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Google Employees Discussed Tweaking Search Results To Counter Trump's Travel Ban (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed how they could tweak the company's search-related functions (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails. The email traffic, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows that employees proposed ways to "leverage" search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be "islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms 'Islam', 'Muslim', 'Iran', etc." and "prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms `Mexico', `Hispanic', `Latino', etc." The email chain, while sprinkled with cautionary notes about engaging in political activity, suggests employees considered ways to harness the company's vast influence on the internet in response to the travel ban. Google said none of the ideas discussed were implemented. "These emails were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. "Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology -- not in the current campaign season, not during the 2016 election, and not in the aftermath of President Trump's executive order on immigration. Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies."
Google needs to realize that by moving away from a neutral platform to one that is politically biased that they have lost the public trust. Not all of the public yet, but enough that people are talking about, even those that are not political. Whether it's here on Slashdot, at work or at the dinner table people are talking about Google's bias, even in liberal states.
Google needs to damage control and it's going to take more than claims of not being biased to do it. Google needs to come clean about past bias, remove the SJW weighting and be honest with people about what they did. Nothing less than a full mea culpa is going to work at this point.
They can claim they aren't biased all day long, but people keep seeing (and not seeing) the same results. Nothing has changed. When Google declined congresses invitation it showed a lot of people a company that is that is arrogant and completely out of touch with the average American.
As it is right now, your starting to see a lot of people who are looking at Google and declaring that their monopoly is overdue for antitrust action. This is starting to become much more prevalent in conservative media which has traditionally stood against antitrust actions.
Management? More like the PR department said they didn't do it.
The social justice engineers probably still did it because everyone knows certain keywords get tuned by hand. Google has become a company whose denials have to be read with the same skepticism given to a lawyer/politician's statement. The specific carve outs and what is not said is as important as what they have told you.
In 2016, I worked with an extremely right-wing company. I'm pretty sure their employees have enough guns to equip a small army.
After the election, a significant percentage were disappointed. In discussions afterward, a few of the die-hard conservatives even confessed they'd voted for HRC, because they worried that Trump would divide the Republican party.
Last I heard, they mostly just want him to shut up and do something that isn't controversial, so the party isn't constantly on defense, and might actually be able to accomplish something before the 2020 election.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The memo you link to doesn't support your conclusion.
Google tried to get Spanish speakers out to vote with Spanish language tools. No admission it was too help Clinton, in fact the memo is careful to remind readers that Google made efforts to be non-partisan with the information it provided.
Trying to get more people to vote probably did help Clinton, because most people who don't vote (because of apathy or suppression or lack of information) are Democrat voters, but that's democracy for you. You can't seriously be arguing that fewer people should vote just because they might vote the wrong way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC