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People have a very optimistic view of what this hearing is going to reveal, and think that it is going to accomplish anything. But it’s largely gonna be republi

People have a very optimistic view of what this hearing is going to reveal, and think that it is going to accomplish anything. But it’s largely gonna be republicans performance vomiting rhetoric about tech companies censoring conservative voices with no evidence, and democrats wanting to discuss everything but what the hearing is actually about, anti-trust. I expect a few democrats to make some interesting queries, and the tech news media to report minor stories that are unknown as breaking news. Full disclosure: I work at a subsidiary of Amazon

jcadam 6y ago
Well considering Google, Twitter, Facebook, et. al, are actively working to shape public opinion to the benefit of the Democrats in the lead up to the election, I wouldn't expect a Democratic-controlled legislative body to do anything that might displease them. These tech CEOs, after all, are really the ones in charge here. They participate in this bit of political theater for the benefit of the proles. They probably find the whole thing amusing.
- theplague42 6y ago
  How are they shaping public opinion to benefit Democrats?
  - aripickar 6y ago
    Hint: They're not.
  - chroma 6y ago
    Try running the following experiment: open an incognito window and do a Google search for "antifa violence". Then do the same search on Bing or DuckDuckGo. On Google, the top results are things like "Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years" and "Antifa Activist Killed At ICE Jail Becomes Symbol For The Right And Left".[1] The first headline is outright false[2] and the second is about a man who assaulted a detention center in Tacoma using firebombs and a rifle.[3] On DuckDuckGo[4], the first result is undercover video footage of an antifa leader admitting that they are violent and encouraging recruits to do things such as eye gouge. Other results are from both left and right-leaning media. Some claim antifa doesn't cause violence. Others claim that antifa is the sole cause of violence. In short: it's far more balanced than what Google is showing. You can also look at the political climate inside of Google. The leaked communications are pretty wild. You have people discussing banning recommendations of videos containing "nazis" using "dog whistles" and examples of such "nazis" are PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro[5]. Look at their internal docs on correcting "algorithmic unfairness" in news and search results.[6] They admit to tweaking the autocomplete behavior for both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, as the defaults suggested (correctly) that Martin was a drug dealer. These docs also claim that factually accurate representations of the world can constitute algorithmic unfairness. Look at the internal responses to James Damore's memo: https://imgur.com/a/S48QN https://imgur.com/a/S48QN Damore's politics are left-leaning libertarian. If that's the response he gets for making his opinion known, there is no chance that a work environment like that can accept a conservative viewpoint. Finally (I wish I could find a better source for this), Tucker Carlson describes an email by the head of Google's Multicultural Marketing department. In it, she explains how she used the company's resources & influence to target latino voters in key states with the goal of swinging the election towards Clinton. She even calls it a "silent donation". If what Tucker Carlson says is true, then that is one hell of a smoking gun. 1. https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png 2. The trick is that antifa doesn't exactly have a membership list, so technically nobody who commits a crime can be tied to them. If you count those who claim to be anti-fascist, you can get quite the body count. For example, one antifa supporter killed 9 people last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack 4. https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png 5. https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAymc6/5e2d800a63f92cf37c73181eec4f9c71/on_peterson-REDACTED.png https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAy... 6. https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocDump.pdf https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocD... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s
    - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      Incognito is no longer enough to keep you away from Google suggestions, they do IP matching on their massive data sets.
    - esrauch 6y ago
      Your citation of an antifa mass shooting doesn't appear very compelling; the Wikipedia article explicitly indicates no political motive in the shooting. It says he separately may have claimed support for antifa but the article also indicates he also may have been an incel or something.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/28/election-interference-google-purges-breitbart-from-search-results/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/28/election-interfere... Whatever the feelings about the source here (I note all their submissions get killed on this site), it would be useful if somebody could point out where their figures are flawed (note they don't just refer to Breitbart, but other conservative websites) - because in the light of the recent clear suppression of conservative websites revealed in the recent "glitch" (1), it's deeply worrying for those of us concerned about free speech. (1) A thread attempting to discuss that episode here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912150
    - nathanwh 6y ago
      Admittedly I’m biased against that source already, but even then I don’t see how their evidence supports their conclusion. There’s three main points I can see 1. The proportion of the traffic to their site from google dropped. This isn’t convincing to me because there’s no evidence it’s because of their conservative viewpoint. Maybe their SEO was just outdated after the update. 2. The fact that a search for “Joe Biden” no longer goes to their site. If you look at the numbers they’re quite low already, again they fail to demonstrate that it’s because they’re a conservative website that they’re not getting traffic 3. They have a bar graph that shows that “conservative” websites get a less percentage of their traffic from google. Two main complaints with this, one the coloring of the bars in the graph is totally arbitrary. Two they again fail to demonstrate that the only thing that’s different is the political leaning of the site I don’t really feel like they’re presenting the data in a misleading way or they’re lying, but they fail to connect the data to the conclusion. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and they just don’t have it
      - mellosouls 6y ago
        Thanks for that constructive response (although I'm not convinced, they were useful counterpoints). To be fair, I'm also sceptical of the publication and would prefer other sources - but these issues of free speech (and in particular Big Tech's alleged suppression of conservative outlets) don't get covered in the mainstream - until they are forced onto the agenda like with the recent open letter. Of course, that may be because the alleged suppression of organisations doesn't happen - but there have been enough reports of it on the edges that warrant at least counter-arguments from impartial experts in more mainstream outlets; and the lack of those in the current undeniable culture of suppression of individual voices ("cancel culture") contributes to the feeling of some of us that something deeply worrying is happening.
  - forgot_account 6y ago
    "Facebook Moderator Boasts Deleting Users For MAGA Hat" https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/facebook-moderator-boasts-deleting-users-for-maga-hat https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/facebook-moderat...
therealdrag0 6y ago
> anti-trust Questions about Google holding Yelp hostage and Facebook acquiring IG to squash competition seemed on point.
- aripickar 6y ago
  True, I was pleasantly surprised at those questions.

jcadam 6y ago

Well considering Google, Twitter, Facebook, et. al, are actively working to shape public opinion to the benefit of the Democrats in the lead up to the election, I wouldn't expect a Democratic-controlled legislative body to do anything that might displease them. These tech CEOs, after all, are really the ones in charge here. They participate in this bit of political theater for the benefit of the proles. They probably find the whole thing amusing.

theplague42 6y ago
How are they shaping public opinion to benefit Democrats?
- aripickar 6y ago
  Hint: They're not.
- chroma 6y ago
  Try running the following experiment: open an incognito window and do a Google search for "antifa violence". Then do the same search on Bing or DuckDuckGo. On Google, the top results are things like "Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years" and "Antifa Activist Killed At ICE Jail Becomes Symbol For The Right And Left".[1] The first headline is outright false[2] and the second is about a man who assaulted a detention center in Tacoma using firebombs and a rifle.[3] On DuckDuckGo[4], the first result is undercover video footage of an antifa leader admitting that they are violent and encouraging recruits to do things such as eye gouge. Other results are from both left and right-leaning media. Some claim antifa doesn't cause violence. Others claim that antifa is the sole cause of violence. In short: it's far more balanced than what Google is showing. You can also look at the political climate inside of Google. The leaked communications are pretty wild. You have people discussing banning recommendations of videos containing "nazis" using "dog whistles" and examples of such "nazis" are PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro[5]. Look at their internal docs on correcting "algorithmic unfairness" in news and search results.[6] They admit to tweaking the autocomplete behavior for both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, as the defaults suggested (correctly) that Martin was a drug dealer. These docs also claim that factually accurate representations of the world can constitute algorithmic unfairness. Look at the internal responses to James Damore's memo: https://imgur.com/a/S48QN https://imgur.com/a/S48QN Damore's politics are left-leaning libertarian. If that's the response he gets for making his opinion known, there is no chance that a work environment like that can accept a conservative viewpoint. Finally (I wish I could find a better source for this), Tucker Carlson describes an email by the head of Google's Multicultural Marketing department. In it, she explains how she used the company's resources & influence to target latino voters in key states with the goal of swinging the election towards Clinton. She even calls it a "silent donation". If what Tucker Carlson says is true, then that is one hell of a smoking gun. 1. https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png https://i.imgur.com/7rqtQrF.png 2. The trick is that antifa doesn't exactly have a membership list, so technically nobody who commits a crime can be tied to them. If you count those who claim to be anti-fascist, you can get quite the body count. For example, one antifa supporter killed 9 people last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_attack 4. https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png https://i.imgur.com/aDNHvNq.png 5. https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAymc6/5e2d800a63f92cf37c73181eec4f9c71/on_peterson-REDACTED.png https://images.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/adFf4yhVbUojBIGoAy... 6. https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocDump.pdf https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/06/SS1DocD... 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iPJMCxOZY&t=1m16s
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    Incognito is no longer enough to keep you away from Google suggestions, they do IP matching on their massive data sets.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    Your citation of an antifa mass shooting doesn't appear very compelling; the Wikipedia article explicitly indicates no political motive in the shooting. It says he separately may have claimed support for antifa but the article also indicates he also may have been an incel or something.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/28/election-interference-google-purges-breitbart-from-search-results/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/28/election-interfere... Whatever the feelings about the source here (I note all their submissions get killed on this site), it would be useful if somebody could point out where their figures are flawed (note they don't just refer to Breitbart, but other conservative websites) - because in the light of the recent clear suppression of conservative websites revealed in the recent "glitch" (1), it's deeply worrying for those of us concerned about free speech. (1) A thread attempting to discuss that episode here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912150
  - nathanwh 6y ago
    Admittedly I’m biased against that source already, but even then I don’t see how their evidence supports their conclusion. There’s three main points I can see 1. The proportion of the traffic to their site from google dropped. This isn’t convincing to me because there’s no evidence it’s because of their conservative viewpoint. Maybe their SEO was just outdated after the update. 2. The fact that a search for “Joe Biden” no longer goes to their site. If you look at the numbers they’re quite low already, again they fail to demonstrate that it’s because they’re a conservative website that they’re not getting traffic 3. They have a bar graph that shows that “conservative” websites get a less percentage of their traffic from google. Two main complaints with this, one the coloring of the bars in the graph is totally arbitrary. Two they again fail to demonstrate that the only thing that’s different is the political leaning of the site I don’t really feel like they’re presenting the data in a misleading way or they’re lying, but they fail to connect the data to the conclusion. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and they just don’t have it
    - mellosouls 6y ago
      Thanks for that constructive response (although I'm not convinced, they were useful counterpoints). To be fair, I'm also sceptical of the publication and would prefer other sources - but these issues of free speech (and in particular Big Tech's alleged suppression of conservative outlets) don't get covered in the mainstream - until they are forced onto the agenda like with the recent open letter. Of course, that may be because the alleged suppression of organisations doesn't happen - but there have been enough reports of it on the edges that warrant at least counter-arguments from impartial experts in more mainstream outlets; and the lack of those in the current undeniable culture of suppression of individual voices ("cancel culture") contributes to the feeling of some of us that something deeply worrying is happening.
- forgot_account 6y ago
  "Facebook Moderator Boasts Deleting Users For MAGA Hat" https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/facebook-moderator-boasts-deleting-users-for-maga-hat https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/facebook-moderat...

therealdrag0 6y ago

> anti-trust Questions about Google holding Yelp hostage and Facebook acquiring IG to squash competition seemed on point.

aripickar 6y ago
True, I was pleasantly surprised at those questions.