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> So, employees saw that the existing algorithm was inappropriately prioritising prejudiced results, and discussed tweaking the algorithm accordingly. I can we
by gwern 8y ago
> So, employees saw that the existing algorithm was inappropriately prioritising prejudiced results, and discussed tweaking the algorithm accordingly.
I can well believe that those employees believed those results were 'prejudiced' and 'inappropriately prioritized', but I would point out that you are merely redescribing the WSJ's claims in different words and at no point have you offered a counter-argument or shown evidence that their discussed tweaks would have been non-partisan.
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> The Google emails were written on Sunday, Jan. 29, two days after Mr. Trump signed the first version of his travel order, which generally restricted immigration to the U.S. from several majority-Muslim countries. One of the emails, from an employee of the Search Product Marketing division, explained that there was a “large brainstorm” going throughout the company’s marketing division over how to respond. “Overall idea: Leverage search to highlight important organizations to donate to, current news, etc. to keep people abreast of how they can help as well as the resources available for immigrations [sic] or people traveling,” the email says.
> “Can we launch an ephemeral experience that includes Highlights, up-to-date info from the US State Dept, DHS, links to donate to ACLU, etc?” the email added.
> Several officials responded favorably to the overall idea. “We’re absolutely in…Anything you need,” one wrote.
> “To the extent of my knowledge, we’d be breaching precedent if we only gave Highlights access to organizations that support a certain view of the world in a time of political conflict,” the public-affairs executive said. “Is that accurate? If so, would we be willing to open access to highlights to [organizations] that…actually support the ban?”
- refurb 8y agoWow! So basically Google employees were using what most people believe is an apolitical search engine to push their particular political view? Maybe not so surprising after the TGIF post-election video.
- untog 8y agoIt sounds a lot more like Google employees were trying to remove overtly political content from apolitical search terms, but you do you.
- refurb 8y agoOne of their ideas was to place banner ads for non-profits who were fighting against the ban. It sounds like adding political content to the search, not removing it.
- untog 8y agoYes, that post has been edited quite dramatically from when I replied to it, unfortunately I'm not able to edit mine any more.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ubernostrum 8y agoI can well believe that those employees believed those results were 'prejudiced' and 'inappropriately prioritized' I personally find it hard to believe that the average Google employee doesn't know and didn't, by that time, know, that Google's algorithms -- which introduce a selection pressure for content that causes outrage (in the name of greater "engagement", and that's been pretty thoroughly demonstrated) over content which contains facts -- were promoting awful things. I find it very easy to believe that the average Google employee simply didn't care about that up until the moment it started affecting their friends and colleagues (the "Muslim ban" would have impacted some Google employees' ability to travel). Up until then, "politics" was something that happened to other people, and so they didn't have to bother about it.
- wpietri 8y agoExactly. I used to think of myself as apolitical. But there's no "outside" the system. I could ignore politics because the existing political dynamics worked for me and the people I cared about. This was tenable for me because the US was for decades controlled by centrists who agreed on a lot. But as XKCD graphs nicely, the era of centrism was basically 1940-1980: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/ https://xkcd.com/1127/large/ After that, the center-right block in the House steadily diminished, and was extinct by 2008. As many of the Republican Never Trump folks make clear, their party has become unrecognizable to them. Previous conservative standards like balanced budgets, rule of law, and personal virtue have become irrelevant there. It has shifted from a positive-sum game to a zero- or negative-sum game of pure political dominance. As much as I enjoyed my youthful obliviousness and above-it-all sense of superiority, those are dead. The post-war political infrastructure has broken down, and restoring it is the work of decades. However much we want to ignore politics, it has stopped ignoring us.