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Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban
- emmelaich 8y agoMaybe it's time to have a politically safe search. I'm not interested in racist results. If I want them I'm pretty sure I'll know how to find them.
- pfschell 8y agoIt's time to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Either internet companies can exert editorial control like this, or they can be free of the consequences of the libel, criminal threats, and intellectual property crimes they are party to. But not both.
- ChrisSD 8y agoNote that they didn't exert any control. It was discussed between colleagues. The email chain contained many warnings not to do this. Ultimately nothing came of it.
- ww520 8y agoIs that considered conspiracy?
- ChrisSD 8y agoNo. Why would it be? At an absolute minimum conspiracy requires some agreement. Which they didn't have here. This also seems to have been an open discussion so there was no secrecy amongst those who did agree.
- ww520 8y agoIANAL, according to Section 1(1) in [1] for UK, the threshold is for two persons to agree to have the law applied to them. It doesn't require all to agree. And from 1(1)(b), it's not necessarily for the conspired act to be carried out under some circumstance. For U.S. [2], the threshold for conspiracy against the U.S. government is similar or lower. Item (2) "they interfere or obstruct legitimate Government activity" sounds a lot like what the Google employees were doing. [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/45/section/1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/45/section/1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_against_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_against_the_United_...
- golemotron 8y agoThe central issue is whether they can exert control They obviously can.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoPaywalled, does someone have a copy?
- mmmeff 8y agoJust click the link from google search results https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+Workers+Discussed+Tweaking+Search+Function+to+Counter+Travel+Ban&oq=Google+Workers+Discussed+Tweaking+Search+Function+to+Counter+Travel+Ban&aqs=chrome..69i64j69i60j69i57.3281j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+Workers+Discussed+Twe...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoDoesn't work for me for some reason (maybe some privacy extension).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- demolicman 8y agoWASHINGTON—Days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed how they could tweak the company’s search-related functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails. The email traffic, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows that employees proposed ways to “leverage” search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ’Iran’, etc.” and “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms `Mexico’, `Hispanic’, `Latino’, etc.” The email chain, while sprinkled with cautionary notes about engaging in political activity, suggests employees considered ways to harness the company’s vast influence on the internet in response to the travel ban. Google said none of the ideas discussed were implemented. "These emails were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology—not in the current campaign season, not during the 2016 election, and not in the aftermath of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies.” Next week Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to meet with state attorneys general to discuss concerns of anticonservative bias. Conservatives recently expressed anger after Breitbart News released a video of a 2016 company meeting in which Google senior managers lamented Mr. Trump’s election victory.
- randomposter44 8y agoIt has become apparent that since the all-hands meeting after the 2016 election that Google views it's role as someone to socially engineer society because of "low information voters" and other topics they dislike.
- DanCarvajal 8y agoHmmm, a banner with a call to action does not seem out of the question on issues like this, tweaking the results not so much.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoWhere does one have a guarantee against unbiased internet search results?
- neuronexmachina 8y agoI remember there was some news at the time about Googlers rallying against the Muslim ban, in part because it directly impacted a couple hundred Googlers: https://www.recode.net/2017/1/30/14446690/google-rallying-sergey-brin-trump-immigration-ban https://www.recode.net/2017/1/30/14446690/google-rallying-se... https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/nearly-200-google-employees-are-affected-by-trumps-immigrati https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/nearly-200...
- komali2 8y agoYea I don't find it surprising at all that any company with technical employees was opposed to the Muslim ban, I specifically remember a bunch of high profile cases of engineers stuck after making the "mistake" of visiting home. H1b and other travel is still a mess. My old recruiter friends back in Texas are just about as conservative as possible but they're still pissed off about all the random executive orders surrounding immigration, it's making their jobs a lot harder.
- kart23 8y agoI was travelling at the time of the ban. Thankfully I wasn't affected by it, but the laptop ban was even more boneheaded. No electronics larger than a cellphone. What does that even mean? Had to go thru another security check right at the gate. Everyone was annoyed, especially the airline staff. Got lucky because I had a check in and I heard about it beforehand. But what if I only had a carry on? My laptop would still be stuck in dubai.
- paultopia 8y agoHow many employees does Google have? What precisely are a few emails from employees supposed to show about the company? I mean, seriously WSJ. What if some employees sent around emails saying they approved of cannibalism, would people be like "Google is about to start eating humans!"
- koolba 8y agoDepends on which ones. There was that video of the all hands with some of their senior leadership literally crying when Trump got elected. If it includes one of them, either directly or looking the other way, it could be a big deal.
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- mc32 8y agoImagine there was an email thread on how to dampen search results for Chinese ops in Tibet or Xinjiang because to many staff from China this was offensive, would that just be swept aside? Oh, just a few employees and it never went into production...
- komali2 8y agoWait, I thought Google will comply with Chinese censorship rules? Isn't that what "Phoenix" was all about?
- mc32 8y agoThat’s different. That’s about tailoring results to conform with Chinese authorities in order to operate in China. My hypothetical example was random employees at the MTV campus emailing ideas to influence US SERPs to propagate their PoV on a political issue they have an interest in.
- qubax 8y agoIt's ridiculous how the exact same people going crazy over china's "digital dictatorship" will defend "digital dictatorship" here as long as it aligns with their own biases and agenda. I guess ideals and principles are not important anymore. What's even more absurd is that people have the gall to defend this behavior on HN.
- dooglius 8y agoI get the impression that this was just chatter on some internal mailing list, not anything that was seriously considered by Google management. Aside from the meta-questions of "Who gave the WSJ these emails and why?" this seems like a non-story.
- kstenerud 8y agoIt's bad enough to foster an echo chamber to your personal biases, as is currently standard operating procedure. But to actively engage in hidden manipulation of public views strikes at the very heart of democracy. Democracy only works because of the wisdom of crowds [1], and the wisdom of crowds only works if each participant has independent knowledge. The more people rely upon a shared source of knowledge and truth, the less accurate their collective wisdom becomes. Practically, this means that anyone with wide enough influence can directly affect democratic outcomes, which defeats the entire purpose, and the level of influence possible these days is unprecedented. So regardless of what actually did or did not happen, the fact that a few companies ARE in a position to wield this kind of influential power should strike fear into the heart of every free citizen of every democratic nation. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706 https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/038...
- mc32 8y agoNow imagine the conversations in newsrooms all over the world on how to present a particular event or newsstory. You can imagine how the different actors behave given their affiliations and editorial freedom (or control, depending) and this is why there is distrust since the ‘60s.
- EGreg 8y agoHave you read Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent?”
- mc32 8y agoManufacturing consent can mean a couple of things. One, where the state apparatus or industry are in cahoots with journalists to execute a conspiracy on information. The other has to do with journalists following their biases in reporting things --an agenda that is not dictated by outside third parties, but one of following an implicit ideology.
- failbuffer 8y agoYeah, caught this on Fox News tonight, and the hypocrisy of their breathless hand-wringing about the "threat to democracy" really burned me up. Not because they're right wing, but because they coordinate a top-down propaganda machine and have spurred other news organizations (like MSNBC) to do the same. The magnitude of their crime and the devastating rifts it has helped widen in our country is so much greater in scope than what the Google employees were talking about doing.
- jchrisa 8y agoToo bad they weren't able to follow through.
- untog 8y agoThis is an absurdly inaccurate headline. From the article: > The email traffic, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows that employees proposed ways to “leverage” search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Iran’, etc.” and “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’, etc.” So, employees saw that the existing algorithm was inappropriately prioritising prejudiced results, and discussed tweaking the algorithm accordingly. I don't see what's controversial about that, unless your understanding of Google is so basic that you really think results are calculated by a magic computer program in the sky. It's always been programmed by humans, within various parameters. It isn't objective and it never has been. Now, is it worth discussing the enormous power Google has over people's perceptions as a result of their market dominance? Absolutely. But using a headline like that just plays into conspiracy theory.
- aphelion 8y agoThat it is incorrect to say that personal bias or subjective interpretation has never played any role whatsoever in search results is a vacuous truth. It's a meaningless tautology. And it's fallacious to use it to excuse for injecting any sort of political ideology into search results.
- p1necone 8y agoSo many people seem to have this weird misconception that there can be no right answer to something just because one political party disagrees with another on it. I wish people would entertain the possibility that either side might actually just be wrong about things sometimes (often trivially). (hypothetically) It would not be "bias" to talk about one side being wrong much more than the other if that was actually the case. I think a lot of people use this fallacious call to "give both sides an un-'biased' chance" to derail discussion in a very intellectually dishonest way when we should be reasoning about things without turning them into political arguments.
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- agildehaus 8y agoSounds like a couple employees wanted to add banner links to pro-immigration charities when someone searched for immigration-related terms, similar to donation links they add when a natural disaster hits. This is incredibly far from modifying the search algorithm. Hard to even say what this means because WSJ is sitting on the actual email chain so they can editorialize it in any way they please.
- utopcell 8y agoI see a lot of coordinated attacks against Google right before the elections.
- redm 8y ago“Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology." -- "Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies.” This is a carefully worded statement, because the fact is, Google does manipulate search results for its business purposes. I expect most companies to follow their corporate ethos and justify change as its expedient for their business. In Google's case, they may even feel a change is a moral imperative, without realizing how subjective that is. I think what people need to recognize is, that Google isn't above these problems, buyer beware.
- propman 8y agoRegardless of whether this is a true story or not, Google needs to be regulated. I firmly believe that now. What’s stoppimg them from tweaking algorithms 2 days before an election? If I search Trump and see 80 women accusing him of sexual assault as the first thing popping up or his $3B net worth and great business deals is a huge difference in results. I know it’s not that simple at all but just making a general point how much power that is. One counter example, every atttempt at censorship and media bias works oppositely. Look at yahoo article content, tilts quite a bit left and the comments are significantly right wing. Makes them more distrustful of true news.
- goblekitepe 8y ago"Prejudice" and "Hate Speech" are necessarily subject to interpretation. Whoever gets to decide what is and isn't prejudice will necessarily inject their personal biases, political or otherwise, into the decision. Recognition of this during the Enlightenment fueled the political philosophy behind the First Amendment in the American Constitution. It is a dangerous day when a monopolistic corporation like Google can casually insert their own biases into search results, because they feel they know best. Is Google a private company, and do private companies have the freedom to do what they want? Generally yes, but in the case of companies like Google that act as the gatekeepers of information to billions of people, the values of free speech AND free thought must supercede the the freedom of private Enterprise.
- trumped 8y agoOnly Google doesn't want to admit that the search results are rigged and/or biased...