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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."
I’m sure they’ll be tweaking results this upcoming election.
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.
Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.
Now that's funny.
This would be the same Google that plans to closely track users of it's search services for the Chinese government and silenced people talking about it ?
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Really it's still on the damn front page as I type this.
Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.
Compare it to: Somebody at Google said "hey, men and women are different and if we consider that then we could help increase actual diversity here for good!" and management came back saying "you're fired", and that was the end of it.
It's bad enough that Google even has this power, but between it and Facebook, there's clear pressure from the bottom up (thanks to the prevalence of thought in the Bay Area) to end up doing this. It's naive to think effort to effect these types of things end here.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
So you have one confirmed instance of employees' serious intent to rig search results, you have the management's *word* that it didn't happen, and from that you conclude that the story is not newsworthy because it follows no other instance of such intent ever occurred, or if it did it must also have been blocked by the management -- according to the management? After the leaked video showing clear and unequivocal political preferences of the management?
Dalmore was fired amidst hate-filled rants and threats from far-left fellow employees, and Google said "He was fired for violating company policy (we don't know which one). Our employees are not far-left, and we would never act on those views (that they don't have)."
Then recently we discovered that right after the 2016 election, Google executives held a meeting, where employees expressed dismay at Trump's election. Many people, including multiple CEx officers, spoke about why it happened, and started brainstorming about ho to make sure that 'fake news' could never make it happen again. Google responded, saying "Yes, we have far-left employees, but they were just expressing their opinions (even the CEO). They would never think of acting on it."
Now we see that employees felt comfortable publicly brainstorming how to use Google's search results to manipulate public opinion and political views. Google's latest response: "Sure, we have far-left employees, and they spend their time thinking of ways to oppose the other political party. However, they would never actually do it. Our search result algorithms, which we will never show you, certainly don't include any deliberate bias for our chosen political views."
As you said, it is naive to believe them when they've lied so much in the past.
...as long as the Federal regulators now recognize that Google DOES exert editorial control over its content.
Therefore, they are no longer simply a 'blind carrier' of information but in fact are showing that they are functionally liable for whatever they link, right?
-Styopa
I loved google when they delivered search results relevant to my query. But increasingly they've been tweaking results. You can do the same search in google and then in other search results and there are certain things that should be in the google search that aren't.
Lots of things are still good about google... their translate service is pretty cool, their maps service is great, their image list thing is pretty good for finding random images that are similar to search results.
Lots of positive things. But... the company has abandoned their "don't be evil" motto.
Time to recognize that and pop over to DuckDuckGo or something.
Whatever your politics, if you put any stock in classical Western Liberalism, then you can't be okay with the search engine trying to bias your political opinions by biasing the search. They've been doing it. Everyone knows. Time to acknowledge it and move on.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
STARTPAGE is good. Also duckduckgo
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This would be the same Google that plans to closely track users of it's search services for the Chinese government and silenced people talking about it ?
It's also the same Google that used their platform to drive Latino votes during the election, in the hopes of upending Trump. But the Slashdot gatekeepers didn't want to tell you that story. They pulled that from the stories you could vote on within hours of my submitting it.