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Except in this case it's not the government, but private corporations taking some kind of political stance. Google in particular has been very "active," not to
by weiming 6y ago
Except in this case it's not the government, but private corporations taking some kind of political stance.
Google in particular has been very "active," not to forget also: https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-will-ban-anything-against-who-guidance-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-will-ban-anything-ag... ("video that 'goes against' WHO guidance on the pandemic will be blocked")
- Tepix 6y agoThere is a lot of pressure on the large tech companies to stop spreading misinformation. This is one of their measures.
- thu2111 6y agoIn the USA? The pressure comes entirely from their straight-from-college activist workforce, with nothing to do and no vision to aim for they've degenerated into constant virtue signalling of the form "we are so intelligent, we must use our intelligence to save the world from bad people/republicans". Google didn't used to be like this. Remember the glory days of organising the world's information, to make it universally accessible? Apparently Google have forgotten. Back when most people who worked there were adults there wasn't any internal pressure to censor stuff because they understood where that path would lead. But a foolish choice to keep hiring indefinitely, just because they could, meant they ran out of adults to hire a long time ago and were forced to rely far more heavily on sucking up the flow of new grads. They go from one university-like environment in which results hardly matter to another, working on the long tail of me-too products nobody cares about, searching for meaning. And they find it in "doing good" and "fighting evil", as they see it, which given the academic "never criticise a fellow professor" mindset they've been steeped in translates naturally to deleting anything that implicitly or otherwise criticises academics (sorry, experts).
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y agoI remember Sergey Brin (Jewish) defending the fact that the second result for a word jew was some nasty conspiracy site that ranked well. Thought he had big balls to defend it especially considering his background.
- drngdds 6y agoAlternate theory: there are intelligent, mature adults who disagree with you
- kleiba 6y agoBack when most people who worked there were adults Are you aware of the fact that Google was literally founded by two college kids?
- thu2111 6y agoI am! And for better or worse, one of the first things investors insisted on was bringing in Schmidt as "adult supervision".
- indymike 6y agoSo? That pressure is unconstitutional in the US and should be ignored completely and resisted utterly.
- the-real-jap 6y agoHow is it unconstitutional? Google/Youtube is not a neutral carrier and can pick what gets broadcasted - just like Fox or CNN. For the record: as a paying Podcast Addict user, I think this is a shitty action by Google. I just don't see how it is unconstitutional. NB. I hope something good comes out of this, like more people discovering and using third party app stores, or being able to run apps on android auto even if google hasn't approved such apps (hello TomTom).
- indymike 6y agoThe pressure from the government is unconstitutional.
- moftz 6y agoThe govt asking Google to help keep the spread of misinformation down is totally different than the govt forcing Google to do so and arresting anyone that posts anything contrary to the official position.
- indymike 6y agoFreedom of speech doesn't really care if information is correct or incorrect.
- amenod 6y agoSo the government-approved information is OK but other information is "misinformation"? Finding excuses for big tech does not help.
- akimball 6y agoIf only they would suppress disinformation issued by governmental sources, I wouldn't be so troubled by this.
- tumetab1 6y ago> private corporations taking some kind of political stance. It's not a political stance, it's a moderation action. Google, Facebook, etc. are just bad moderators of their platforms. Selective enforcement of moderations policies is bad moderation. Implementing automated moderation without proper quality control is bad moderation. Implementing automated moderation without proper appeal processes is bad moderation. The moderation policy is insane, but I think how moderation is done is even more insane.
- freshhawk 6y agoTry posting something either of those companies care about (I don't mean copyrighted stuff that can be automated) and see how fast it gets taken down. Given that there is selective attention given to different political subjects it is by definition a political stance.
- ravenstine 6y agoWhat is a government but a "corporation" that owns land and takes a political stance? I find Google to be virtually indistinguishable from government besides that it doesn't have a constitution. Even worse is that they have contracts with the US and various governments, making them a political toady.