4 ms·
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 i
by 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 agoHow, 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 agoI'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 agoNobody 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.
- esja 6y agoI already said it was off topic... it was a hypothetical.
- wcarey 6y ago1. Well, I just told you about them. It's old fashioned, but talking to people works wonders. You're not the first person I've encouraged to go directly to legal documents. 2. Probably the median person uses several -- google, facebook, and the like.
- tptacek 6y agoWe're talking about Youtube, not Google search results for Fox News. I don't find any of this persuasive. Google is also preventing me from forming my own opinions about content featuring firearms, hate speech, violent criminal organizations, sales of regulated goods, nudity, and sexual content. I'm waiting for an argument from you that would be persuasive to someone who thinks it's just fine for Google to ban porn from Youtube.
- esja 6y agoI'm not trying to persuade you that your specific personal preferences for a "Safe Mode Internet" are wrong. I'm saying that just because you are personally comfortable with Google's current set of moderation choices, this does not mean that it is right or optimal for Google to start enforcing these preferences for society as a whole, particularly when it requires them to become the arbiter of truth and basic facts, while also avoiding the normal regulatory obligations associated with this. That is the slope we are on. There is also a difference in kind between porn and this sort of speech. Different laws apply, different social norms apply, different technical options (and trade-offs) apply, and so on. I have also heard that there are many other porn hosting websites, and Google does not enjoy any sort of monopoly. Perhaps we're talking past each other here but to put my general point a different way, and it's only relevant because Google is effectively a monopoly: If you were told you could be born into a world with a free internet, or a curated internet, but you had no influence over who would do the curation, which world would you choose?
- tptacek 6y agoGoogle doesn't enjoy any sort of monopoly in any kind of video content. I don't think your argument is very coherent.
- 22c 6y ago> We're talking about Youtube, not Google search results for Fox News. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, next to Google itself. I would say it's not beyond the realms of possibility for YouTube to eventually eclipse Google.
- 6y ago