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It might be more appropriate to link to a indepdent article about this rather than Gabbard's site. Here is one from The Verge [1]. It sounds like Google's fra
by slg 7y ago
It might be more appropriate to link to a indepdent article about this rather than Gabbard's site. Here is one from The Verge [1].
It sounds like Google's fraud/spam algorithms automatically triggered the suspension (maybe due to a large increase in spend meant to build on Gabbard's post debate momentum). The account was unlocked after human intervention. Gabbard insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated, which seems hard to believe. But either way, it highlights a long standing problem with Google giving algorithms so much power. It is also potentially more damaging for the all of us who aren't presidential candidates and can't get our accounts quickly restored if we mistakenly anger some unknown Google algorithm.
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi-gabbard-democratic-candidate-lawsuit-ad-search-ban-political-bias-debates https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi-gabb...
- dvt 7y agoI was considering linking the NYT article[1] but consciously decided against it. I don't even particularly support Tulsi Gabbard, but I'd rather go to the horse's mouth, so to speak, and let people make up their own minds. Also, her blog has no intrusive ads or paywalls. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi-gabbard-sues-google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/technology/tulsi-gabbard-...
- slg 7y agoThat is a fair viewpoint. I am just a little cautious of only hearing one side of a lawsuit, especially when that side is a political campaign and therefore is very concerned with spin. Gabbard's account has a lot of political grandstanding in it that you wouldn't find in a independent article.
- cwkoss 7y ago> Gabbard insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated The subtext I'm reading is that the "major" political accounts probably have specific flags set by Google internally to prevent automated shut-offs like this. If Google is not applying these whitelist flags to all candidates in a fair and systematic fashion, it would effectively be utilizing their corporate resources to disproportionately benefit certain candidates at the expense of others.
- belltaco 7y ago>it would effectively be utilizing their corporate resources to disproportionately benefit certain candidates at the expense of others Which is still not illegal. Fox News does it all the time.
- cwkoss 7y agoWould it be legal for Fox News to price political ads based on whether they agree with the bias?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rwc 7y agoIt is not legal.
- roywiggins 7y agoUnder what law?
- protomyth 7y agoIn the US, it would be Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Title 47 United States Code).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- roywiggins 7y agoAha: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidate-appearances-advertising https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...
- therein 7y ago
- Natsu 7y agoThey've been caught on camera several times now talking about wanting to influence the elections. I keep that in mind when considering their excuses. Sort of like how Bernie got locked out of DNC databases during the last campaign, etc., it gets hard to believe all the coincidences sometimes.
- favorited 7y ago> Sort of like how Bernie got locked out of DNC databases You mean after his staff got caught snooping around Hillary's campaign data? https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/ https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cwkoss 7y agoBernie's campaign reported the vulnerability in NGPVan's platform to them and campaign asked the user who saw HRC data to resign. Then they were suspended and the 'snooping in Hillary's data' spin appeared the next day.
- favorited 7y agoLogs showed 4 staffers accessed the data (including running more than 20 search queries), and only one was fired (and he was fired, not "asked to resign"). It's not spin, it's what happened.
- cwkoss 7y agoNGPVan is a buggy SaaS platform. They discovered and reported a bug in the platform that displayed HRC's information to the wrong customer. 'Snooping' is a biased mischaracterization.
- codezero 7y agoBy they, do you mean Google? Was there someone other than Jen Gennai? I think there are a lot of ways to interpret what she said, and it sounded to me, when I read it, that she was referring to the online foreign influence campaigns, but since the discussion was informal and edited, it's hard to know the exact context, or even what her hand in following through on that would look like.
- jisujhdhr 7y agoFunny how those algorithms rarely effect the Clinton and Bidens of the world. Basically if you believe Google as a company doesn't have a vested political interest which it acts upon then I have a bride to sell you.
- taytus 7y ago>Gabbard insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated, which seems hard to believe. I'm not saying that she is right but it's not hard to believe at all.
- metalchianti 7y agoGoogle has been shown to interfere with results that don't align with the company's political values. It's harder to believe that this suspension WASN'T politically motivated.
- moultano 7y agoNo, they haven't.
- supernintendo 7y agoWhich of Tulsi Gabbard’s views don’t align with the “political values” of Google? Sorry if I’m misinformed but from what I’ve seen Tulsi seems like a very reasonable politician. She may be somewhat of an outsider in terms of foreign policy but overall she has pretty standard left-leaning positions and I’ve never heard her resort to extreme rhetoric (a rare quality in today’s politics). If I’m buying into this logic I would expect Google to take similar action against other presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, who are much more vocal in spearheading policies that are against the corporate interests of large tech companies like Google. Have either of those candidates been censored?
- nailer 7y agoGabbard doesn't believe in identity politics, thinks we should avoid making Syria a quagmire, was a soldier, and has a homophobic Dad. The first makes her the enemy to the hard left, so she is criticized for the later.
- kspacewalk 7y ago>thinks we should avoid making Syria a quagmire I think you accidentally misspelled "makes excuses for a tyrant while the blood is still dripping from his hands". Because you can be reasonable about not thinking that an invasion of Syria is a good idea and call Assad out on his war crimes. Most other candidates manage that just fine.
- dang 7y agoOK, we've changed to that from https://www.tulsi2020.com/tulsi-vs-google https://www.tulsi2020.com/tulsi-vs-google. If anyone suggests a better link, we'll be happy to change it again. The site guidelines call for original sources, but in the case of press releases we tend to switch to the best available third-party article.
- dvt 7y agoMind using the NYT link? It's in my post above yours. I think it's higher quality than the Verge. (Although I still think in my heart of hearts we should link to Tulsi's blog post but I understand the opposing viewpoint.)
- dang 7y agoOk, switched to that from https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi-gabbard-democratic-candidate-lawsuit-ad-search-ban-political-bias-debates https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/8930373/google-tulsi-gabb....
- ukd1 7y agoIt might be higher quality, but the paywall sucks.
- dang 7y agoWe allow paywalls with workarounds here, even though they suck, because HN would suck worse without articles from NYT, Economist, New Yorker, WSJ, and others. Rather than complaining about the paywall, it would be better to look for the workaround. There's at least one posted to this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- bufferoverflow 7y ago> insinuates the initial suspension was politically motivated, which seems hard to believe How is that hard to believe? We know for a fact Google does political censorship. https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whis... https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/25/breaking-new-google-document-leaked-describing-shapiro-prager-as-nazis-using-the-dogwhistles/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/25/breaking-new-googl... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ricI5t66cj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ricI5t66cj8 (note these are fresh links just from the last 2 days)
- mtgx 7y agoSome people still cling to the 10-year old image of "good guy Google." I used to be one of those people.
- DavidAdams 7y agoJames O'Keefe claiming something doesn't make it a fact. On the contrary, I'd be inclined to doubt the claim in that case.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoYou clearly didn't look at the links. O'Keefe is irrelevant.
- rhcom2 7y agoWith the amount he's been caught doing "selective editing" I'd say he's pretty relevant.
- slg 7y agoProject Veritas is in no way a reliable source on political issues. Both it and its founder have a long record of being exposed committing fraud.
- 7y ago
- fooey 7y agoKilling suspicious spending makes sense to both sides of the spend. If you're going to radically change your spending, the responsible move it always make sure everyone knows it's coming. Same thing will happen to any Joe Plumber who's credit cards suddenly started spending uncharacteristically Tulsi's campaign throwing a tantrum like this just shows how poorly run a campaign she has. Hire people who know what they're doing and you don't have things like this happen.
- xster 7y agoWhy would you think The Verge/Comcast is an independent source when MSNBC/Comcast spent years firing their anchormen for questioning foreign invasions and WMDs. If you boiled Gabbard down to a single issue, it would be anti-war.
- aaronbrethorst 7y agoWeird, I'd say "pro-dictator." That kinda jives with anti-war, depending on which war you're talking about, though, I suppose. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/26/tulsi-gabbard-bashar-al-assad-syria-democrats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/26/tulsi-gabbar... https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/politics/tulsi-gabbard-syria-assad/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/politics/tulsi-gabbard-syria-...
- jessaustin 7y agoWhy do you care so much about what the media has told you Assad has done? Assad is not and never has been a threat to you or anyone you know. It is a good thing that we didn't get into a protracted war with Syria. It's easy to see the results of our wars in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Syrian people are fortunate that they didn't suffer the same fates as those nations. Gabbard's diplomatic mission is at least partially to thank for that. [EDIT:] This is a really complete explanation: https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-syria https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-syria
- aaronbrethorst 7y agoAssad is not and never has been a threat to you or anyone you know 1. That's an interesting assumption you make. 2. Why would I have to know someone personally to empathize with them? 3. U.S. foreign policy, as conducted by our military, has pretty consistently been a disaster for decades. I agree wholeheartedly with you on that point.
- jessaustin 7y ago1. It would be easy to refute, wouldn't it? If you or anyone in your family have ever been ISIS members, by all means correct me. 2. I'm glad to know that you have empathy for war victims. When has a war with USA ever saved lives? Didn't the ramp-up to the planned Syria war look just like previous ramp-ups to our wars in other Muslim nations? Those media projects were later found to be completely false (as has the Syria gas narrative, at this point), so why would we have believed this project? 3. USA wars are always conducted in USA media first. That is the time to fight, and that's what Gabbard (and many others) did. We seem to have broken their spirits, too. After really trying on Syria and only failing because they made so much money hyping up Trump, their recent efforts on Venezuela were fairly half-hearted. The world might be getting safer...
- not_a_cop75 7y agoI don't know how they could mistake a major political candidate spending as spam. Seems like reckless neglect, really.
- LorenPechtel 7y agoThere are two separate issues here: 1) The spending. That tripped some sort of fraud detector that caused a shutdown until a human intervened. No big surprise, I'm sure we've all triggered fraud detectors at one time or another, even ones that should have had a bit more brains. (Hey, it's Black Friday. You know I make a decent number of electronics purchases, is it any wonder I made several that day?!) 2) The spam filtering. Just because it's a presidential candidate doesn't mean it isn't something people regard as spam.
- crb002 7y agoEither there is a human in the loop, or they disrespect their largest ad clients by not having a human in the loop to prevent outages. Neither seems good for Google.
- einpoklum 7y ago"Automatically triggered"? Yes, well... flag_the_adword = some_conditions() || (esimate_political_reliability() < THRESHOLD);
- hkai 7y agoIn the leaked emails in 2016, Tulsi Gabbard was threatened by Democratic party officials that she would be cut off from the Dem's fundraising and shut out in other ways, and given Google's support for the Democratic party, it doesn't seem highly improbable (although still unlikely).