3 ms·
This may be controversial, but I don't agree. Any legitimate item can be used for bad things if someone wants. At the risk of making a bad analogy, a car can b
by Nemi 5y ago
This may be controversial, but I don't agree. Any legitimate item can be used for bad things if someone wants.
At the risk of making a bad analogy, a car can be used by someone to go on a rampage and mow down hundreds of people. If that happened you can be sure that someone, somewhere would suggest that the auto manufacturers have a responsibility to stop this kind of thing from happening again by making a "kill switch" available to police that can be used to stop the vehicle remotely.
Another bad analogy would be using a hammer to kill someone.
Clearly there is a fuzzy line there somewhere. I am not saying that companies have no responsibility in keeping their products from being used in bad ways by bad people, but I do think it is important not to only look at the bad thing and say that companies need to stop that bad thing from happening at all costs.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoIt's not controversial, it's just Google's search engine has become extremely complex and there is a lot of manual intervention going on already. It is very convenient for them to say they want to keep neutral but it doesn't work this way. To use your analogy, imagine a wave of murders done only with a specific brand of hammer. As the CEO of the company manufacturing these hammers, at the very least you would want to inquire as to why your hammers were used and if there are ways to modify your product in order to avoid this kind of hammer misuse of your product in the future. At least any decent person would do that. On the other hand, you could argue in the world where the so called "shareholder value" is the ultimate reference, the CEO would see it not as a misfortune but rather an opportunity to sell more hammers.
- lupire 5y agoIf your hammer is the most popular and least expensive hammer, there's not much to be done.
- RugnirViking 5y agoA pr statement addressing it would be a start. Probably also a token gesture, such as issuing a hammer recall. Sure it costs money, but this is PR 101.
- jankassens 5y agoI don't think Google is quite as neutral here. Google suggests adding "cheater" to the search of the victim's names and ranks those websites. What if the manual of the hammer included a section "try hitting someone with it". Now, Google's recommendation clearly came from seeing those words appear together, but to me Google is somewhere between completely neutral like grep, a hammer, or a car and fully editorialized like a blog or newspaper.
- 8note 5y agoWhy not apply this in the opposite direction? Google is allowingforvad things, and therefore shouldn't exist. The potential for abuse is bad, but only when it's stopping this nonsense? To me, you're endorsing the bad behaviour