7 ms·

As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about pri

by esja 6y ago

As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about principles because it's very easy to focus on the specific details of these particular cases, and the fact it's your political enemy pursuing them. But that may not be true next time, and certainly won't be true every time.

matwood 6y ago
It's not pre-judging when the courts have dismissed the cases. They have been judged to have no merit.
- esja 6y ago
  You seem to be arguing that because cases 1-9 were without merit, case 10 and beyond are too. That may turn out to be true, but it is also quite literally pre-judging. Your argument also accepts that the courts judged these cases to have no merit, while implicitly denying that such judging was necessary. How should a Google staffer differentiate between case number 9 (dismissed) and case number 10 (still on the docket)? And what hope can they have of coming to a better understanding of the details and merits of a case than the exact body (a court) which is set up to do precisely this? The whole legal system is premised on every case being judged on its own merits, and rightly so.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Cases 10 and beyond are, too. One way you can see that is the subsequent cases have been relying on the same batshit evidence as the dead cases. If Google was a courtroom, you might have a point --- the courts are in many circumstances obligated to hear and dispassionately resolve batshit frivolous cases. Google is not.
    - esja 6y ago
      My concern is that you as an individual have used your personal judgement to come to the conclusion that these cases are batshit (as have I incidentally), and in this specific case you are most likely correct. But had Google prevented you from seeing this information, you would not have been able to form any view at all. And that is the direction all these platforms are moving in. I also have absolutely zero trust in Random Googlers being capable of determining truth and falsity in the general case (which is where this is heading), or in managing this power in such a way that is a net benefit to society. If they didn't have monopolies on information consumption I would be a little less concerned. A different example: Google could have stopped people seeing "false" information about COVID earlier this year. Twitter and other platforms labelled this "misinformation", and Google could have censored it from YouTube, searches, etc. The tech companies anointed the WHO as the arbiter of truth, yet the WHO was wrong for quite a while about several important things. I would prefer to live in a world where individuals are allowed to see all the contested facts and arguments, and decide for themselves. One last example: Ignaz Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and many others. I suppose the real solution is to break up the information monopolies, then let them do all the censoring they want.
      - wcarey 6y ago
        How, even in principle, would google prevent a person from seeing legal documents? Most (all?) jurisdictions publish them on the web themselves? https://www.courtlistener.com/ https://www.courtlistener.com/ is great.
        esja 6y ago
        I'm not arguing Google are censoring legal documents. But let's take this trend in that direction... 1. How would the average person find that website? A search engine perhaps? 2. How many search engines does the average person use? One, perhaps? Which one?
        tptacek 6y ago
        Nobody has accused Google of burying search results about these court cases, so you can't reasonably pretend that's the debate we're having. Please keep the goalposts static, so we can discuss productively.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The election occurred over a month ago. The counting of votes was complete enough 4 days later that any violations subsequent to then could not have changed the outcome. The relief sought--to prevent the results from being certified--would have been impossible to grant two weeks ago. At this point, any case being filed now over the results of the election is doomed to fail either by the doctrine of laches (you should have filed it sooner) or inability to grant relief, and that's even without considering any other possible failings it may have (including merit!). While the courts will operate under the assumption that a case is meritorious until proven otherwise, there is no reason for the court of public opinion to operate under the same assumption, especially when there is clear precedent and established case history demonstrating why the case must be dismissed that the filing makes no attempt to address.
    - esja 6y ago
      I don't think "the court of public opinion" is a high enough standard for a prospective world-wide monopolistic censor of information. Such an authority needs to be completely rigorous, completely fair, completely objective, completely informed, and so on. Google cannot meet that bar. By your standard, Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and the rest.
      - HideousKojima 6y ago
        Or for an even more recent example, the scientific community largely rejected plate tectonics initially
        UncleMeat 6y ago
        And was that borne out in the public square or in scientific journals and conferences? There are reasonable arenas for this material. In this case, that arena is the courts.
  - SurfingToad 6y ago
    Just because the sun has risen every day of your life, that doesn't mean that you can expect it to do so tomorrow.
    - esja 6y ago
      Of course we can, because it's a law of nature. Whereas man-made laws are subject to human action and interpretation, so outcomes are far less predictable.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - deleted 6y ago
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tptacek 6y ago
I think the presence of court cases, frivolous or not, is completely orthogonal to Google's content moderation policies. An appeal to "this is pending in court" is a deeply unprincipled argument; plenty of things that a court would certainly countenance are forbidden by Google's policies.
- esja 6y ago
  I agree but that's not really my concern. I am most concerned about granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false, and to prevent individuals from seeing the information used to make those judgements, or to decide for themselves. See my other reply to you below.
  - warkdarrior 6y ago
    > granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
    - totony 6y ago
      >Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service. And people have to right to find this despicable. Although Google may not actually have that power (I don't know how much Youtube is considered a monopoly)
    - abernard1 6y ago
      > Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service. And half of America that politically was skeptical of anti-trust has the power to rethink that as well. (And they will, and Google will find out if the juice is worth the squeeze on that.) Because of COVID-19 and the huge increase of mail in ballots, there is good reason to believe that fraud was higher than other years. Biden's margin of victory in key swing states is smaller than Trump's in 2016. These are not unreasonable things to discuss and I find unfathomable that this policy would be something Google would apply to say, Iran, or any other country where there was speech skeptical of government. Acting as if speech discussing this on their platform is beyond the pale is ludicrous. It shows a sheltered, fragile group of people who think their views are more common than they are.
skedaddle 6y ago
The "specific details" are a plethora of court rulings, election certifications, and statements from Trump's own lawyers that they are not bringing fraud cases.
anigbrowl 6y ago
They don't need to pre-judge them, they can look out at the actual outcomes of court cases that have already been litigated.

by esja 6y ago

matwood 6y ago

It's not pre-judging when the courts have dismissed the cases. They have been judged to have no merit.

esja 6y ago
You seem to be arguing that because cases 1-9 were without merit, case 10 and beyond are too. That may turn out to be true, but it is also quite literally pre-judging. Your argument also accepts that the courts judged these cases to have no merit, while implicitly denying that such judging was necessary. How should a Google staffer differentiate between case number 9 (dismissed) and case number 10 (still on the docket)? And what hope can they have of coming to a better understanding of the details and merits of a case than the exact body (a court) which is set up to do precisely this? The whole legal system is premised on every case being judged on its own merits, and rightly so.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Cases 10 and beyond are, too. One way you can see that is the subsequent cases have been relying on the same batshit evidence as the dead cases. If Google was a courtroom, you might have a point --- the courts are in many circumstances obligated to hear and dispassionately resolve batshit frivolous cases. Google is not.
  - esja 6y ago
    My concern is that you as an individual have used your personal judgement to come to the conclusion that these cases are batshit (as have I incidentally), and in this specific case you are most likely correct. But had Google prevented you from seeing this information, you would not have been able to form any view at all. And that is the direction all these platforms are moving in. I also have absolutely zero trust in Random Googlers being capable of determining truth and falsity in the general case (which is where this is heading), or in managing this power in such a way that is a net benefit to society. If they didn't have monopolies on information consumption I would be a little less concerned. A different example: Google could have stopped people seeing "false" information about COVID earlier this year. Twitter and other platforms labelled this "misinformation", and Google could have censored it from YouTube, searches, etc. The tech companies anointed the WHO as the arbiter of truth, yet the WHO was wrong for quite a while about several important things. I would prefer to live in a world where individuals are allowed to see all the contested facts and arguments, and decide for themselves. One last example: Ignaz Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and many others. I suppose the real solution is to break up the information monopolies, then let them do all the censoring they want.
    - wcarey 6y ago
      How, even in principle, would google prevent a person from seeing legal documents? Most (all?) jurisdictions publish them on the web themselves? https://www.courtlistener.com/ https://www.courtlistener.com/ is great.
      - esja 6y ago
        I'm not arguing Google are censoring legal documents. But let's take this trend in that direction... 1. How would the average person find that website? A search engine perhaps? 2. How many search engines does the average person use? One, perhaps? Which one?
        tptacek 6y ago
        Nobody has accused Google of burying search results about these court cases, so you can't reasonably pretend that's the debate we're having. Please keep the goalposts static, so we can discuss productively.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The election occurred over a month ago. The counting of votes was complete enough 4 days later that any violations subsequent to then could not have changed the outcome. The relief sought--to prevent the results from being certified--would have been impossible to grant two weeks ago. At this point, any case being filed now over the results of the election is doomed to fail either by the doctrine of laches (you should have filed it sooner) or inability to grant relief, and that's even without considering any other possible failings it may have (including merit!). While the courts will operate under the assumption that a case is meritorious until proven otherwise, there is no reason for the court of public opinion to operate under the same assumption, especially when there is clear precedent and established case history demonstrating why the case must be dismissed that the filing makes no attempt to address.
  - esja 6y ago
    I don't think "the court of public opinion" is a high enough standard for a prospective world-wide monopolistic censor of information. Such an authority needs to be completely rigorous, completely fair, completely objective, completely informed, and so on. Google cannot meet that bar. By your standard, Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and the rest.
    - HideousKojima 6y ago
      Or for an even more recent example, the scientific community largely rejected plate tectonics initially
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
        And was that borne out in the public square or in scientific journals and conferences? There are reasonable arenas for this material. In this case, that arena is the courts.
- SurfingToad 6y ago
  Just because the sun has risen every day of your life, that doesn't mean that you can expect it to do so tomorrow.
  - esja 6y ago
    Of course we can, because it's a law of nature. Whereas man-made laws are subject to human action and interpretation, so outcomes are far less predictable.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

tptacek 6y ago

I think the presence of court cases, frivolous or not, is completely orthogonal to Google's content moderation policies. An appeal to "this is pending in court" is a deeply unprincipled argument; plenty of things that a court would certainly countenance are forbidden by Google's policies.

esja 6y ago
I agree but that's not really my concern. I am most concerned about granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false, and to prevent individuals from seeing the information used to make those judgements, or to decide for themselves. See my other reply to you below.
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  > granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
  - totony 6y ago
    >Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service. And people have to right to find this despicable. Although Google may not actually have that power (I don't know how much Youtube is considered a monopoly)
  - abernard1 6y ago
    > Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service. And half of America that politically was skeptical of anti-trust has the power to rethink that as well. (And they will, and Google will find out if the juice is worth the squeeze on that.) Because of COVID-19 and the huge increase of mail in ballots, there is good reason to believe that fraud was higher than other years. Biden's margin of victory in key swing states is smaller than Trump's in 2016. These are not unreasonable things to discuss and I find unfathomable that this policy would be something Google would apply to say, Iran, or any other country where there was speech skeptical of government. Acting as if speech discussing this on their platform is beyond the pale is ludicrous. It shows a sheltered, fragile group of people who think their views are more common than they are.

skedaddle 6y ago

The "specific details" are a plethora of court rulings, election certifications, and statements from Trump's own lawyers that they are not bringing fraud cases.

anigbrowl 6y ago

They don't need to pre-judge them, they can look out at the actual outcomes of court cases that have already been litigated.