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Google's Selfish Ledger is an Unsettling Vision of Silicon Valley Social Engineering (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future. The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X), and shared internally within Google. It imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and disease.
I believe we've found the answer.
George Orwell was a visionary.
Start with "don't be evil"
ends up with a terrifying Big Brother-y quasi police state* 'managing' everyone's behavior "for the public good, of course Mr Smith"
*you might say that Google is merely gathering data and at most 'nudging' behavior. I'd say that when Google can concatenate & save forever EVERYTHING YOU DO to a degree that would make FB and Cambridge Analytica (you know, the guys being publicly lynched for doing exactly this?) blush, and use that data against you in ways ranging from subtle to blatant including simply handing your data over to authorities, then yeah, I'm going to call that a quasi-police state whose 'public/private' partnership borders on Fascism.
-Styopa
There's an old saying about democracy being "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch".
The point being, the republic was set up to aspire to higher goals than can be achieved by pure democracy alone. We have people in power who are not bound by the will of the people, they can vote their conscience based on what they think is right. We take guidance from a bunch of enlightened people 250 years ago who set up basic guidelines to do this.
The idea of a bunch of like-minded people getting together and trying to "nudge users into alignment with their goals" is the same thing, it's "two wolves and a sheep" writ large.
We're seeing this today with the changes in user policy. YouTube used to be a bastion of free speech, everything that wasn't explicitly illegal was allowed... until that changed, and you can no longer talk about guns, or have conservative views, or cast aspersions on certain races or religions. (But it's OK when those races or religions cast aspersions back.)
Their goals are well-meaning today so that people will get behind the efforts and help, tomorrow their goals may be different.
Even when you agree with their goals, not everyone agrees with their proposed solutions - and yet they still try to influence public debate. Climate change is one of these issues, where a lot of people would agree that it's a problem and something should be done, if only the solutions weren't politically motivated.
What they are proposing is control over social thought. Unlike PACs or advertising, it's done without oversight or transparency. We complain about PACs not having enough transparency, and not knowing who pays for political ads - are we going to allow Google to be similarly opaque?
Next election it won't be "Russians hacked the election", it'll be "Google hacked the election".
Nudging behaviour like this is insidious and evil.
Is Hari Seldon running Google now?
Life is too short and too important to { take seriously | use windows }.
Why would the superwealthy want to implement communism or soviets? The current plutocracy is the safer bet.
Back in the 1970s they said that the United States of America would combine information and capitalism to create a paradise.
In fact they built a brutish hellhole.
Poor white guys. The centuries of constant oppression they have faced must be unbearable.
Spotted the racist.
One can imagine the scene in which Gandalf, say, was placed in such a position. It would be a delicate balance. On one side the true allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior strength because Sauron was not actually in possession, and perhaps also because he was weakened by long corruption and expenditure of will in dominating inferiors. If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken from him for ever. But the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end.
Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).
-Tolkien, Letter #246
Google - an intolerant monoculture of sheltered, white, suburban, arrogant jackasses who think they know what's best for everyone else.
Probably because this was a thought experiment.
That's irrelevant. The idea has been conceived and disseminated. The initial dissemination was among people with the power and the resources to make it a real-world experiment. Do you really Google doesn't have the arrogance, the hubris, and the power-lust to start implementing this?
This was a video that the source reports was released internally with the intention of showing unsettling things they do not plan on doing.
They may "not plan on doing", but do they "plan on not doing"? Besides, to hear Google tell it, they planned to not be evil - and look at them now.
Another non-story.
Google has a history of at least trying out the wild shit their people dream up. And I'm pretty sure the insularity of Silly Valley's denizens renders many of them immune to the consideration that using the rest of as lab rats is in any way immoral or inappropriate. Even at that, this would be a non-story only if Google wasn't already fully capable of rolling out such a scheme in a short time frame.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Of course. I have been modded down to oblivion whenever I have pointed it out, but this is sociopathic behavior, and we are training and indoctrinating kids with this sort of crap for decades now.
This country was formed to prevent precisely this, and to favor individual liberty over the "collective good", precisely because at some point, someone or some group will come along and attempt to define "collective good" for everyone else - which then has to be enforced at the point of a sword.
Liberalism/"progressivism"/socialism can only end in totaltarian behavior, it is part and parcel and the end game of any socialist activity.
There was also no subtlety in Google firing this person. Strange how none of you Damore cry babies ever criticize Google for that firing. Because I’m sure the lack of outrage has nothing to do with this other person’s political views.
The fact that you think Sweden is full of "no-go zones" (or even London, for that matter) tells me that your opinions were already manufactured by Russian troll farms.
There was nothing subtle in the firing of James Damore. Neither is the Censorship on Facebook "subtle".
FREEDOM TECHNOLOGIES:
+Jabber +YacY +ssh +scp +phpbb +irc
James Damore was an idiot. Your employer and coworkers don't give a fuck about your edgy opinions. They want to make as much money as possible, as easily as possible. If you get in the way of that, expect negative repercussions. Your workplace is not a debate club, social studies class, therapist's office or democracy. Shut up and do your job and things will likely work out fine.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Probably because this was a thought experiment.
That's irrelevant. The idea has been conceived and disseminated. The initial dissemination was among people with the power and the resources to make it a real-world experiment. Do you really Google doesn't have the arrogance, the hubris, and the power-lust to start implementing this?
They have pretty much all the data they need to do this for some people. They have your search history, your email history, your SMS history, your phone calls and voicemails (google voice), your detailed location history, your purchase history, (google wallet) every photo you've taken in the past N years, all of your files in Google Drive, and more.
They know more about you than Facebook.
Liberalism/"progressivism"/socialism can only end in totaltarian behavior, it is part and parcel and the end game of any socialist activity.
Been saying this for a long time.
It's even my /. sig.
"Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce."
Google/FB/twatter/et al provide the surveillance state, the Feds provide the police state.
Fascism refined for the information age. It's an authoritarian's wet-dream.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Knowledge is power. As Google knows you better and better, they have more and more power over you. This video shows they're already considering how to exercise this power. This is the obvious next step for them (and, FWIW, I had already called it: https://slashdot.org/comments....).
Google, Facebook and the other data vampires really need to be stopped. The EU GDPR is a step in the right direction (though I, personally, would prefer both companies, and other privacy infringers, like Equifax, to be dismantled, or broken up). Unfortunately, the US government is already in Google and Facebook's pockets (it's not for nothing that Google is the largest corporate lobbyist in the USA), so I don't expect any useful legislative action.