their way into social networking. ie the threat that if Forbes didn't play ball with Google+, search placement (ie traffic) and hence ad revenue would dry up.

ehsankia 9y ago

I don't get it. Google is under no "obligation" to fund something. Sure, using funding a way to convince people to do things is shitty, but at the same time, you can't really make someone fund something they don't want to. It's not like it's their duty to keep funding New America. And honestly, we should not trust something funded by X to be unbiased towards X anyway, that's just common sense.

SFJulie 9y ago
So what is ycombinator biased towards? Unless you have not noticed a lot of news are being censored systematically on HN when they touch certain topics, some of them is giving SV/IT a bad PR, or poor work conditions in IT , political POV... references: http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ (use all button) http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  If you want more evidence of HN censorship, I maintain a website that tracks title changes, deleted posts, and score/comments/rank over time here: http://hn.0x2237.club http://hn.0x2237.club There's definitely solid evidence of censorship, at some point I'm going to collect the main points into a blog post.
  - kikimaru 9y ago
    ... huh. TIL
staticelf 9y ago
The issue is that they try to use convince people that monopolies are bad except when they are doing it. It's generally considered bad taste and hypocritical to preach something and not abide to what you preach yourself. In my country a lot of media people are for example writing about embracing immigration and slander anyone who disagrees but studies have shown that the people who work in these media outlets does not live in areas affected negatively by increased immigration to a large extent. There is a reason why people hate that kind of shit and that's because it stinks and is used by people in power to shit on people without power.