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Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat [pdf]
- VMG 7y agowhat an odd endorsement of Google
- tracker1 7y agoFrankly, a lot of this is worrisome. I lean libertarian/centrist/classic-liberal in terms of my views. Lately I feel that even trying to engage with anyone to the left is an effort in futility. Especially in Pacific-Coast tech companies. Reason doesn't seem to matter, only feelings. I was blocked on twitter for nearly a week, while they reviewed my challenge and judged against me, for posting anti-violence messages of all things. I can't help but feel if the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are censoring otherwise legal and non-violent content in favor of a political ideology, they deserve to lose section 230 protections.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stcredzero 7y ago"lose"
- pacala 7y agoGoogle/Twitter/Facebook are the ultimate stage in media consolidation. 3 mega-corporations controlling the information feeds for the vast majority of people in the world. Even with the best intentions, I can't see how this arrangement can fare well. The amount of power wielded is just astonishing. In historical context, US media has been undergoing a unabated consolidation for the past 3 decades. "In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies; as of 2011, 90% was controlled by just 6 companies and in 2017 the number was 5.", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership#Recent_media_mergers_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh....
- sjg007 7y agoI don't think they are exercising their power like they should be. Google and YouTube should delist Foxnews.com for promoting hate content, same with Facebook.
- outworlder 7y ago> I feel that even trying to engage with anyone to the left Maybe if you would step back from the partisan-thinking mode, you would find people more amenable to your views? Labeling things 'left' or 'right' or 'liberal' may be a convenient shorthand, but it is not intellectually honest. Reality doesn't conform to party lines.
- tracker1 7y agoYou have to be able to name things... what names would you use?
- ionised 7y agoThe problem you might be having is your insistence on viewing people with a left/right partisan lens. That's just tribal football-team politics and is simply part of the problem.
- thoughtstheseus 7y agoSomeone call Jaron.
- rdtsc 7y ago> On Election Day in 2018, the “Go Vote” reminder Google displayed on its home page gave one political party between 800,000 and 4.6 million more votes than it gave the other party Interesting. I assumed they displayed those for everyone. Did any whistleblowers come up saying how they decided who to show that and who to not show that message? Because if they only picked out voters they assumed would vote Democrat that would be troubling. Though, I guess it is tempting to say, they are using their resources however they see fit, but even then I'd at least hope they are transparent and clear were they stand, and not try to pretend to be unbiased. > A growing body of evidence suggests that Google employees deliberately engineer ephemeral experiences to change people’s thinking. Does anyone from Google here even knows about or heard the phrase "ephemeral experiences"? Search suggestions I guess could change people's opinions, but I am not sure about the deliberate manipulation part, and that it's concerted internal effort.
- i_am_nomad 7y agoIt could be that “get out the vote” drives generally benefit Democrats more than Republicans - I seem to recall reading a few studies that support this.
- gundmc 7y agoGoogle did show it to everyone. If you follow the link and read his "analysis", his argument boils down to the assertion that Google users overall are left of center so reminding Google users to vote unfairly benefits Democrats. Furthermore, he argues that Google could theoretically remind only subsections of the population and in doing so skew the vote more significantly at some point in the future. Frankly the whole letter and article is quite conspiratorial and backed up only by references to his own equally bombastic claims.
- prepend 7y agoIt is quite conspiratorial. It’s really hard for Google to prove they didn’t do this as it’s proving a negative. I think the argument boils down to since they are capable of doing so, and no one would be able to tell if they did; therefore search must be open to prevent such potential actions. Google has been caught doing things like favoring inferior shopping searches to point to their own products. So maybe it is possible to detect and not as much of a risk.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- malcolmhere 7y agoThis is such garbage. If you clickthrough on this guy's "research", you'll find that he objects to Google's "Go Vote Today" reminder is unfair politically because: - It increases voter turnout across the board (which favors Democrats marginally) - Google users tend to be younger (and hence more left-leaning) Google has many questionable practices, but simply reminding people when it is an election day is not one of them
- oska 7y agoTo play devil's advocate: What role does a for-profit advertising company have in encouraging people to vote? And what are their motives in doing so? Disclaimer: I haven't read the pdf (only responding to your comment) and don't really hold a strong position on this question, other than being sceptical of Google's participation in any political process.
- adamnemecek 7y agoI agree. It's a Pandora's box I don't want to open.
- identity0 7y agoIt's like changing a company's logo to a rainbow flag during pride month. It has basically zero cost and gains a minor increase in public perception as being a company that stands with "the people." (Telling people to vote has always been pretty popular, and I remember my friends sharing posts of their favourite celebrities telling people to vote.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 7y agoIt's a good business practice because it's good branding. Companies intentionally try to associate their brand with other things seen as positive -- pride month, the Olympics, the environment, promoting diversity, etc. Google does this with their home-page doodles. Encouraging people to vote is another feel-good brand association. There's nothing nefarious here like Google promoting a specific political agenda, that's overthinking it. It simply improves their brand image which makes people more likely to trust and use and promote their products. It's the profit motive at work... which, to answer your question, is why a for-profit advertising company does it.
- wyck 7y agoGoogle search has gone down the proverbial shithole in the last 2 years, and has been struggling long before that. Even for non political searches it returns horrible results. It's a threat in the short-term, and then it will be replaced since the algorithm is falling apart.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoThe crap results I get in place of good ones are pretty spammy. I suspect it's not google that's getting worse, but spammers getting better. That's not something a google alternative will magically do better combatting.
- codingslave 7y agoYeah they got beat by spam and hired a bunch of subpar engineers through their leetcode dogma
- akvadrako 7y agoIt's been getting worse for way more than 2 years. Remember when google would honor quotes and the plus sign to force those terms to appear in the results?
- jhanschoo 7y agoCan I have an example where quotes are not honored? To force a certain spelling even for a single word, enclose it in quotes.
- joshuwa 7y agoRobert Epstein - the self citing author of that testimony - had his website flagged as a security threat by Google a few yeas back and he's been on a vendetta ever since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#Criticism_of_Go...
- akersten 7y agoThere is a serious and concerted effort to disparage the large tech companies lately on this platform and others. It isn't about anti-trust, or any benefit to the consumer either, although it may be dressed up that way. It's about forcing private companies to be platforms for radical views, and to self-censor and be disallowed from having their own political opinions and operating policies. The government should be hands-off here. Look only to the fact that they're not investigating Microsoft, Walmart, or the ISPs, to realize that this is targeted political harassment.
- prepend 7y agoHow is this related to forcing private companies to be platforms for radical views? Should the private gas company be forced to be platforms for radical views?
- mr_toad 7y agoA prominent Republican once said: ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’. I get the impression that this is still their policy.
- CapricornNoble 7y agoI see FAR more of that from Democrats than from Republicans these days. Far leftists call Tim Pool and Joe Rogan (both left-leaning centrists with some socialist views) supporters of the "alt right".
- slg 7y agoDr. Robert Epstein might very well have a valid complaint, but it seems like he has had an ax to grind with Google going back years. His site was hacked in 2012 and Google put up a warning as a result and he was not happy about it [1]. Maybe coincidentally, later that year Epstein started publicly criticizing Google and calling for them to be regulated [2]. He also started sounding the alarm about election interference years before the 2016 election [3]. If Dr Epstein is leading a conversation about Google's biases, I think it is only fair to also discuss whether Dr Epstein's himself is biased against Google. [1] - https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and-experts-weigh-in-on-a-site-owner-vs-google/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/readers-and-expert... [2] - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-privacy_b_1962827 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/google-privacy_b_1962827 [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google-did-not-rig-indian-elections https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/15/google-di...
- gerash 7y agoYou'd imagine a professor in Psychology from Harvard would not hold a grudge for seven years over Google warning users about his hacked website and "tarnishing" his reputation. Apparently not.
- bogwog 7y agoSome random dude on hackernews claims that Epstein's motivation is based on a 7 year grudge, and you just believe it.
- gerash 7y agoHad you done a quick search you'd find his Wikipedia page along with several references.
- justinclift 7y ago> would not hold a grudge for seven years ... Why not? He had a poor experience with them some time ago, and Googles behaviour in the last 7 years has been abysmal and seems to be getting far worse. eg likely re-inforcing his opinion. Not really seeing why he'd "forgive" an entity with those circumstances. If Google had instead changed for the better, maybe you'd have a point. :)
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago>A worldwide network of passive monitoring systems must be built to protect humanity and democracy from manipulations by today’s Google and the Googles of tomorrow. Yeah no thanks.
- outworlder 7y agoRight. Feral cats are a problem, so let's release tigers to take care of them. "Monitoring systems" are exactly why Google and similar companies are a problem.
- drtillberg 7y agoIf even a fraction of the allegations in the PDF are true, wouldn't Google be exposed to a campaign finance compliance issue? Or, to put it in another way, since these corporations are just giant buckets of money sloshing around, wouldn't it be true that pretty much any political activism they incorporate into their business operations would have the potential to be considered an election-influencing political contribution?
- stretchwithme 7y agoThe electoral system in the US has so many other gigantic flaws. It is only wracked by such controversies because it so bad at representing the interests of the voters.
- TomMckenny 7y agoIn this case there is zero such interest. It's just a focused shakedown of companies that contribute to the opposing party at an equal or greater rate than the ruling party.
- mmcconnell1618 7y ago"On January 31, 2009, Google blocked access to virtually the entire internet for 40 minutes." - Please explain how Google created a denial of service attack on the entire internet for 40 minutes. Clearly, Dr. Epstein believes that the only way to access the internet is through a search engine.
- judge2020 7y agoWhile his claim is false (they didn't take down the internet), Google would be the "only" [default] gateway to the internet for a large portion of users if it weren't for: mobile app stores browsers auto-completing frequent websites (eg. searching for "apple" vs your browser auto-completing "apple.com").
- justinclift 7y agoBGP misconfiguration?
- IOT_Apprentice 7y agoYoutube "recommendations"? Sure. Facebook? Absolutely.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- outworlder 7y agoWhy is Google in particular an issue and not, say, Facebook?
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoIt seems to me that Epstein is far more annoyed that bad things are working against things he cares about, than that bad things are happening. Many people have been very concerned with Google's monopolistic power over the economy. Literally the difference in these two auto completes, can mean a make or break most businesses: brand name is... scam brand name is... great Add to that google has been unjustly pushing it's own sites to the top and you have blatant market manipulation, even if it doesn't conform to the legal definition of this term, it definitively conforms to the spirit of the law. That never bothered Mr Epstein. But as soon as he can give it a political spin, all of a sudden this power and its abuse are an issue. And even then it is so narrow and in a space so rife with bias that it's hard to take seriously. I mean, the major networks don't even feature 3rd party candidates in the debate. And yet I don't hear him crying bias. I'm pretty sure media bias is way more pervasive and swings more elections than google or Facebook has ever done. The issue at hand should be Google's monopoly on search, it's blatant bias and the oversize power that gives them. If you pick up on specifics and not address the wider issue, I'm going to have to wonder why.
- Adishetu 7y agoThere’s no threat to our democracy, if that’s the case then that means it’s a weak mindset and that the only truth, because it’s a dangerous deadly and downright demonic ideology. So abort democracy in order to avoid the sixth birthing of feminism. They both gotta go and get with Islam, just read Quran and Sunnah. What has DeMoCracy actual achieve if not causing confusion and delay???
- bogwog 7y agoI really like his idea for making Google's search index a public commons. Google search is by far their most popular product in terms of traffic, it's one of the most controversial and easily abused, and it's not even their main revenue stream. Google can survive without search, and the internet would be better off if there was more competition. The only issue I see is how would you make sure other smaller companies aren't providing biased search results too? His idea for having a monitoring system sounds like a privacy nightmare for users. At least you can regulate the hell out of Google and have actual audits. Doing the same for thousands of search engines isn't easy.
- UncleMeat 7y agoThe index isn't the hard part, it is the ranking. The proposal also makes basically all forms of anti abuse impossible.
- betterunix2 7y agoFull disclosure: I work on cryptography for Google, nothing related to this particular article. These claims are a bit...much. In the 2016 election, which was characterized by media manipulation and fake news stories, Google's results, according to his analysis, seemed to skew favorably toward Clinton. How do you even control for all the confounding factors here? Maybe Google is just better at weeding out misinformation than Bing, resulting in fewer negative stories about Clinton (or fewer positive stories about Trump). Then in 2018 Google threatened democracy by telling people to go out and vote, which clearly is an act of voter manipulation by Google in Dr. Epstein's view. In that same election, Dr. Epstein claims that Google's results were biased in favor of one party; yet in that same election, one party's talking points were divorced from reality, so any search algorithm than favors truthfulness would have to favor the other party.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 7y agoAn algorithm cannot favor truthfulness but only a certain definition of truthfulness. And that definition is not the thing itself.
- argv_empty 7y agoEpstein's argument seems to assume that any information which shifts an undecided person's view is biased. Basic chemistry lessons make the claims of homeopaths seem downright silly. Does that mean that teaching chemistry is biased against homeopathy, or is homeopathy just not all that great an idea? Well, perhaps that definition of bias is specific to strictly political topics rather than questions about the observable effects of various actions. Even so, by the standard of shifting views a certain direction, does Google present as much of a threat to democracy as higher education does?
- dang 7y agoRecent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20440079
- antpls 7y agoGoogle doesn't pose more threat than any other big recognized brands that people trust. It's all about trust. If people trust more Google or Apple than the legacy system, then maybe these brands earned people trust by also doing good things (sometime) ? Of course they have now a great responsability.
- projektfu 7y agoWhat kind of scholar doesn't have any references to something he didn't write? Surely Epstein's not the only scholar in the field of search engine effects.
- nickodell 7y ago>In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton. This is the most important claim that he makes, and as far as I can tell, he gives zero backing for it. He has two citations. The first citation is a paper showing that re-ordering search results to show links to articles that favor candidate A will cause readers to favor candidate A. The second citation does not give any explanation for the 2.6 million figure. ---- Let's take a look at the second citation: https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift-millions-of-votes-in-the-november-elections-without-anyone-knowing_2671195.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-big-tech-can-shift-mil... >I found pro-Clinton bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google’s search results. [...] Because, as I noted earlier, Google’s search algorithm is not constrained by equal-time rules, it almost certainly ends up favoring one candidate over another in most political races, and that shifts opinions and votes. This is literally true but realistically meaningless. Suppose that there are two candidates for office, A and B. Days before the election, it is revealed that candidate A fucks dogs. The news publishes many articles about candidate A fucking dogs. Google places those articles highly in search results, and many voters see them. Has Google shown pro-candidate B bias by showing those articles? Obviously not. Unless Epstein can show that a viewpoint-neutral ranking would have produced a different result, what he has is meaningless.