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It is laughable that "tech giants" are going to great lengths these days in cahoots with elected politicians and warlords (equally), to crack down on "misinform

It is laughable that "tech giants" are going to great lengths these days in cahoots with elected politicians and warlords (equally), to crack down on "misinformation" and yet when their own algorithm and callous management propagate damaging misinformation, no one can crack the whip on them, so to speak. As others suggested, this needs to hit the court and be brought to the notice of regulators too. What if one day this deceptive "knowledge box" gets someone lynched? Am sure this has already happened if the lens is broad enough. Nevertheless they cannot be allowed to associate random photos with unrelated content without repercussions. At the very least they should have a channel where the general public can reach them and they take prompt action based on the merits of the case. It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is, while they have a deliberately cultivated oversized impact on society.

harlanji 5y ago
> no one can crack the whip on them, so to speak. We collectively can by acting as technology shepherds for those around us, and providing better options. Not our job? I hear you. Technology is to be thought of as a tool, first of all--and a double-edged sword. I spent my high school years and beyond playing with it like a video game, but it's getting/gotten real. In my experience they probably know who all of the potential shepherds are and have moats around them. There could even be instruments that isolate them via slightly "negative" biases that each seem legitimate when looked at through independent compartmentalized lenses, and amount to a "false light" being presented in search results through Algorithmic Fairness or similar. Their behavior could be manipulated as well, to look down upon those who they could help or encourage selfishness. > they cannot be allowed to associate random photos with unrelated content without repercussions. Whole heatedly agree. I'm experiencing various attacks from various parties; having spent 3 years homeless with half of that during the pandemic, I have indeed been physically isolated and thus had disproportionate affect from algorithms--"how am I presented to others?" is literally life or death, as there is no option for a physical presentation. My way off the streets before pandemic was to get retail jobs and save, but that is no longer possible without showers and with the "Simon Says" rules of pandemic in play. The algorithms literally own me. > It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is Studying law around some of these issues in recent years, "false light" might be the angle to attack with for these cases. A person experiencing literal identity theft, meaning ruin being laid to their "root identity" (physical body and legal fiction name), has had a false light painted about them to their associates by malicious parties; seems similar, albeit it could be stupidity or malice from big tech depending how the algorithm "views" a person. A new personal view is that South Korea did it right by requiring ID to get online. I was appalled when my university friends told me in 2010ish (plus a SK friend's laptop was still confiscated at the airport upon return to the US). There is no way to fully recover a relationship damaged by a false light or impersonator, and effectively no way to get accountability unless we can get a service built around NSA's alleged data in Provo that can catch the baddies and create an impact report or similar. Still, many topics have a "toothpaste can't go back into the tube" nature about them, so one can only really move on from the damage without hope of reconnecting. IDs tied to everything could put the brakes on a lot of bad activity. Concretely shepherds could start by distributing YubiKeys and RasPis, bringing back key signing parties, and starting RSS feeds. I didn't realize how rich I was as a techie until I had to go back to living on retail money. I'd have invested a lot more into my Day 1's if I realized how hard they have it--I went straight from my parents' house to a townhouse without renting by age 21, could've done more to rise the water for everyone.
- garbagetime 5y ago
  Replacing Google is difficult.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace. More and more people switching to DuckDuckGo as a default and using Google only when necessary would get the ball rolling. Gmail is pretty replaceable with any other email, although I can see many people not changing from it out of laziness. Google drive apps are pretty nice, but I doubt most people use them much at all, and Microsoft/apple offer alternatives. Google maps can eventually be replaced if people started using the alternatives more. It will take time, but seems doable if more and more people keep changing habits.
    - indigochill 5y ago
      > I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace. What about Vimeo? Or for a more federated approach, PeerTube? From the last conversation I had around PeerTube, the main objection I got was that content creators would probably lose a bunch of traffic which they switched, which is true, but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail.
      - jmnicolas 5y ago
        The good content isn't on any alternative platforms. And they mostly suck. I wish it wasn't true.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail. People use gmail for free, and there are no network effects. Content creators use YouTube due to its ability to sell ads, but I am not familiar with the alternatives to know if they are capable of handling the amount of people and ads YouTube serves. It seems like a more difficult problem than alternatives to email/maps/drive/search.
PaulHoule 5y ago
I asked G ‘how long has X been a senator?’ It returned the ages of the senators, not the length of the terms. It is going downhill.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  Try asking for details about things that didn't happen. Google is broken. https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1333529967079120896 https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1333529967079120896
  - the_lonely_road 5y ago
    This seems disingenuous at best. Even on the very first day that Google launched if you typed those things into it, you would get 'the most relevant responses' which is all that these are, a search engine providing the most relevant response to your query. At some point the tool and its underlying algorithms have to operate on a good faith assumption which this twitter person was clearly not operating on. There may have been some tomfoolery going on with that twitter guy as well and/or in the intervening time Google has improved the algorithms to handle people trying to get silly results. This is what I got trying to repeat his first query: What year did Tom Hanks land on the moon 1995 William Broyles Jr. Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise. For his second query, it makes perfect sense to me why google returned what it did (still returning the answer he got, but notice he conventently cutoff the paragraph of text that includes the saturn 5 rocket and the statue of liberty, possibly the only document on the web to have both in the same sentence, explaining why you got that return. which rocket launched the statue of liberty into the ocean? The Saturn V rocket The Saturn V rocket was 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about the height of a 36-story-tall building, and 18 meters (60 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. Fully fueled for liftoff, the Saturn V weighed 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants.Feb 21, 2018 Apollo 13 (film) - Wikipedia
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
wg0 5y ago
>It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is, while they have a deliberately cultivated oversized impact on society. So true from Twitter, Facebook to Google.
mebassett 5y ago
Getting this to "hit the court" is a non-trivial problem for someone without access to the legal system. So in order to help the OP should we suggest she contact...whom? the EFF? The ACLU? Who can help with these sorts of legal issues?
- auggierose 5y ago
  Doesn't every US citizen of legal age have access to the legal system?
  - zrobotics 5y ago
    Are you offering to pay for OP's lawyer? Edit: This is Google, so what is actually needed is a legal team, not just one lawyer.
    - gpm 5y ago
      Many lawyers are willing to work for something like 30% of whatever payout they manage to get, OP (or rather the pastor) likely doesn't even need to pay for a lawyer, just convince one that they have a good case. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the legal standard is "reckless disregard for the truth", which seems like it has been met. An entire legal team is not needed to litigate a simple case against Google, that's just not how the legal system works...
      - hpoe 5y ago
        It shouldn't need to be like that but it is the case. It has nothing to do with the merits of the case itself the tactic a company like Google employs is to just file reams of paperwork, discovery, delays, motion for this and that and each of them have to be considered and discussed and pushes thibgs out at least another day or two. They then use this tactic to extend cases into years. Although a lawyer will work for a certain cut of the reward they need to eat in the meantime and won't because the case isn't being completed, and isn't going to trial, plus it eats up an enormous amount of time and effort for the lawyer involved cutting into other potential cases. Eventually you have to call it quits and Google wins because the case never went to trial because Googles legal army was able to delay everything by abusing the legal system. In short as the PHB from Dilbert once said "we're using the law to keep justice away." That's what's happening right now.
TomSwirly 5y ago
> this needs to hit the court How would that do anything? What sort of damages could you get for having a wrong photo up? Google would simply run a delaying action with its lawyers for a few years, and then "concede", pay her a pittance, and then in the next rev of the search engine, the problem would simply re-appear, and she'd have to do it all over again for the rest of her life. I worked at Google for five years. Here's how they think (as a corporation): * Everything has to be completely automated with no human corrections. * So some percentage of errors, even horrible errors, are expected. * And it's completely unreasonable for anyone to expect otherwise. * So one of their mistakes fucks up your life and you try to do something about it, you're the asshole.
NoPicklez 5y ago
Reflecting on this, Telco's here in Australia are held to extremely high standards when it comes to honouring when a customer wishes to not be put in public phone records. If found in breach of this they're hit with high fines due to the security this provides for victims of abuse. Yet Google can knowingly build an algorithm which fuzzy matches people's images to content on the internet. Imagine if this was a rapist and the wrong image was posted against it.

harlanji 5y ago

> no one can crack the whip on them, so to speak. We collectively can by acting as technology shepherds for those around us, and providing better options. Not our job? I hear you. Technology is to be thought of as a tool, first of all--and a double-edged sword. I spent my high school years and beyond playing with it like a video game, but it's getting/gotten real. In my experience they probably know who all of the potential shepherds are and have moats around them. There could even be instruments that isolate them via slightly "negative" biases that each seem legitimate when looked at through independent compartmentalized lenses, and amount to a "false light" being presented in search results through Algorithmic Fairness or similar. Their behavior could be manipulated as well, to look down upon those who they could help or encourage selfishness. > they cannot be allowed to associate random photos with unrelated content without repercussions. Whole heatedly agree. I'm experiencing various attacks from various parties; having spent 3 years homeless with half of that during the pandemic, I have indeed been physically isolated and thus had disproportionate affect from algorithms--"how am I presented to others?" is literally life or death, as there is no option for a physical presentation. My way off the streets before pandemic was to get retail jobs and save, but that is no longer possible without showers and with the "Simon Says" rules of pandemic in play. The algorithms literally own me. > It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is Studying law around some of these issues in recent years, "false light" might be the angle to attack with for these cases. A person experiencing literal identity theft, meaning ruin being laid to their "root identity" (physical body and legal fiction name), has had a false light painted about them to their associates by malicious parties; seems similar, albeit it could be stupidity or malice from big tech depending how the algorithm "views" a person. A new personal view is that South Korea did it right by requiring ID to get online. I was appalled when my university friends told me in 2010ish (plus a SK friend's laptop was still confiscated at the airport upon return to the US). There is no way to fully recover a relationship damaged by a false light or impersonator, and effectively no way to get accountability unless we can get a service built around NSA's alleged data in Provo that can catch the baddies and create an impact report or similar. Still, many topics have a "toothpaste can't go back into the tube" nature about them, so one can only really move on from the damage without hope of reconnecting. IDs tied to everything could put the brakes on a lot of bad activity. Concretely shepherds could start by distributing YubiKeys and RasPis, bringing back key signing parties, and starting RSS feeds. I didn't realize how rich I was as a techie until I had to go back to living on retail money. I'd have invested a lot more into my Day 1's if I realized how hard they have it--I went straight from my parents' house to a townhouse without renting by age 21, could've done more to rise the water for everyone.

garbagetime 5y ago
Replacing Google is difficult.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace. More and more people switching to DuckDuckGo as a default and using Google only when necessary would get the ball rolling. Gmail is pretty replaceable with any other email, although I can see many people not changing from it out of laziness. Google drive apps are pretty nice, but I doubt most people use them much at all, and Microsoft/apple offer alternatives. Google maps can eventually be replaced if people started using the alternatives more. It will take time, but seems doable if more and more people keep changing habits.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    > I think YouTube is Google’s only product that 99% of people cannot replace. What about Vimeo? Or for a more federated approach, PeerTube? From the last conversation I had around PeerTube, the main objection I got was that content creators would probably lose a bunch of traffic which they switched, which is true, but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail.
    - jmnicolas 5y ago
      The good content isn't on any alternative platforms. And they mostly suck. I wish it wasn't true.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > but that's effectively the same argument as the hassle involved with switching off Gmail. People use gmail for free, and there are no network effects. Content creators use YouTube due to its ability to sell ads, but I am not familiar with the alternatives to know if they are capable of handling the amount of people and ads YouTube serves. It seems like a more difficult problem than alternatives to email/maps/drive/search.

PaulHoule 5y ago

I asked G ‘how long has X been a senator?’ It returned the ages of the senators, not the length of the terms. It is going downhill.

theandrewbailey 5y ago
Try asking for details about things that didn't happen. Google is broken. https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1333529967079120896 https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1333529967079120896
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  This seems disingenuous at best. Even on the very first day that Google launched if you typed those things into it, you would get 'the most relevant responses' which is all that these are, a search engine providing the most relevant response to your query. At some point the tool and its underlying algorithms have to operate on a good faith assumption which this twitter person was clearly not operating on. There may have been some tomfoolery going on with that twitter guy as well and/or in the intervening time Google has improved the algorithms to handle people trying to get silly results. This is what I got trying to repeat his first query: What year did Tom Hanks land on the moon 1995 William Broyles Jr. Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris and Gary Sinise. For his second query, it makes perfect sense to me why google returned what it did (still returning the answer he got, but notice he conventently cutoff the paragraph of text that includes the saturn 5 rocket and the statue of liberty, possibly the only document on the web to have both in the same sentence, explaining why you got that return. which rocket launched the statue of liberty into the ocean? The Saturn V rocket The Saturn V rocket was 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about the height of a 36-story-tall building, and 18 meters (60 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. Fully fueled for liftoff, the Saturn V weighed 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants.Feb 21, 2018 Apollo 13 (film) - Wikipedia
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

wg0 5y ago

>It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is, while they have a deliberately cultivated oversized impact on society. So true from Twitter, Facebook to Google.

mebassett 5y ago

Getting this to "hit the court" is a non-trivial problem for someone without access to the legal system. So in order to help the OP should we suggest she contact...whom? the EFF? The ACLU? Who can help with these sorts of legal issues?

auggierose 5y ago
Doesn't every US citizen of legal age have access to the legal system?
- zrobotics 5y ago
  Are you offering to pay for OP's lawyer? Edit: This is Google, so what is actually needed is a legal team, not just one lawyer.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Many lawyers are willing to work for something like 30% of whatever payout they manage to get, OP (or rather the pastor) likely doesn't even need to pay for a lawyer, just convince one that they have a good case. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the legal standard is "reckless disregard for the truth", which seems like it has been met. An entire legal team is not needed to litigate a simple case against Google, that's just not how the legal system works...
    - hpoe 5y ago
      It shouldn't need to be like that but it is the case. It has nothing to do with the merits of the case itself the tactic a company like Google employs is to just file reams of paperwork, discovery, delays, motion for this and that and each of them have to be considered and discussed and pushes thibgs out at least another day or two. They then use this tactic to extend cases into years. Although a lawyer will work for a certain cut of the reward they need to eat in the meantime and won't because the case isn't being completed, and isn't going to trial, plus it eats up an enormous amount of time and effort for the lawyer involved cutting into other potential cases. Eventually you have to call it quits and Google wins because the case never went to trial because Googles legal army was able to delay everything by abusing the legal system. In short as the PHB from Dilbert once said "we're using the law to keep justice away." That's what's happening right now.

TomSwirly 5y ago

> this needs to hit the court How would that do anything? What sort of damages could you get for having a wrong photo up? Google would simply run a delaying action with its lawyers for a few years, and then "concede", pay her a pittance, and then in the next rev of the search engine, the problem would simply re-appear, and she'd have to do it all over again for the rest of her life. I worked at Google for five years. Here's how they think (as a corporation): * Everything has to be completely automated with no human corrections. * So some percentage of errors, even horrible errors, are expected. * And it's completely unreasonable for anyone to expect otherwise. * So one of their mistakes fucks up your life and you try to do something about it, you're the asshole.

NoPicklez 5y ago

Reflecting on this, Telco's here in Australia are held to extremely high standards when it comes to honouring when a customer wishes to not be put in public phone records. If found in breach of this they're hit with high fines due to the security this provides for victims of abuse. Yet Google can knowingly build an algorithm which fuzzy matches people's images to content on the internet. Imagine if this was a rapist and the wrong image was posted against it.