Quick note: this is not a political thread ,this is not meant to discuss politics but just to discuss Google itself Today or yesterday this story popped up https://www.projectveritas.com/2019...revent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ Tl;Dr ignoring the interfering with politics shit ,an alleged Google insider has come out saying Google is officially taking a stance as the gatekeeper of the information you get to view on the internet, they teaching an AI to automatically do this and with some human staff making up for it shortcomings ,there was video on YouTube interviewing this whistle blower but it was taken down and you can still watch it on the site I linked. What do yall think about this situation, is this real or just fake news I'm thinking it's real they did provide real video evidence afterall but I know what I'm using as my search engine after this
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/25/project-veritas-video-targeting-google-pulled-yout/ __________ Meanwhile, Jen Gennai, the Google executive shown in the footage, posted a response saying that Project Veritas “selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer, and published it widely online.” “I was having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language,” Ms. Gennai said in a post on Medium. “Project Veritas got me. Well done.” In the video, Ms. Gennai was shown saying that breaking up Google would “make it worse” because smaller companies “will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation,” but she said later that she was referring to foreign interference in the 2016 election. __________ I read the project veritas article and agree with this statement. Particularly because it highlighted "Project Veritas got me. Well done." as some kind of admission of guilt, when that isn't what it is. Project Veritas reads like a damn tabloid, and is completely unreliable. That said, and after further saying I do believe Google is innocent of some grand conspiracy to filter Trump news, I would not be terribly surprised or hurt to learn the opposite is true. Google is not the government, and is not required to be neutral. If it wants to push a particular political agenda, there is literally nothing stopping it and no particular crime it will be committing. __________ As an extra: Funny enough, since net neutrality was repealed, Google can also - acting as an ISP - directly deny access to whatever it wants online to its customers. Forget filtering search results on their own search platform - they can refuse to allow you to access other news sites, social media platforms, or whatever else they want. The only thing stopping them is some obscure idea that they might lose customers to competitors if they did. Originally this kind of behaviour would have been forbidden by the government as a form of consumer protection, but the government decided to abdicate that authority. A ridiculous change that Google fought - and continues to fight - against, despite being an ISP.
This site is all about how American tech companies supposedly suppress right-wing content specifically. Bias? They added a comment from a displeased Tea Party politician. They took only one quote from the reply of the employee, a quote that's very misleading without proper context. Exactly what the employee accused them of. They ignored the actual rebuttals in the reply. The quote with "screwed over in 2016" probably talks about very clear interference in the elections by Russia, as the employee indicates in her reply. Not about how they want to manipulate the elections themselves next time. But hey, PV don't give any context and they frame it very suspiciously by saying "working diligently to “prevent” the results of the 2016 election from repeating in 2020". About the supposed email proof, there's more people looking up DT's emails than HC's. It's not surprising that the first gets more attention from Google when prepping for possible user searches. Granted, I'm using Google's data here again but hey if they doctored that as well, then well played. Anyway, this goes to show that it's not as easy as PV seem to think, they clearly lack basic knowledge about machine learning or statistics. We don't know how Google built that system and PV clearly also don't know. They throw out quotes from a Google insider, but it's no proven source. Could be the author of the article for all we know. Additionally, some of the quotes lack context, and they are very incomplete explanations at best. The insider always remains vague enough. The single point of truth is a very logical approach. They want to filter out low-quality sources and misinformation ... isn't that logical? Wouldn't any search engine company want to do that to serve the users better? It's the methodology here that matters, but they don't seem to have any information about what actually matters at all. Just some mucky quotes. The encircled manual review of sources is always needed, because machine learning while powerful is not the be all and end all right now. E.g. in factories machine learning is used in combination with human supervision. It's an important component in the chain. The "people like us are programmed" diagram is a very interesting one, explicitly showing how the employees' biases can influence their work and thus warning against it. It goes contrary to the line of the article. And there's probably more points to be made. One last very important tidbit to go. At the end, the insider praises PV specifically for their ethics and journalism. That's not something that belongs in a proper article at all, it should be noticeable from the text itself. It's like a salesman praising his own products: highly unreliable, suspect even. Unfortunately, they have a clear purpose when writing this (which is a no-no), they leave out context and compile quotes as they please, misinterpret graphics and show a clear lack of knowledge of how search engines and machine learning work. They miss the technical information to make any actual conclusions. Big no-no concerning journalism ethics. Overall, low-quality bait. Reads more like propaganda than like reputable investigative journalism. Had a few good chuckles, it so chock full of irony that it almost reads like satire.
Google employees did an oopsie and got caught with their panties in a bunch.....and there's mass censoring going on...videos being removed, copyright strikes, account deletion..... https://www.bitchute.com/video/re9Xp6cdkro/
It's not that interference by Google in whatever direction is impossible, there's some places in the chain where it can be done (methodology, training data, manual review). These possible places of interference have proper technical reasons for their existence though, so they're not proof of anything. You need training data, you need manual review, you need to plan how to approach presenting news to users. The article contains no actual proof, nor does it adhere to any semblance of investigative or ethical journalism. There's a thousand reasons not to use Google, but this article ain't one. It's a piece of utter shite.
Government needs to stomp these idiots into the dirt. Let them know that they're not allowed to push agendas on the public. Really needs to be a huge slap to their stupid skulls so they get rid of these delusions once and for all
Government is too busy pushing agendas on the public and living under their own delusions to care about what anyone else does.
Government pushing agenda is what they do. I'm mostly just pissed a third party is trying to Orwell their way into my mind. Maybe if i get aids or something I'll go to Google hq and kill all their stupid executives before dying. Be a good samaritan for once
I don't really get it, tbh. What's the difference between said third party and gov't when both do the same thing? I'd tell you to do your aids suicide thing in Congress instead, but I don't want to be arrested.
Err. Both are telling you what to do and how to feel, and I still think one is too many to begin with?
Large companies (like tech companies) are too powerful, and something should be done about it. That's what's important. Inspecting what's actually happening in those companies, possibly breaking them down in smaller pieces. Some right-wing propaganda site crying about how right-wing messages get censored without any actual proof is totally irrelevant. Critical thinking is hard. That's just a video by the same people who wrote the article, it's probably worthless just like the article for reasons I mentioned earlier. The article gave literally no proof of it happening whatsoever. I'm using the word irony a lot here, but ironically you are doing exactly what a third party (the writers of this sham of an article) want. For all we know, the big money pushed Google and other large tech companies to push the Republicans forward in the last elections. You're asking me for proof? Well, there's this insider I talked to, you know? And here, some quotes without context as dessert! Maybe you want an audio tape? People have at least some form of input in democratic governments. Whether through democracy (even if eroded), whether it's because governments are held to a higher moral standard, and so on. Demonizing the concept of governments is in my eyes a bad thing to do, because they're necessary and can do a lot good things if set up somewhat properly. If you put distance between it and yourself, you put distance between yourself and the one institution that can possibly protect you against a lot of shit coming from, for example, large companies. That's my view on things. Insert Churchill quote.
it's too late already.... have you counted social media sites lately? People get news carefully selected for them by facebook, youtube and other "platforms"
because you elect government officials, but no one elected google to tell people what they can or cannot say.
This is so yesterday. They've been challenged to reveal their algorithm but so far are mute about it.
Yes, correct. I meant to say "intentionally influencing interference" or something like that instead of just "interference". Interference is, as I explained, unavoidable because you cannot let machine learning do everything without supervision. But I think I was pretty clear in explaining that Google is in too strong of a position and can possibly do manipulation at some points in the chain if there's no proper supervision. I'm all for supervision, and I'm all for trying to prevent interference in elections. Company wants to make money. Company wants to keep users chained to the site as much as possible. Company wants to give users content relevant to their specific interest. Company creates echo chambers for users, effectively showing them what they like/thought, providing an easy digestible experience for their users. It's one of the things I hate about social media. It has got nothing to do with this article specifically though.
I am pretty sure the claim is that they are already interfering with elections, like removing some sites from search results and not suggesting some conservative channels to people, etc. This is bullshit. Make all the money you want, but don't filter content without people knowing. There are cases when facebook doesn't show posts of certain people even if you subscribed to them. They also sort suggestions and posts in a specific way so that you would get content they prefer you to see first, instead of what you selected to see. This is psychological manipulation. They create information bubbles and people just don't see anything outside of their comfort zone. God forbid someone sees a different opinion - the world will end