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Australia rebukes Google for blocking local content
- ggm 6y agoThe failure to understand A/B testing, the 1:100 subsample and what role it plays is huge: this is not censoring news or blocking news, its Google trying to quantify its effect feeding eyeballs to the news sources in search. Why? Because they want to offset the "value" of the feed, against the implied cost of their news aggregation under the coming Australian mandated payment for news content. I don't have much skin in this game despite being an Australian, I think the main thing for me is the complete mis-characterisation of the A/B test, and what it means. We do A/B testing all the time. There might be an ethics issue in this, much as Facebook experimenting on sad/happy news raised issues, but I think this is on the evidence something google HAS to do, to balance out the economics of the cost/benefit across this area. I think its heading to some kind of least-cost reconciliation, not unlike peer settlement. Disclaimer: this is my theory. I don't work for google. I know google staffers of some years, and ex-staffers. This wasn't informed by talking to them. I said as much in the Graun comment-is-free space too.
- kristianp 6y ago"The search engine said it was conducting experiments to determine the value of its service to Australian news outlets". Sounds like Google is gathering information for an argument that Google News' traffic is of value to local news sources.