5 ms·

Why is it on Google to store political history?

cess11 1y ago
"But the ad archives were introduced 7 years ago for a reason - in no small part because of the chaos of the Brexit and Trump 2016 votes, and our own advocacy here in Ireland about interference in the 2018 8th amendment referendum. They were introduced to allow for scrutiny of campaigns, and also to provide a historical record so we could go back and look at what had been promised, and what had been spent, and to see if this lined up with what happened later. This erasure of our political past feels dangerous, for scrutiny, for accountability, for shared memory, for enforcement of our rules - for our democracy." It's a rather reasonable demand that they should keep a record of the political campaigns and psyops they make their dough from, at least if nuking Alphabet from orbit is not an option.
- pixl97 1y ago
  Reasonable demand from whom? The groups that have the power to demand they do this are the same ones involved in the chaos and have no onus to ensure that google keeps this data around, and as much as the US flip flops in political power it can go from they must keep this data one year to they must get rid of it the next. No, the only reasonable demand in a world that has already embraced insanity is that you keep the data and share it with others. Why not get together with others of the same mindset and form voluntary entities that keep this data safe. Trusting the government to keep the audit data on itself won't always work, and the 4th estate of the large media has been bought off by large companies that are much more apt to work in the governments interests to make as much profit as possible at the cost of democracy.
  - cess11 1y ago
    I wrote it so clearly it's from me. Is this your view on corporations having to keep and make public their accounting records as well? If not, what's the difference?
grafmax 1y ago
Why is what is effectively the digital commons privately owned and we are okay with that?
- pie_flavor 1y ago
  Private owners went to the effort of collecting it. Other people can start doing so at any time.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    Monopolies are not easy to crack.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - pie_flavor 1y ago
      This is a content-free dismissal. The existence of an effective monopoly in records retrieval for previously published data does not affect your ability to collect presently published data.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    YouTube offers free hosting and is widely available. Presumably that’s why it was chosen to host these videos. Other people cannot duplicate YouTube. VCs financed YouTube to build a free service with network effects that allow them to turn around and charge rent on the one hand and exercise capricious control on the other. It’s not in the public interest to allow these billionaires to retain control of these companies. Their control over these rent seeking enterprises directly conflicts with the public interest. This incident, erasing political ads, is an egregious example of private entities using their wealth to silence essential public discourse.
- glitchc 1y ago
  Arbitrarily labeling a private, multi-billion dollar infrastructure as a "digital commons" reeks of hubris and entitlement.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
I think you could make an argument that any hyperscaler that has used it's economy of scale superpower to obliterate as much competition as the giants have (thinking Google, Meta, et al) and have gone to such lengths to become the center-point of their given markets have at least a vague notion of an ethical obligation to like... not be monsters. Which is of course antithetical to the "eat the world" ethos: one would observe that few things once eaten are better for the experience. Like, maybe it's just me, but if you as a corporate entity are going to subsume all your competition under the weight of your size and ability to lose money on tons of things so you can make even more on the other, I think it's a pretty fair ask in turn for them to not... I dunno, arbitrarily delete a shit ton of useful data for no reason?
- philipallstar 1y ago
  Sadly it's not just you, but it's wrong. They didn't have as part of the agreement to show some ads a clause for keeping the data for eternity.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    Well, if an organization is so central to the operation of our society, maybe they need to not be privately owned then.
    - philipallstar 1y ago
      They don't need to be. It's just a strange coincidence that all the talented innovators aren't working for the public sector.
freedomben 1y ago
IMHO it's not, but they built that ad transparency site specifically for that purpose, so it's noteworthy that they've suddenly and silently reversed course.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  To be clear, the site is still up. Archives are still available for other countries.
vintermann 1y ago
When they took money to influence political history, I think the least they can do is keep a record of who paid them to say what.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  The archive and record is still up. The article is about how EU countries are not available in the tool. Speculation is that some EU regulation might overlap with the site: Maybe it’s technically against some law to share that customer information or perhaps the upcoming laws about political advertising don’t have a carve-out for historical ads, so any such archive might be infringing. If they were out to eliminate all transparency they’d just shut the site down, but they didn’t.

"But the ad archives were introduced 7 years ago for a reason - in no small part because of the chaos of the Brexit and Trump 2016 votes, and our own advocacy here in Ireland about interference in the 2018 8th amendment referendum. They were introduced to allow for scrutiny of campaigns, and also to provide a historical record so we could go back and look at what had been promised, and what had been spent, and to see if this lined up with what happened later. This erasure of our political past feels dangerous, for scrutiny, for accountability, for shared memory, for enforcement of our rules - for our democracy." It's a rather reasonable demand that they should keep a record of the political campaigns and psyops they make their dough from, at least if nuking Alphabet from orbit is not an option.

pixl97 1y ago
Reasonable demand from whom? The groups that have the power to demand they do this are the same ones involved in the chaos and have no onus to ensure that google keeps this data around, and as much as the US flip flops in political power it can go from they must keep this data one year to they must get rid of it the next. No, the only reasonable demand in a world that has already embraced insanity is that you keep the data and share it with others. Why not get together with others of the same mindset and form voluntary entities that keep this data safe. Trusting the government to keep the audit data on itself won't always work, and the 4th estate of the large media has been bought off by large companies that are much more apt to work in the governments interests to make as much profit as possible at the cost of democracy.
- cess11 1y ago
  I wrote it so clearly it's from me. Is this your view on corporations having to keep and make public their accounting records as well? If not, what's the difference?

grafmax 1y ago

Why is what is effectively the digital commons privately owned and we are okay with that?

pie_flavor 1y ago
Private owners went to the effort of collecting it. Other people can start doing so at any time.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Monopolies are not easy to crack.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - pie_flavor 1y ago
    This is a content-free dismissal. The existence of an effective monopoly in records retrieval for previously published data does not affect your ability to collect presently published data.
- grafmax 1y ago
  YouTube offers free hosting and is widely available. Presumably that’s why it was chosen to host these videos. Other people cannot duplicate YouTube. VCs financed YouTube to build a free service with network effects that allow them to turn around and charge rent on the one hand and exercise capricious control on the other. It’s not in the public interest to allow these billionaires to retain control of these companies. Their control over these rent seeking enterprises directly conflicts with the public interest. This incident, erasing political ads, is an egregious example of private entities using their wealth to silence essential public discourse.
glitchc 1y ago
Arbitrarily labeling a private, multi-billion dollar infrastructure as a "digital commons" reeks of hubris and entitlement.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago

I think you could make an argument that any hyperscaler that has used it's economy of scale superpower to obliterate as much competition as the giants have (thinking Google, Meta, et al) and have gone to such lengths to become the center-point of their given markets have at least a vague notion of an ethical obligation to like... not be monsters. Which is of course antithetical to the "eat the world" ethos: one would observe that few things once eaten are better for the experience. Like, maybe it's just me, but if you as a corporate entity are going to subsume all your competition under the weight of your size and ability to lose money on tons of things so you can make even more on the other, I think it's a pretty fair ask in turn for them to not... I dunno, arbitrarily delete a shit ton of useful data for no reason?

philipallstar 1y ago
Sadly it's not just you, but it's wrong. They didn't have as part of the agreement to show some ads a clause for keeping the data for eternity.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Well, if an organization is so central to the operation of our society, maybe they need to not be privately owned then.
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    They don't need to be. It's just a strange coincidence that all the talented innovators aren't working for the public sector.

freedomben 1y ago

IMHO it's not, but they built that ad transparency site specifically for that purpose, so it's noteworthy that they've suddenly and silently reversed course.

Aurornis 1y ago
To be clear, the site is still up. Archives are still available for other countries.

vintermann 1y ago

When they took money to influence political history, I think the least they can do is keep a record of who paid them to say what.

Aurornis 1y ago
The archive and record is still up. The article is about how EU countries are not available in the tool. Speculation is that some EU regulation might overlap with the site: Maybe it’s technically against some law to share that customer information or perhaps the upcoming laws about political advertising don’t have a carve-out for historical ads, so any such archive might be infringing. If they were out to eliminate all transparency they’d just shut the site down, but they didn’t.