4 ms·

The biggest issue is that Google is also a publisher, with comment sections. It competes in the same space, and is pretty much the only game in town for adverti

by surge 6y ago

The biggest issue is that Google is also a publisher, with comment sections. It competes in the same space, and is pretty much the only game in town for advertising. This is an election year, political biases are a factor in the discussion and other sites on the other end of the political spectrum don't get their advertising removed for speech by commenters. Other sites have comment sections and has its share of trolls (from both sides) and controversial speech that targets identity groups. Does Google hold itself and other sites with that speech to the same standards? This creates an anti-trust issue. And yes, if a company has enough power to control the speech and public discourse with little other alternative is part of anti-trust, just as if there was one phone company to communicate with. There is a double standard here and a conflict of interest (not to mention they teamed up with NBC News to make this happen, another competitor). This will be used as evidence that Google should be broken up. I bet their lawyers are freaking out right now. Section 230 holds the standard that sites are not held accountable for the speech of their commenters. Corporations can censor too. The issue becomes when a corporation uses its market dominance to force another company to censor its own speech. It starts slow, but eventually it'll be any speech against Google getting censored, comments, or news articles will earn a "policy violation" with lop sided enforcement.

jonahbenton 6y ago
With all respect, I'm afraid that most of what you are saying is incorrect. Google is a "publisher" but not in any way that uniquely competes with ZH. No Google property takes traffic from ZH, for ZH's audience. ZH is a well known brand, long established, with huge proportion of return visitors and inbound link traffic. Google is also very much not the only game in town for advertising. They are the default choice for many publishers but there are many, many, many monetization partners, a high degree of liquidity and flexibility, and a brand as well known and with as loyal and wealthy an audience as ZH is ideal for many monetization strategies that are much more valuable than plain old Google ads. I understand the anti-trust framing and the "teamed up" with NBC business and conflict of interest and so forth, but with all respect, that amounts to conspiracy theory/faulty inference thinking. It is not reality. Google's lawyers are not concerned about any of this. Ads is just a monetization tool. Advertising is ALWAYS sensitive to messaging and reputation and issues around implied endorsements and so forth. People confuse that with speech, but it is not. It is about b2b contractual relationships with both sides being free to end them at any time. Ads are not "pipes" like ISP service (or arguably CDN). They are not search, not publishing. Just money. Cheers.
- surge 6y ago
  They present NBC News on their platform "YouTube" which directly competes in the media space with other news outlets. They also have an issue if they start using this tactic to pull the rug out from outlets critical of the companies other divisions. If an outlet reports on an issue with say, a Pixel phone, and suddenly the advertising for that outlet dries up...or they come up with an excuse about comments, knowing full well they also have comments on their platforms that violate their own policy. Well you can see where there is a lopsided enforcement or double standard and this can be wielded to coerce speech or extort a company into giving favorable reviews. Which is already a problem given access media practices. I wouldn't care so much if there was another few advertising players in the market. One isolated incident isn't cause for concern, but there's been enough of this to establish a pattern.

by surge 6y ago

jonahbenton 6y ago

With all respect, I'm afraid that most of what you are saying is incorrect. Google is a "publisher" but not in any way that uniquely competes with ZH. No Google property takes traffic from ZH, for ZH's audience. ZH is a well known brand, long established, with huge proportion of return visitors and inbound link traffic. Google is also very much not the only game in town for advertising. They are the default choice for many publishers but there are many, many, many monetization partners, a high degree of liquidity and flexibility, and a brand as well known and with as loyal and wealthy an audience as ZH is ideal for many monetization strategies that are much more valuable than plain old Google ads. I understand the anti-trust framing and the "teamed up" with NBC business and conflict of interest and so forth, but with all respect, that amounts to conspiracy theory/faulty inference thinking. It is not reality. Google's lawyers are not concerned about any of this. Ads is just a monetization tool. Advertising is ALWAYS sensitive to messaging and reputation and issues around implied endorsements and so forth. People confuse that with speech, but it is not. It is about b2b contractual relationships with both sides being free to end them at any time. Ads are not "pipes" like ISP service (or arguably CDN). They are not search, not publishing. Just money. Cheers.

surge 6y ago
They present NBC News on their platform "YouTube" which directly competes in the media space with other news outlets. They also have an issue if they start using this tactic to pull the rug out from outlets critical of the companies other divisions. If an outlet reports on an issue with say, a Pixel phone, and suddenly the advertising for that outlet dries up...or they come up with an excuse about comments, knowing full well they also have comments on their platforms that violate their own policy. Well you can see where there is a lopsided enforcement or double standard and this can be wielded to coerce speech or extort a company into giving favorable reviews. Which is already a problem given access media practices. I wouldn't care so much if there was another few advertising players in the market. One isolated incident isn't cause for concern, but there's been enough of this to establish a pattern.