31 ms·

I think there's a valid concern with this; a concern which is not necessarily distilled down to "big brother" or "corporate overlords". Google is so large that

I think there's a valid concern with this; a concern which is not necessarily distilled down to "big brother" or "corporate overlords". Google is so large that any stance they take, no matter how minuscule, has immense influence. Case in point, from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/google-maps-neighborhood-names.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/google-maps-ne... > For decades, the district south of downtown and alongside San Francisco Bay here was known as either Rincon Hill, South Beach or South of Market. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. > The peculiar moniker immediately spread digitally, from hotel sites to dating apps to Uber, which all use Google’s map data. The name soon spilled over into the physical world, too. Real-estate listings beckoned prospective tenants to the East Cut. And news organizations referred to the vicinity by that term. My point is, it might seem like a small, inconspicuous change. But at Google-scale, this actually has an impact on the real world, and personally I don't feel confident with Google deciding what words are the correct words.

blenderdt 4y ago
This was also proven during the pandemic. Google made it openly clear that they just block everything on YouTube that goes against Google's stance regarding the pandemic. Google controlles what the world sees on YouTube.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  No problem there. When i log in to (login to?) yt, i know who the boss is.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    Yup, if you don’t like it, just go start your own multi-billion dollar video streaming service.
  - blenderdt 4y ago
    Well it a kind of sad in this case. For example they removed some videos that said the virus spreads via aerosols. Now, one and a half year later most agree this is true and good ventilation could have saved a lot of people.
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      Not really, at the time the science suggested that was the best path. Youtube is a private enterprise and has every right to remove material that they consider dangerous based on their research teams. You were perfectly free to make a video and release it on you own website or peertube or via torrents/usenet. You have a free voice but you don't have the right to mass distribution, that is up to you (the hypothetical generic "you") to see that it happens.
      - rdm70 4y ago
        If they were hiding videos from black activists would you feel the same way?
        tc9923 4y ago
        Not activists and not entirely black, but I know that Youtube works with the Metropolitan Police in the UK to remove drill rap videos that the Met considers too violent (violent content, of course, being one of the things that is against Youtube's TOS). https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-dr... (As always, content removal is a controversial topic, and that includes this topic.) Youtube has been stung by various "scandals" in the past where advertisers temporarily "boycott" (or, at least, raised a ruckus) when an ad appears next to content the advertisers consider objectionable (such as, as I recall, child exploitation content and al-Qaeda / jihadist groups several years ago). As an ad supported platform, I do think that Youtube certainly should have the right to monitor their platform in order to remove content that they believe is bad for business, including protecting advertiser brands from content they don't want to appear next to. Youtube also has legal requirements to follow (eg copyright law) and may do some things more to manage their own brand, or even perhaps manage legal liability. It would be nice if Youtube was more transparent about the whys of their content management, but as a private company they are not obligated to do so. Youtube is not the last word in streaming videos. There are several platforms dedicated to hosting videos that would fall afoul of Youtube's content policy. Many of the ones I can think of are not funded by advertising, though some platforms are big enough where "niche advertising networks" are possible (eg big adult video networks like Pornhub).
  - Engineering-MD 4y ago
    As an aside, I think login to, but it’s weird. It can be separate, joined to ‘log’ as in login or in some contexts with ‘to’ as in into. Perhaps it should just be ‘loginto’?
    - branon 4y ago
      "Log into?"
    - blowski 4y ago
      “log into” or “log in to”. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5302/log-in-to-or-log-into-or-login-to https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5302/log-in-to-o...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- random314 4y ago
  Seeing the recommendations on my YouTube home page, your statement is patently false.
  - blenderdt 4y ago
    Maybe they recently changed this. But during the pandemic a lot of videos were blocked. And Google just admitted this was because they thought they were fake pandemic news.
- afavour 4y ago
  Eh, I don’t think that’s the point the OP is making and is something we’ve heard ad nauseum during the pandemic. Google controls what appears on YouTube. That’s not really very surprising. But the idea that Google’s choices (over words or neighbourhood name) spills out into the offline world and alters it… that’s something else.
  - nostrebored 4y ago
    Google's choices spilling out into the offline world is exactly what the GP was getting at -- by choosing to expose Youtube users to a specific type of content, Google has chosen what escapes into meatspace.
    - seoaeu 4y ago
      That’s like saying that the New York Times editors’s choices spill out into the offline world because they choose what appears on the pages of the newspaper
      - Karunamon 4y ago
        Which is strictly true. Except Google has much further reach.
  - throwawayboise 4y ago
    YouTube's primary function is to be open to the public. Anyone can go there, anyone can post videos there. They are like a mall or other privately-owned-but-publicly-open place. Google should not be censoring speech there, beyond already-illegal stuff and other content that is broadly prohibited in public places (porn, etc.)
buro9 4y ago
It's no longer big brother, it's big sibling and it has always been big sibling.
- pempem 4y ago
  Best comment!
  - pempem 4y ago
    To be clear, its the best comment because "...it has always been big sibling" These approaches have a way of wiping the past clean off the slate. There's no problem with the words 'big sibling' - I, as a big sister, am in favor of it. The problem is that the internet is a snapshot pretending to be all of history.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I thought the phrase was "dear sibling" since "big" might not be sufficiently inclusive.
  - vincentmarle 4y ago
    True, it would discriminate against smaller companies.
  - ngc248 4y ago
    dear would discriminate against those who are not so beloved.
Clubber 4y ago
Can it be turned off? It sounds like a fine optional feature and an annoying required one. If I'm writing something, I certainly don't want the word processor constantly throwing up modals ruining my train of thought. Reminds me of Clippy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant
- Kye 4y ago
  Defaults matter because few people change from it. If everyone zigs because the dominant software defaults to it and you want to zag, you're fighting against that current. Real world example: Twitter got even worse once they bullied everyone into algorithmic feeds by changing it back from chronological until people gave up and left it.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It doesn't sound more intrusive than the existing red-squiggle for spelling errors.
  - rurp 4y ago
    Spelling errors usually have an objective fix and are isolated to a single word. Warning about an improper word depends on the surrounding context and is highly subjective. The latter case requires a great deal more cognitive load to deal with and I think it will be much more distracting.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      > usually have an objective fix Well, nowadays. Keeping in mind that the only reason English spelling is standardized in 2022 is the waves of intentional English language spelling standardizations that occurred in the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries, each of which was supported by dictionaries, education programs, and a general messaging that it would be the intelligent thing to do to get on board with the standard. I can't help but wonder if people decried the idea of standardization back then. "It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word." ~Andrew Jackson, 1833 (... typing these sentences has triggered my spell-checker three times. I have accepted two suggestions and taken the liberty of disagreeing with the third, after a cross-check with my dictionary to confirm my spelling). ;)
mdoms 4y ago
This is why I'm concerned about the word "inclusive" in the original tweet. I don't want to see the Americanisation (or worse, San Franciscoisation) of all Western cultures. I worked at an Australian tech company that expanded its offices into USA tech hubs. Very quickly our American staff started complaining about non-inclusive phrases commonly used at the company - phrases like "guys" instead of "folks". In Australia "guys" is a gender-neutral term when used collectively. It's very commonly used and not considered non-inclusive by any Australian I know. But of course they forced the change and the word "guys" was effectively retired from conversation there. Is it more inclusive to force an Australian company of largely Australian employees to adopt an American culture because of a few easily offended Americans on staff? Or is that less inclusive? It seems like forcing people to drop their own cultural affectations and assuming that your American ones are the de facto correct ones is (in a small way) rather imperialist. Yes this is a minor example on the scheme of things. But I think it's illustrative.
- rurp 4y ago
  I think you are spot on about this. Different communities and regions have varying definitions for words, and there are probably thousands of such cases. Trying to dictate one "correct" usage for each is extremely arrogant and disrespectful. Not to mention that meanings can evolve over time a great deal. If these types of corrections become common place I'm not sure what all of the ramifications will be but I suspect they will be bad on the whole.
- Swizec 4y ago
  As a European who moved to San Francisco a few years ago. I almost know how to use the 3 shells. (for anyone who doesn't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nFEnFtvCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nFEnFtvCM)
- Ferrotin 4y ago
  > In Australia "guys" is a gender-neutral term when used collectively. It is in the U.S. too.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
Animats 4y ago
There's an organization, the "East Cut Community Benefit District", promoting this. Their main job is homeless removal. Google used to choose map markers by population. The map of Rio de Janeiro showed all the favelas by name, and ignored the tourist areas. This annoyed Brazilian authorities. [1] https://www.theeastcut.org/ https://www.theeastcut.org/
- Talanes 4y ago
  Yeah, the East Cut is definitely not an example of real estate taking their cues from Google, but Google taking their cues from the real-estate sector. San Francisco's realtor-defined neighborhoods have always been a little off from the colloquially described one.
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  > Their main job is homeless removal. Citation needed.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    I do not like this type of reply. To me, it is hostile and lazy. Idea: Try Googling: East Cut Community Benefit District homeless It only takes a couple of seconds. I just did, and I found an article from FastCompany that discusses this matter. Ref: https://www.fastcompany.com/90217789/inside-san-franciscos-shaky-plan-to-build-a-lux-new-neighborhood-from-scratch https://www.fastcompany.com/90217789/inside-san-franciscos-s... Nice quote: The cost of living here has contributed to a homeless problem that has gained national notoriety. But it is less evident on the surface because luxe apartment building security has worked to clear the streets. The CBD says it helps with the homeless problems and says it has gotten 2,300 calls for homeless outreach assistance from January through October 2018. But a recent study from UC Berkeley found that some CBDs (also called Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs) in California have contributed to the rise of anti-homeless laws across the state by lobbying local governments. “Our key finding is that [CBDs] exclude homeless people from public space through aggressive policy advocacy and policing practices,” says Jeff Selbin, the director of the Policy Center and UC Berkeley School of Law, at a press conference in September about the study. “This finding raises important legal—and I would say moral—concerns.” You may also find a shi--y content farm piece from www.businessinsider.in that reads like a copy-paste job from the FastCompany article and a bunch of PR from East Cut CBD. No need to add a reference for that article... :)
cato_the_elder 4y ago
> I don't feel confident with Google deciding what words are the correct words. Personally, even if they could accurately decide what are the "correct" word in some sense, it didn't make it less dystopian for me. I would rather make my own mistakes, be wrong, and have some regrets rather than having to put up with the constant holier-than-thou browbeating and woke-scolding.
codesternews 4y ago
This is pretty scary. Inclusivity fine but what else can they push and censor. I am from different country and most of the words are gender neutral which in US pretty big deal like (landlord, guys - which is gender neutral in our country). Its like pushing your culture on different countries. I don't want to see the Americanisation on our country cultures. There is no issues of inclusivity in our country. Google is pushing their agenda on different groups, cultures and countries, This is how it starts. https://twitter.com/thecitywanderer/status/1516176983549530122 https://twitter.com/thecitywanderer/status/15161769835495301...
- colpabar 4y ago
  >I don't want to see the Americanisation on our country cultures. This is something that I just cannot reconcile with the notion that all these measures are meant to make things more inclusive. All I see are groups of rich and powerful people telling people "below them" how to behave, and makings tons of money doing it. D&I is a grift.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - uoaei 4y ago
    - alexb_ 4y ago
      DEI is a great system as long as you assume that everyone participates, everyone is completely free of biases, and people actually want it to happen. So you know, it doesn't fucking work.
      - dvtrn 4y ago
        DEI is a great system as long as you assume that everyone participates, everyone is completely free of biases Having been on more than a couple DEI boards, I'm really curious where the notion that everyone must be "completely free of biases" comes from in your mind? I've never understood, and never saw any DEI effort describing bias to be something to be completely, utterly and totally eradicated, but instead something to recognize as a source of potentially--but not always--folly-filled actions ("what happens when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me", etc). Everyone has biases about something or another. Every last one of us. That's why such things as "implicit" vs "explicit" bias exists, and any DEI effort worth its salt should really be making it known that there's a difference between the two.
la6472 4y ago
- drdeca 4y ago
  Much evil can be done with good intentions. It is of prime importance to recognize one's own fallibility. The more power one has, the more important it is for one to to recognize the possibility that one will err. Also, the whitelist->allowlist thing is stupid, and has no benefits other than demonstrating who is in power.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    > Much evil can be done with good intentions. "If we don't colonize them and replace their religion with Christianity they'll go to hell and we can't have that"
  - la6472 4y ago
    - akomtu 4y ago
      There is nothing humiliating in it, so I'm going to politely ignore your suggestion. In practice, though, the "gentle suggestion" is a thinly veiled threat to report heresy to inquisition.
    - teakettle42 4y ago
      I think “allowlist” is oppressive and humiliating so can you please stop using it altogether? It’s all about demonstrating that you have the social power to control other people’s words, even when (perhaps especially when) your justification for doing so is completely and obviously nonsensical to everyone involved. I think it qualifies as an oppressive form of social violence. If you at all cared about the lived experienced of the folks you’re oppressing, you’d stop using it.
    - la6472 4y ago
throwaway13337 4y ago
There is indeed something deep going on here. When our communication tools nudge us in a direction, they change who we are. This is a profound change when scaled to the society as a whole and when the way we communicate is dominated by the tools we use. Our tools are an extension of ourselves. It's for this reason that it's a very scary direction we are going with all tools - smart phones, home automation, email software, brain-computer interface, etc - that are extensions of ourselves but agents of companies acting not on behalf of the end user but on the behalf of their own interests. Tools that are an extension of ourselves need to be the agent only of ourselves. We, as individuals, require that to keep our own personhood. It sound dramatic to say, but our essence of being is what's at stake here.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  - mnd999 4y ago
  - cato_the_elder 4y ago
    > You're free to ignore the inclusivity suggestions, just as you're free to ignore the spelling suggestions. Sure, then please kindly also install the upcoming Russian version of it, which merely makes suggestions like using the "neutral" word "special operation" when you inappropriately call it an "invasion". These will be mere suggestions, and you are free to ignore them, but you should always be aware of the "consequences" of the words you choose.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      If I were writing a document to be shared with Russian government officials, I would want those suggestions. The consequences of making my document not suit its audience already exist. If I'm writing a suggestion to my mail carrier, I wouldn't want to use the the word "mailman" because she could see it as being passive aggressive and interpret the suggestion accordingly. This, just like spell-checking, just makes it easier to write a document that won't make the audience quibble over diction or make negative inferences about tone.
trutannus 4y ago
> a concern which is not necessarily distilled down to "big brother" or "corporate overlords". My first thought was the time that Google banned a genocide researcher and froze their Drive account because it contained images and video of warcrimes for their research. I can only imagine this `feature` going the same way over time. This is going to affect people who are legitimately studying social problems, more than it is likely to help fix the problems they're studying. For example, the Nuremberg Trial transcript probably contains some pretty choice words. If Google starts suggesting edits, or worse auto-applying them like they do with spelling, we run the risk of whitewashing documents like this unintentionally.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  This is going to affect people who are legitimately studying social problems We don't need people to fix social problems anymore. We have the tech industry to do that for us. After all, freedom and independent thought don't scale.
  - trutannus 4y ago
    "It's an engineering problem"
_trampeltier 4y ago
The village name, from the village next to my village (in Switzerland) is wrong on Google Maps since ever. But it seems, nobody does care or is impossible to reach somebody on Google to correct it.
- barrkel 4y ago
  Have you tried clicking on 'Send feedback', the very small link on the bottom right of the map? I did when Maps was failing to route through a junction near where I lived in London, because it thought going straight through wasn't legal (it was). It was fixed a few weeks later. (Disclaimer: I work for Google but nowhere near Maps, and my experience of correction predated my employment. And I don't speak for Google.)
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    Where Google Maps has a dedicated way of providing corrections, you can get things fixed quickly. Where it doesn’t, and you have to use a more generic feedback form, my experience is that it never gets corrected. Zero times out of perhaps a dozen that I’ve tried, for several different types of errors (misplaced town markers, a missing consonant in the Bengali spelling of a road name, can’t remember what else off the top of my head). I just don’t bother now. Most seem to get fixed some years down the line, probably incidentally as part of some other more generic data or processing algorithm update. The only time I’ve had any sort of prompt success was when I reported something on a Google Maps-related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367961. The fix in that instance was evidently done as a one-off exception, but looking at a few places in Google Maps now, I think the underlying systemic issue is finally fixed (for now).
  - intellirogue 4y ago
    As far as I can tell, that feedback goes into a black hole. I've sent many corrections there, not a single one has been adopted, including ones where entire streets didn't exist (i.e. they exist on Maps but have never existed IRL). In the city I used to live, they had to put signs up at the entrance to a street, warning people to ignore Google Maps. It tried to route people the wrong way up a one-way street, and the government had failed to get Google to fix it.
dogman144 4y ago
I think what is most difficult is the inability to attribute this change to a clear intent, which can be then be clearly opposed. What's likely happening under the hood is a Google PM thinks this a good idea bc they have an MBA from a good school, see the market research on grammarly (sp?), knows it nods to helpful social movements sometimes, and decides to roll it out as an OKR from a team of a sub-team of a product of Google of Alphabet. Who do you push back on against this? Putting aside the massive network effects GOOG can wrangle to roll this out and have it standardize. The same thing happens with an Amazon warehouse in Rural PA that is doing shady things with workers and data tracking, a Walmart in Montana. The city council decides to do something about it. Who exactly do they complain to with actual impact? There is no one really.
xracy 4y ago
How do you feel about autocorrect?
asiachick 4y ago
I use Chrome. I like it better than the alternatives. But, I turn off Google completion suggestions. To see what I mean, go to Google.com in English and type "tr" in the search box (do not press enter). Suddenly things I don't want to see are suggested to me. The same is true in Chrome's address bar unless you opt out (PS: I get most people might find it useful or not care and I'm in the minority). I get if I actually did the search I'd get google's suggestions but something about it completing with pictures to partial input feels more off for some reason. But, even more, the default home page of Chrome shows the day's Google Doodle. I often like Google Doodles, but, at the same time, often the Google Doodle is some celebration of a person and while that's semi innocuous, one day it suddently felt like someone else's propoganda in front of me. I quickly changed my new tab page to something without Google. It's scary to me that a few people at Google get to choose each day what to make a ~billion people look at. It seems different than say the NYTimes because the browser is a tool to me, it's not the source of content itself. Sure if I go read the NYTimes they get to choose what's on the front page. But I can choose not to go to the Times. But, by default, Browsers are a source of content (Except Safari? Though it does by default promote 10+ company's sites). Even Firefox, by default, shovles content someone else selected, in my face, intentionally or un-intensionally pushing their agendna on me.
wordnerd2022 4y ago
That neighborhood itself calls itself the East Cut. They have signs on all the light posts proudly proclaiming it
thih9 4y ago
It wasn’t just google that wanted the name change though. > The East Cut was established in 2015 by residents and business owners as a community benefit district. The goal is to provide this neighborhood its identity separate from South of Market and South Beach neighborhoods. Source: https://www.realestateadvisor.com/neighborhoods/san_francisco/east_cut https://www.realestateadvisor.com/neighborhoods/san_francisc... Side note, I can’t access parent source due to paywall.
alephnan 4y ago
> rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. There was briefly some gentrified name for the area between Soma, Portrero Hill and Mission, around where the Muji was and the highway overpass still is. I remember it rhyming with SomaSopa from that one episode of South Park, but even more ridiculous because it concatenated 3 words alluding to each of the 3 adjacent neighborhoods. Does anyone remember it? EDIT: Huh, they've seen to have settled on 'Showplace Square' now. That's new.
stephen_g 4y ago
It is interesting about the Maps thing. We have a similar one in our city, where part of the CBD is designated 'Frog's Hollow', which was the colloquial name for a small area (basically mostly a slum) for a time in the 1800s. It makes it look like that's the actual name of half our CBD! But it hasn't slipped back into actual use, it's just a curiosity. Interesting that it's been like that for years and they still haven't fixed it...
biztos 4y ago
I used to work on Rincon Hill and the East Cut thing happened after I moved away, so I had long wondered whether it was an old name being revived (it kinda has a gold-rush ring to it) or another real estate scheme like calling the Tenderloin “Lower Nob Hill.” Going by the article maybe you can just pay a branding company and they’ll get Google to rename your neighborhood whatever you like? Upper Biztos Heights here I come!
knorker 4y ago
> "corporate overlords". Please use more inclusive language, like "overpersons", or "overaristocracy".

blenderdt 4y ago

This was also proven during the pandemic. Google made it openly clear that they just block everything on YouTube that goes against Google's stance regarding the pandemic. Google controlles what the world sees on YouTube.

InCityDreams 4y ago
No problem there. When i log in to (login to?) yt, i know who the boss is.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Yup, if you don’t like it, just go start your own multi-billion dollar video streaming service.
- blenderdt 4y ago
  Well it a kind of sad in this case. For example they removed some videos that said the virus spreads via aerosols. Now, one and a half year later most agree this is true and good ventilation could have saved a lot of people.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Not really, at the time the science suggested that was the best path. Youtube is a private enterprise and has every right to remove material that they consider dangerous based on their research teams. You were perfectly free to make a video and release it on you own website or peertube or via torrents/usenet. You have a free voice but you don't have the right to mass distribution, that is up to you (the hypothetical generic "you") to see that it happens.
    - rdm70 4y ago
      If they were hiding videos from black activists would you feel the same way?
      - tc9923 4y ago
        Not activists and not entirely black, but I know that Youtube works with the Metropolitan Police in the UK to remove drill rap videos that the Met considers too violent (violent content, of course, being one of the things that is against Youtube's TOS). https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-dr... (As always, content removal is a controversial topic, and that includes this topic.) Youtube has been stung by various "scandals" in the past where advertisers temporarily "boycott" (or, at least, raised a ruckus) when an ad appears next to content the advertisers consider objectionable (such as, as I recall, child exploitation content and al-Qaeda / jihadist groups several years ago). As an ad supported platform, I do think that Youtube certainly should have the right to monitor their platform in order to remove content that they believe is bad for business, including protecting advertiser brands from content they don't want to appear next to. Youtube also has legal requirements to follow (eg copyright law) and may do some things more to manage their own brand, or even perhaps manage legal liability. It would be nice if Youtube was more transparent about the whys of their content management, but as a private company they are not obligated to do so. Youtube is not the last word in streaming videos. There are several platforms dedicated to hosting videos that would fall afoul of Youtube's content policy. Many of the ones I can think of are not funded by advertising, though some platforms are big enough where "niche advertising networks" are possible (eg big adult video networks like Pornhub).
- Engineering-MD 4y ago
  As an aside, I think login to, but it’s weird. It can be separate, joined to ‘log’ as in login or in some contexts with ‘to’ as in into. Perhaps it should just be ‘loginto’?
  - branon 4y ago
    "Log into?"
  - blowski 4y ago
    “log into” or “log in to”. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5302/log-in-to-or-log-into-or-login-to https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5302/log-in-to-o...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
random314 4y ago
Seeing the recommendations on my YouTube home page, your statement is patently false.
- blenderdt 4y ago
  Maybe they recently changed this. But during the pandemic a lot of videos were blocked. And Google just admitted this was because they thought they were fake pandemic news.
afavour 4y ago
Eh, I don’t think that’s the point the OP is making and is something we’ve heard ad nauseum during the pandemic. Google controls what appears on YouTube. That’s not really very surprising. But the idea that Google’s choices (over words or neighbourhood name) spills out into the offline world and alters it… that’s something else.
- nostrebored 4y ago
  Google's choices spilling out into the offline world is exactly what the GP was getting at -- by choosing to expose Youtube users to a specific type of content, Google has chosen what escapes into meatspace.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    That’s like saying that the New York Times editors’s choices spill out into the offline world because they choose what appears on the pages of the newspaper
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      Which is strictly true. Except Google has much further reach.
- throwawayboise 4y ago
  YouTube's primary function is to be open to the public. Anyone can go there, anyone can post videos there. They are like a mall or other privately-owned-but-publicly-open place. Google should not be censoring speech there, beyond already-illegal stuff and other content that is broadly prohibited in public places (porn, etc.)

buro9 4y ago

It's no longer big brother, it's big sibling and it has always been big sibling.

pempem 4y ago
Best comment!
- pempem 4y ago
  To be clear, its the best comment because "...it has always been big sibling" These approaches have a way of wiping the past clean off the slate. There's no problem with the words 'big sibling' - I, as a big sister, am in favor of it. The problem is that the internet is a snapshot pretending to be all of history.
zbrozek 4y ago
I thought the phrase was "dear sibling" since "big" might not be sufficiently inclusive.
- vincentmarle 4y ago
  True, it would discriminate against smaller companies.
- ngc248 4y ago
  dear would discriminate against those who are not so beloved.

Clubber 4y ago

Can it be turned off? It sounds like a fine optional feature and an annoying required one. If I'm writing something, I certainly don't want the word processor constantly throwing up modals ruining my train of thought. Reminds me of Clippy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant

Kye 4y ago
Defaults matter because few people change from it. If everyone zigs because the dominant software defaults to it and you want to zag, you're fighting against that current. Real world example: Twitter got even worse once they bullied everyone into algorithmic feeds by changing it back from chronological until people gave up and left it.
shadowgovt 4y ago
It doesn't sound more intrusive than the existing red-squiggle for spelling errors.
- rurp 4y ago
  Spelling errors usually have an objective fix and are isolated to a single word. Warning about an improper word depends on the surrounding context and is highly subjective. The latter case requires a great deal more cognitive load to deal with and I think it will be much more distracting.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > usually have an objective fix Well, nowadays. Keeping in mind that the only reason English spelling is standardized in 2022 is the waves of intentional English language spelling standardizations that occurred in the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries, each of which was supported by dictionaries, education programs, and a general messaging that it would be the intelligent thing to do to get on board with the standard. I can't help but wonder if people decried the idea of standardization back then. "It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word." ~Andrew Jackson, 1833 (... typing these sentences has triggered my spell-checker three times. I have accepted two suggestions and taken the liberty of disagreeing with the third, after a cross-check with my dictionary to confirm my spelling). ;)

mdoms 4y ago

This is why I'm concerned about the word "inclusive" in the original tweet. I don't want to see the Americanisation (or worse, San Franciscoisation) of all Western cultures. I worked at an Australian tech company that expanded its offices into USA tech hubs. Very quickly our American staff started complaining about non-inclusive phrases commonly used at the company - phrases like "guys" instead of "folks". In Australia "guys" is a gender-neutral term when used collectively. It's very commonly used and not considered non-inclusive by any Australian I know. But of course they forced the change and the word "guys" was effectively retired from conversation there. Is it more inclusive to force an Australian company of largely Australian employees to adopt an American culture because of a few easily offended Americans on staff? Or is that less inclusive? It seems like forcing people to drop their own cultural affectations and assuming that your American ones are the de facto correct ones is (in a small way) rather imperialist. Yes this is a minor example on the scheme of things. But I think it's illustrative.

rurp 4y ago
I think you are spot on about this. Different communities and regions have varying definitions for words, and there are probably thousands of such cases. Trying to dictate one "correct" usage for each is extremely arrogant and disrespectful. Not to mention that meanings can evolve over time a great deal. If these types of corrections become common place I'm not sure what all of the ramifications will be but I suspect they will be bad on the whole.
Swizec 4y ago
As a European who moved to San Francisco a few years ago. I almost know how to use the 3 shells. (for anyone who doesn't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nFEnFtvCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nFEnFtvCM)
Ferrotin 4y ago
> In Australia "guys" is a gender-neutral term when used collectively. It is in the U.S. too.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago

Animats 4y ago

There's an organization, the "East Cut Community Benefit District", promoting this. Their main job is homeless removal. Google used to choose map markers by population. The map of Rio de Janeiro showed all the favelas by name, and ignored the tourist areas. This annoyed Brazilian authorities. [1] https://www.theeastcut.org/ https://www.theeastcut.org/

Talanes 4y ago
Yeah, the East Cut is definitely not an example of real estate taking their cues from Google, but Google taking their cues from the real-estate sector. San Francisco's realtor-defined neighborhoods have always been a little off from the colloquially described one.
diebeforei485 4y ago
> Their main job is homeless removal. Citation needed.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  I do not like this type of reply. To me, it is hostile and lazy. Idea: Try Googling: East Cut Community Benefit District homeless It only takes a couple of seconds. I just did, and I found an article from FastCompany that discusses this matter. Ref: https://www.fastcompany.com/90217789/inside-san-franciscos-shaky-plan-to-build-a-lux-new-neighborhood-from-scratch https://www.fastcompany.com/90217789/inside-san-franciscos-s... Nice quote: The cost of living here has contributed to a homeless problem that has gained national notoriety. But it is less evident on the surface because luxe apartment building security has worked to clear the streets. The CBD says it helps with the homeless problems and says it has gotten 2,300 calls for homeless outreach assistance from January through October 2018. But a recent study from UC Berkeley found that some CBDs (also called Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs) in California have contributed to the rise of anti-homeless laws across the state by lobbying local governments. “Our key finding is that [CBDs] exclude homeless people from public space through aggressive policy advocacy and policing practices,” says Jeff Selbin, the director of the Policy Center and UC Berkeley School of Law, at a press conference in September about the study. “This finding raises important legal—and I would say moral—concerns.” You may also find a shi--y content farm piece from www.businessinsider.in that reads like a copy-paste job from the FastCompany article and a bunch of PR from East Cut CBD. No need to add a reference for that article... :)

cato_the_elder 4y ago

> I don't feel confident with Google deciding what words are the correct words. Personally, even if they could accurately decide what are the "correct" word in some sense, it didn't make it less dystopian for me. I would rather make my own mistakes, be wrong, and have some regrets rather than having to put up with the constant holier-than-thou browbeating and woke-scolding.

codesternews 4y ago

This is pretty scary. Inclusivity fine but what else can they push and censor. I am from different country and most of the words are gender neutral which in US pretty big deal like (landlord, guys - which is gender neutral in our country). Its like pushing your culture on different countries. I don't want to see the Americanisation on our country cultures. There is no issues of inclusivity in our country. Google is pushing their agenda on different groups, cultures and countries, This is how it starts. https://twitter.com/thecitywanderer/status/1516176983549530122 https://twitter.com/thecitywanderer/status/15161769835495301...

colpabar 4y ago
>I don't want to see the Americanisation on our country cultures. This is something that I just cannot reconcile with the notion that all these measures are meant to make things more inclusive. All I see are groups of rich and powerful people telling people "below them" how to behave, and makings tons of money doing it. D&I is a grift.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- uoaei 4y ago
  - alexb_ 4y ago
    DEI is a great system as long as you assume that everyone participates, everyone is completely free of biases, and people actually want it to happen. So you know, it doesn't fucking work.
    - dvtrn 4y ago
      DEI is a great system as long as you assume that everyone participates, everyone is completely free of biases Having been on more than a couple DEI boards, I'm really curious where the notion that everyone must be "completely free of biases" comes from in your mind? I've never understood, and never saw any DEI effort describing bias to be something to be completely, utterly and totally eradicated, but instead something to recognize as a source of potentially--but not always--folly-filled actions ("what happens when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me", etc). Everyone has biases about something or another. Every last one of us. That's why such things as "implicit" vs "explicit" bias exists, and any DEI effort worth its salt should really be making it known that there's a difference between the two.

la6472 4y ago

drdeca 4y ago
Much evil can be done with good intentions. It is of prime importance to recognize one's own fallibility. The more power one has, the more important it is for one to to recognize the possibility that one will err. Also, the whitelist->allowlist thing is stupid, and has no benefits other than demonstrating who is in power.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  > Much evil can be done with good intentions. "If we don't colonize them and replace their religion with Christianity they'll go to hell and we can't have that"
- la6472 4y ago
  - akomtu 4y ago
    There is nothing humiliating in it, so I'm going to politely ignore your suggestion. In practice, though, the "gentle suggestion" is a thinly veiled threat to report heresy to inquisition.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    I think “allowlist” is oppressive and humiliating so can you please stop using it altogether? It’s all about demonstrating that you have the social power to control other people’s words, even when (perhaps especially when) your justification for doing so is completely and obviously nonsensical to everyone involved. I think it qualifies as an oppressive form of social violence. If you at all cared about the lived experienced of the folks you’re oppressing, you’d stop using it.
  - la6472 4y ago

throwaway13337 4y ago

There is indeed something deep going on here. When our communication tools nudge us in a direction, they change who we are. This is a profound change when scaled to the society as a whole and when the way we communicate is dominated by the tools we use. Our tools are an extension of ourselves. It's for this reason that it's a very scary direction we are going with all tools - smart phones, home automation, email software, brain-computer interface, etc - that are extensions of ourselves but agents of companies acting not on behalf of the end user but on the behalf of their own interests. Tools that are an extension of ourselves need to be the agent only of ourselves. We, as individuals, require that to keep our own personhood. It sound dramatic to say, but our essence of being is what's at stake here.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
- mnd999 4y ago
- cato_the_elder 4y ago
  > You're free to ignore the inclusivity suggestions, just as you're free to ignore the spelling suggestions. Sure, then please kindly also install the upcoming Russian version of it, which merely makes suggestions like using the "neutral" word "special operation" when you inappropriately call it an "invasion". These will be mere suggestions, and you are free to ignore them, but you should always be aware of the "consequences" of the words you choose.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    If I were writing a document to be shared with Russian government officials, I would want those suggestions. The consequences of making my document not suit its audience already exist. If I'm writing a suggestion to my mail carrier, I wouldn't want to use the the word "mailman" because she could see it as being passive aggressive and interpret the suggestion accordingly. This, just like spell-checking, just makes it easier to write a document that won't make the audience quibble over diction or make negative inferences about tone.

trutannus 4y ago

> a concern which is not necessarily distilled down to "big brother" or "corporate overlords". My first thought was the time that Google banned a genocide researcher and froze their Drive account because it contained images and video of warcrimes for their research. I can only imagine this `feature` going the same way over time. This is going to affect people who are legitimately studying social problems, more than it is likely to help fix the problems they're studying. For example, the Nuremberg Trial transcript probably contains some pretty choice words. If Google starts suggesting edits, or worse auto-applying them like they do with spelling, we run the risk of whitewashing documents like this unintentionally.

reaperducer 4y ago
This is going to affect people who are legitimately studying social problems We don't need people to fix social problems anymore. We have the tech industry to do that for us. After all, freedom and independent thought don't scale.
- trutannus 4y ago
  "It's an engineering problem"

_trampeltier 4y ago

The village name, from the village next to my village (in Switzerland) is wrong on Google Maps since ever. But it seems, nobody does care or is impossible to reach somebody on Google to correct it.

barrkel 4y ago
Have you tried clicking on 'Send feedback', the very small link on the bottom right of the map? I did when Maps was failing to route through a junction near where I lived in London, because it thought going straight through wasn't legal (it was). It was fixed a few weeks later. (Disclaimer: I work for Google but nowhere near Maps, and my experience of correction predated my employment. And I don't speak for Google.)
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  Where Google Maps has a dedicated way of providing corrections, you can get things fixed quickly. Where it doesn’t, and you have to use a more generic feedback form, my experience is that it never gets corrected. Zero times out of perhaps a dozen that I’ve tried, for several different types of errors (misplaced town markers, a missing consonant in the Bengali spelling of a road name, can’t remember what else off the top of my head). I just don’t bother now. Most seem to get fixed some years down the line, probably incidentally as part of some other more generic data or processing algorithm update. The only time I’ve had any sort of prompt success was when I reported something on a Google Maps-related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367961. The fix in that instance was evidently done as a one-off exception, but looking at a few places in Google Maps now, I think the underlying systemic issue is finally fixed (for now).
- intellirogue 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, that feedback goes into a black hole. I've sent many corrections there, not a single one has been adopted, including ones where entire streets didn't exist (i.e. they exist on Maps but have never existed IRL). In the city I used to live, they had to put signs up at the entrance to a street, warning people to ignore Google Maps. It tried to route people the wrong way up a one-way street, and the government had failed to get Google to fix it.

dogman144 4y ago

I think what is most difficult is the inability to attribute this change to a clear intent, which can be then be clearly opposed. What's likely happening under the hood is a Google PM thinks this a good idea bc they have an MBA from a good school, see the market research on grammarly (sp?), knows it nods to helpful social movements sometimes, and decides to roll it out as an OKR from a team of a sub-team of a product of Google of Alphabet. Who do you push back on against this? Putting aside the massive network effects GOOG can wrangle to roll this out and have it standardize. The same thing happens with an Amazon warehouse in Rural PA that is doing shady things with workers and data tracking, a Walmart in Montana. The city council decides to do something about it. Who exactly do they complain to with actual impact? There is no one really.

xracy 4y ago

How do you feel about autocorrect?

asiachick 4y ago

I use Chrome. I like it better than the alternatives. But, I turn off Google completion suggestions. To see what I mean, go to Google.com in English and type "tr" in the search box (do not press enter). Suddenly things I don't want to see are suggested to me. The same is true in Chrome's address bar unless you opt out (PS: I get most people might find it useful or not care and I'm in the minority). I get if I actually did the search I'd get google's suggestions but something about it completing with pictures to partial input feels more off for some reason. But, even more, the default home page of Chrome shows the day's Google Doodle. I often like Google Doodles, but, at the same time, often the Google Doodle is some celebration of a person and while that's semi innocuous, one day it suddently felt like someone else's propoganda in front of me. I quickly changed my new tab page to something without Google. It's scary to me that a few people at Google get to choose each day what to make a ~billion people look at. It seems different than say the NYTimes because the browser is a tool to me, it's not the source of content itself. Sure if I go read the NYTimes they get to choose what's on the front page. But I can choose not to go to the Times. But, by default, Browsers are a source of content (Except Safari? Though it does by default promote 10+ company's sites). Even Firefox, by default, shovles content someone else selected, in my face, intentionally or un-intensionally pushing their agendna on me.

wordnerd2022 4y ago

That neighborhood itself calls itself the East Cut. They have signs on all the light posts proudly proclaiming it

thih9 4y ago

It wasn’t just google that wanted the name change though. > The East Cut was established in 2015 by residents and business owners as a community benefit district. The goal is to provide this neighborhood its identity separate from South of Market and South Beach neighborhoods. Source: https://www.realestateadvisor.com/neighborhoods/san_francisco/east_cut https://www.realestateadvisor.com/neighborhoods/san_francisc... Side note, I can’t access parent source due to paywall.

alephnan 4y ago

> rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. There was briefly some gentrified name for the area between Soma, Portrero Hill and Mission, around where the Muji was and the highway overpass still is. I remember it rhyming with SomaSopa from that one episode of South Park, but even more ridiculous because it concatenated 3 words alluding to each of the 3 adjacent neighborhoods. Does anyone remember it? EDIT: Huh, they've seen to have settled on 'Showplace Square' now. That's new.

stephen_g 4y ago

It is interesting about the Maps thing. We have a similar one in our city, where part of the CBD is designated 'Frog's Hollow', which was the colloquial name for a small area (basically mostly a slum) for a time in the 1800s. It makes it look like that's the actual name of half our CBD! But it hasn't slipped back into actual use, it's just a curiosity. Interesting that it's been like that for years and they still haven't fixed it...

biztos 4y ago

I used to work on Rincon Hill and the East Cut thing happened after I moved away, so I had long wondered whether it was an old name being revived (it kinda has a gold-rush ring to it) or another real estate scheme like calling the Tenderloin “Lower Nob Hill.” Going by the article maybe you can just pay a branding company and they’ll get Google to rename your neighborhood whatever you like? Upper Biztos Heights here I come!

knorker 4y ago

> "corporate overlords". Please use more inclusive language, like "overpersons", or "overaristocracy".