6 ms·

The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. Google

by mdrzn 4y ago

The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. Google has an ethical and moral responsibility to not allow its platform to be used for defamatory purposes. While Google is an American company, it operates in many countries around the world and should be held accountable for its actions in each of these countries. The issue is not about one country telling another what to do but rather about a company being held accountable for its actions in a particular jurisdiction. The Canadian court system has the responsibility to enforce Canadian laws and protect the rights of its citizens, including the Montrealer in this case. If you don't agree with that, don't offer your service in Canada.

ChatGTP 4y ago
This sentiment I see more and more on HN. My theory is it’s because tech is braking rules more and more often, and we all just love tech so it’s easier to just victim blame rather than address the actual issues.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Everyone secretly thinks they're a tech (or general) genius and will (eventually) be a tech tycoon. An extension of the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire thing".
- windexh8er 4y ago
  I love tech. But you're implying that what tech means to me is basically just a large company. And in fact I don't love large tech companies. The Internet was much more enjoyable before a sales person got a hold of it. And while I do understand that a lot of really great engineering has come from within these companies it doesn't matter if they are abusing their users. Because Google loves it when their brand is associated with something positive. But Google should also be responsible for owning all of the negative their company and employees build. Finally, I'm an American. I have a very dim view on the positive that Google, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft contribute to society. They're all for profit companies no longer being run with a strong engineering or customer focus. Their goal is to turn more profit. That's not the spirit of tech in my mind. I don't consider any of these companies strong technology contributors anymore. They employ a number of great engineers that still do amazing things. But the companies (the executives, the senior management, the board of directors, etc) are not in it to move the industry in a positive direction. They're in it to make more money. The cost of that misdirection is very high to all. These companies have impacted many lives in very negative ways even though many have never intentionally wanted to use, or be part of, their services. These companies need far more accountability. Hiding behind a company logo should not be something society continues to support.
- dahwolf 4y ago
  It's fake libertarianism. So imagine this happening to these commenters. Somebody publishes that you're a pedo. Out of the blue. The relationship with your sons break down, nobody wants anything to do with you in community or business and everything you worked for falls apart. For no reason. Would said commenter now truly say: ah well, go Google! This trillion dollar company should absolute be able to spread this, versus the 5 seconds it takes to take it down. I don't think so.
wildrhythms 4y ago
My thought is that it's not up to Google or any company to be the judge and jury... if the statements are defamatory then the plaintiff should go to an elected judge and have their accuser brought to justice, and the judge can wield the power of the state to demand search engines and other publishers remove those results. I think you would agree that simply removing the search results in the short term doesn't bring the wrongdoers to justice at all. Perhaps this is an indictment of the slow movement of the justice system for cases like this.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  > the plaintiff should go to an elected judge and have their accuser brought to justice and what if the accusers are outside local jurisdiction?
- mdrzn 4y ago
  Which is exactly what happened: the Montrealer did indeed ask Google to remove the defamatory search results, but they refused. So he took the matter to court and obtained a ruling from an elected judge and jury. The court's decision to order Google to pay $500,000 in damages shows that there are consequences and you can't ignore them forever just because you're Google. I'm also sure that the Montrealer tried to take down the original source directly, without succeeding.
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    You can’t ignore what forever? Your position simply requires Google to remove anything that anybody asks them to from their results, doesn’t it?
    - mdrzn 4y ago
      If Google allows defamatory content to be displayed on their platform, knowing that it is defamatory, it cannot continue to promote it and be exempt from any consequences. While I am not suggesting that every reported link should be removed, when a Judge makes a ruling, it must be taken seriously and given value.
vertis 4y ago
Agreed. I mean democracies tell each other what to do in one form or another all the time. The US is not at all shy about pushing other countries around. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. So much international law is about synchronizing laws to allow for dealing with these kind of things within a framework where we agree on the common principles. Sad to say for the US ranters but defamation is a common principle and exists just as much within US law (albiet varying implementations).
balderdash 4y ago
Hacker News skews very American so that statement can be made about most topic - my suspicion is that most of the comments against google are also from Americans
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  HN is an English language site for an incubator VC company that is based in California, with a heavy focus on Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Like, what do you expect?
avsteele 4y ago
You probably don't believe a library or book store should be sued if they sell a book with defamatory content, so why do you think Google should be here? The connection between wrongdoing by Google is even more attenuated here, since Google is mostly an indexer, with limited curation.
- bhargav 4y ago
  Libraries and bookstores curate all the time. Controversial books are not sold or removed.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Google exercises a great deal of editorial discretion on the content they present to the user. The days of 'mostly an indexer' stopped years ago.
- 542458 4y ago
  If the library was informed of the defamatory content, was asked to remove it, complied, then restored it, was asked to remove it again, complied, restored it again, then finally started refusing to remove it, I’d say suing them is reasonable (which is what happened here as far as I can tell - the exact sequence of events is a bit hard to reconstruct).
  - perihelions 4y ago
    - "If the library was informed of the defamatory content, was asked to remove it," Thankfully 100% unconstitutional in the US.
    - sdfghswe 4y ago
      Doesn't matter if it's unconstitutional in the US. Different countries have different laws. If you can't abide by the laws of other countries, don't operate there.
      - notch898c 4y ago
rootusrootus 4y ago
> My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. I would guess it's narrower than that, and what you're seeing is mostly from SV. Even then, not everyone in SV is so willing to cut Google slack. But they can be the loudest on HN at times.
account42 4y ago
I'm not american and I don't like this ruling. Google shouldn't be responsible for censoring the internet. If there is a site out there then Google should be allowed to link to it.
- mdrzn 4y ago
  Your argument seems to be that Google should not be held responsible for removing links from their platform, regardless of their content. However, it is important to consider the potential harm caused by certain links, such as revenge pornography, which can be extremely damaging to individuals. Should Google be allowed to link to such content? If you are against the ruling in this case, are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns?
  - perihelions 4y ago
    - "If you are against the ruling in this case, are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns?" Yes, and yes; and triply-yes if it's a DMCA theory that alleges that linking to a page containing allegedly infringing material also constitutes infringement.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > it is important to consider the potential harm caused by certain links, such as revenge pornography, which can be extremely damaging to individuals. Information does not cause damage, people do. Surely the onus must be on the people who use the information to cause damage? For example, those in the article who chose to not do business with the Montrealer because of the invalid information they leveraged. They caused the damage claimed in court. Why is Google responsible for their poor judgement? > are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns? If you stand by takedowns, why prefer removal of a link over the source material? Surely once the actual content goes away so too will the link? If the content is still out there, it will still be found, if not by Google, by some other means.
    - mdrzn 4y ago
      It's important to recognize the role that platforms like Google can play in facilitating that harm. What if the website containing harmful content is hosted on a Russian server that ignores DMCA takedowns and there is no way to remove it? What if the majority of traffic to that website comes from Google, should Google not take any responsibility for promoting that content? Or should Google take proactive measures to prevent harm, even if they are not the source of the content?
galangalalgol 4y ago
If we are just talking about the search engine, does google offer services in Canadan via local caching, or do Canadians have to retrieve Googles services from the US. It is probably a relevant question, at least legally. Ethically I think there is no "fair" way to do page rankings that would both yield the results people want and avoid pages with false accusations. Also, legally If google were to start filtering the information it provided in the US based on some criteria other than "we think this is most likely what you were searching for, and look these people paid us to have you look at these first" then they would fall afoul to US laws that would remove their common carrier status. At least that is my understanding.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  > then they would fall afoul to US laws that would remove their common carrier status. At least that is my understanding. https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... This is a common but completely incorrect misconception. Read the first bolded subsection.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    Thank you!
nashashmi 4y ago
> Google has an ethical and moral responsibility to not allow its platform to be used for defamatory purposes. Fine. But do not assume it should be a legal responsibility. Rephrase the statement to "it has the responsibility to forbid defamatory content" and now you will start wondering if it should have prohibited fox news content on dominion voting or CNN content on Trump's hush money scandal.
eviks 4y ago
Uncritical support of the government court system boot is less sane than defending a search engine resisting censorship Also, what about the rights of its other citizens to get information?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fasterik 4y ago
I think your characterization is a straw man. Nobody is arguing that Google shouldn't comply with court decisions. The question is what should happen when an individual comes to Google with a complaint, before they have sought any legal verdict. How is Google supposed to decide whether a claim is true or false? Even if it were their responsibility to determine what counts as defamation, how would we prevent people abusing that system to take down legitimate content they don't like? Do we want tech companies making decisions like this independently of the legal system?
- quickcheque 4y ago
  cough cough ... do things that don't scale....this industry is a joke.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  Clearly, they should ask ChatGPT 4 for a ruling :)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rchaud 4y ago
> The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. This is Hacker News; the readership has a lot of temporarily embarrassed monopolists raised on business models that assume that the regulations that apply to others, don't apply to them.
908B64B197 4y ago
I don't understand how it's Google's responsibility to fact-check and police the links it merely indexes (to me, akin to suing a distributor) which is completely protected first amendment speech. Why didn't the plaintiff simply go after the publisher (the website) and get the false information removed (as well as sue for defamation).
Xorakios 4y ago
It's a tough slope. Should ISP's be required to screen all their clients? Then what about datacenters? Then what about utility providers to the datacenters? Then what about roads or food service to people who work at datacenters that host websites that promote false content? I don't think it's a US-centric philosophy that the evildoer should be punished, not everyone who breathes the same air. (And for anyone who didn't read the full text of the court's ruling, the URL was changed, the article was re-written, and eventually the person's name was misspelled to keep trying to evade Google's sanctions. How does anyone fight that level of misdirection and evil?)
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  If an ISP was hosting child porn and someone asked them to stop and they didn't then they would be held responsible. It's not the fact that someone's using it for bad things, it's the not putting it right.
  - Xorakios 4y ago
    Again though, what about the electric company or the linux developer that improves image compression algos? Or if an airport provides free Wifi? How do all those people and companies "make it right" instead of just going after the creators of filth and evil?
jiveturkey 4y ago
> Google has an ethical and moral responsibility irrelevant (and subjective anyway). it only matters if they have a legal responsibility.

by mdrzn 4y ago

ChatGTP 4y ago

This sentiment I see more and more on HN. My theory is it’s because tech is braking rules more and more often, and we all just love tech so it’s easier to just victim blame rather than address the actual issues.

red-iron-pine 4y ago
Everyone secretly thinks they're a tech (or general) genius and will (eventually) be a tech tycoon. An extension of the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire thing".
windexh8er 4y ago
I love tech. But you're implying that what tech means to me is basically just a large company. And in fact I don't love large tech companies. The Internet was much more enjoyable before a sales person got a hold of it. And while I do understand that a lot of really great engineering has come from within these companies it doesn't matter if they are abusing their users. Because Google loves it when their brand is associated with something positive. But Google should also be responsible for owning all of the negative their company and employees build. Finally, I'm an American. I have a very dim view on the positive that Google, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft contribute to society. They're all for profit companies no longer being run with a strong engineering or customer focus. Their goal is to turn more profit. That's not the spirit of tech in my mind. I don't consider any of these companies strong technology contributors anymore. They employ a number of great engineers that still do amazing things. But the companies (the executives, the senior management, the board of directors, etc) are not in it to move the industry in a positive direction. They're in it to make more money. The cost of that misdirection is very high to all. These companies have impacted many lives in very negative ways even though many have never intentionally wanted to use, or be part of, their services. These companies need far more accountability. Hiding behind a company logo should not be something society continues to support.
dahwolf 4y ago
It's fake libertarianism. So imagine this happening to these commenters. Somebody publishes that you're a pedo. Out of the blue. The relationship with your sons break down, nobody wants anything to do with you in community or business and everything you worked for falls apart. For no reason. Would said commenter now truly say: ah well, go Google! This trillion dollar company should absolute be able to spread this, versus the 5 seconds it takes to take it down. I don't think so.

wildrhythms 4y ago

My thought is that it's not up to Google or any company to be the judge and jury... if the statements are defamatory then the plaintiff should go to an elected judge and have their accuser brought to justice, and the judge can wield the power of the state to demand search engines and other publishers remove those results. I think you would agree that simply removing the search results in the short term doesn't bring the wrongdoers to justice at all. Perhaps this is an indictment of the slow movement of the justice system for cases like this.

Chris2048 4y ago
> the plaintiff should go to an elected judge and have their accuser brought to justice and what if the accusers are outside local jurisdiction?
mdrzn 4y ago
Which is exactly what happened: the Montrealer did indeed ask Google to remove the defamatory search results, but they refused. So he took the matter to court and obtained a ruling from an elected judge and jury. The court's decision to order Google to pay $500,000 in damages shows that there are consequences and you can't ignore them forever just because you're Google. I'm also sure that the Montrealer tried to take down the original source directly, without succeeding.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  You can’t ignore what forever? Your position simply requires Google to remove anything that anybody asks them to from their results, doesn’t it?
  - mdrzn 4y ago
    If Google allows defamatory content to be displayed on their platform, knowing that it is defamatory, it cannot continue to promote it and be exempt from any consequences. While I am not suggesting that every reported link should be removed, when a Judge makes a ruling, it must be taken seriously and given value.

vertis 4y ago

Agreed. I mean democracies tell each other what to do in one form or another all the time. The US is not at all shy about pushing other countries around. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. So much international law is about synchronizing laws to allow for dealing with these kind of things within a framework where we agree on the common principles. Sad to say for the US ranters but defamation is a common principle and exists just as much within US law (albiet varying implementations).

balderdash 4y ago

Hacker News skews very American so that statement can be made about most topic - my suspicion is that most of the comments against google are also from Americans

red-iron-pine 4y ago
HN is an English language site for an incubator VC company that is based in California, with a heavy focus on Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Like, what do you expect?

avsteele 4y ago

You probably don't believe a library or book store should be sued if they sell a book with defamatory content, so why do you think Google should be here? The connection between wrongdoing by Google is even more attenuated here, since Google is mostly an indexer, with limited curation.

bhargav 4y ago
Libraries and bookstores curate all the time. Controversial books are not sold or removed.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Google exercises a great deal of editorial discretion on the content they present to the user. The days of 'mostly an indexer' stopped years ago.
542458 4y ago
If the library was informed of the defamatory content, was asked to remove it, complied, then restored it, was asked to remove it again, complied, restored it again, then finally started refusing to remove it, I’d say suing them is reasonable (which is what happened here as far as I can tell - the exact sequence of events is a bit hard to reconstruct).
- perihelions 4y ago
  - "If the library was informed of the defamatory content, was asked to remove it," Thankfully 100% unconstitutional in the US.
  - sdfghswe 4y ago
    Doesn't matter if it's unconstitutional in the US. Different countries have different laws. If you can't abide by the laws of other countries, don't operate there.
    - notch898c 4y ago

rootusrootus 4y ago

> My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. I would guess it's narrower than that, and what you're seeing is mostly from SV. Even then, not everyone in SV is so willing to cut Google slack. But they can be the loudest on HN at times.

account42 4y ago

I'm not american and I don't like this ruling. Google shouldn't be responsible for censoring the internet. If there is a site out there then Google should be allowed to link to it.

mdrzn 4y ago
Your argument seems to be that Google should not be held responsible for removing links from their platform, regardless of their content. However, it is important to consider the potential harm caused by certain links, such as revenge pornography, which can be extremely damaging to individuals. Should Google be allowed to link to such content? If you are against the ruling in this case, are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns?
- perihelions 4y ago
  - "If you are against the ruling in this case, are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns?" Yes, and yes; and triply-yes if it's a DMCA theory that alleges that linking to a page containing allegedly infringing material also constitutes infringement.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > it is important to consider the potential harm caused by certain links, such as revenge pornography, which can be extremely damaging to individuals. Information does not cause damage, people do. Surely the onus must be on the people who use the information to cause damage? For example, those in the article who chose to not do business with the Montrealer because of the invalid information they leveraged. They caused the damage claimed in court. Why is Google responsible for their poor judgement? > are you also opposed to DMCA takedowns? If you stand by takedowns, why prefer removal of a link over the source material? Surely once the actual content goes away so too will the link? If the content is still out there, it will still be found, if not by Google, by some other means.
  - mdrzn 4y ago
    It's important to recognize the role that platforms like Google can play in facilitating that harm. What if the website containing harmful content is hosted on a Russian server that ignores DMCA takedowns and there is no way to remove it? What if the majority of traffic to that website comes from Google, should Google not take any responsibility for promoting that content? Or should Google take proactive measures to prevent harm, even if they are not the source of the content?

galangalalgol 4y ago

If we are just talking about the search engine, does google offer services in Canadan via local caching, or do Canadians have to retrieve Googles services from the US. It is probably a relevant question, at least legally. Ethically I think there is no "fair" way to do page rankings that would both yield the results people want and avoid pages with false accusations. Also, legally If google were to start filtering the information it provided in the US based on some criteria other than "we think this is most likely what you were searching for, and look these people paid us to have you look at these first" then they would fall afoul to US laws that would remove their common carrier status. At least that is my understanding.

cmeacham98 4y ago
> then they would fall afoul to US laws that would remove their common carrier status. At least that is my understanding. https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... This is a common but completely incorrect misconception. Read the first bolded subsection.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Thank you!

nashashmi 4y ago

> Google has an ethical and moral responsibility to not allow its platform to be used for defamatory purposes. Fine. But do not assume it should be a legal responsibility. Rephrase the statement to "it has the responsibility to forbid defamatory content" and now you will start wondering if it should have prohibited fox news content on dominion voting or CNN content on Trump's hush money scandal.

eviks 4y ago

Uncritical support of the government court system boot is less sane than defending a search engine resisting censorship Also, what about the rights of its other citizens to get information?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fasterik 4y ago

I think your characterization is a straw man. Nobody is arguing that Google shouldn't comply with court decisions. The question is what should happen when an individual comes to Google with a complaint, before they have sought any legal verdict. How is Google supposed to decide whether a claim is true or false? Even if it were their responsibility to determine what counts as defamation, how would we prevent people abusing that system to take down legitimate content they don't like? Do we want tech companies making decisions like this independently of the legal system?

quickcheque 4y ago
cough cough ... do things that don't scale....this industry is a joke.
ChatGTP 4y ago
Clearly, they should ask ChatGPT 4 for a ruling :)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rchaud 4y ago

> The fact that some comments are defending Google is insane to me. My only guess is that they are all from USA and have a very "american" view of things. This is Hacker News; the readership has a lot of temporarily embarrassed monopolists raised on business models that assume that the regulations that apply to others, don't apply to them.

908B64B197 4y ago

I don't understand how it's Google's responsibility to fact-check and police the links it merely indexes (to me, akin to suing a distributor) which is completely protected first amendment speech. Why didn't the plaintiff simply go after the publisher (the website) and get the false information removed (as well as sue for defamation).

Xorakios 4y ago

It's a tough slope. Should ISP's be required to screen all their clients? Then what about datacenters? Then what about utility providers to the datacenters? Then what about roads or food service to people who work at datacenters that host websites that promote false content? I don't think it's a US-centric philosophy that the evildoer should be punished, not everyone who breathes the same air. (And for anyone who didn't read the full text of the court's ruling, the URL was changed, the article was re-written, and eventually the person's name was misspelled to keep trying to evade Google's sanctions. How does anyone fight that level of misdirection and evil?)

MagicMoonlight 4y ago
If an ISP was hosting child porn and someone asked them to stop and they didn't then they would be held responsible. It's not the fact that someone's using it for bad things, it's the not putting it right.
- Xorakios 4y ago
  Again though, what about the electric company or the linux developer that improves image compression algos? Or if an airport provides free Wifi? How do all those people and companies "make it right" instead of just going after the creators of filth and evil?

jiveturkey 4y ago

> Google has an ethical and moral responsibility irrelevant (and subjective anyway). it only matters if they have a legal responsibility.