Google as a Dishonest Broker?
This strikes me as an exceedingly bad idea from Google:
From Drudge:
GOOGLE FRANKENSTEIN: MACHINES TO CHOOSE YOUR NEWS
Mon Apr 12 2010 08:15:34 ETGOOGLE CEO and Obama political activist Eric Schmidt declared this weekend that his machines will help decide what news you receive!
News sites should use technology to PREDICT what a user wants to read by what they have already read, Schmidt told the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWS EDITORS, where a few humans still remained in the audience.
“We’re all in this together.”
MORE
Schmidt said he doesn’t want ‘to be treated as a stranger’ when reading online, POLITICO reports.
He envisions a future where technology for news editing could help tailor advertisements for individual readers.
And he wants to be challenged through technology that ‘directs readers’ to a story with an ‘opposing’ view.
[An odd suggestion from the CEO of a company long accused of offering little to no conservative-leaning links on its news page, while aggressively promoting left-leaning hubs.]
Schmidt said GOOGLE is working on new ways to push adverts and content for consumers, based on what stories they’ve read.
What stories his machines have selected.
Developing…
If this no-choice “opposing view” meme sounds familiar, that’s because a prominent friend and appointee of President Obama, former U. of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, has, for several years, articulated a sophisticated theory on the need for government to regulate speech, “reformulate” the 1st Amendment to ensure greater “diversity” and compel the presentation of “opposing views”. While I share Sunstein’s concern that many people are deliberately corrupting their OODA Loops by only reading sources with which they already agree, forcing legal adults to read something else isn’t the answer. It’s a free country and with liberty comes the right to be left to wallow in ignorance in peace.
Getting the Congress and states to turn the free speech and free press clauses on their head is a task with small chance of political success. Persuading or pressuring a small number of friendly CEO’s of search engine companies to optimize their own systems to produce politically favorable results for the administration and the Democratic Party is a lot easier, far less transparent to the public and more difficult for the GOP and conservatives (or for that matter, dissident progressives and unpopular minorities) to combat.
To put it simply, the long term strategy here is that the information aggregators – Google being the 800lb gorilla – will become the new “gatekeepers” with their finger on the scales that determine the page rank of opposing views on controversial issues.
I feared that Google might be tempted to go down this road when they first became entangled with the Chinese government in a way that compromised the integrity of their search engine. At the time I asked:
” If you have agreed to censor what information can be accessed in China in return for greater market opportunities, have you also agreed to censor what information can be accessed about China by the rest of us ?”
As far as I am aware, that question has never been answered, though I think the answer has bearing on American national security and our domestic tranquility. The temptation to use the enormous informational power of Google to deliberately shape public discourse and cultural evolution to “manufacture consent” for policies favored by the elite without the commoners being aware of the manipulation, appears to be very difficult to resist.
I like Google. The company has provided a truly amazing array of informational services that – and I do not think this is an exaggeration – have added real and significant value to civilization. But part of that value comes from Google being regarded universally as an “honest broker” of information. Their CEO’s proposal jeopardizes that trust and once credibility is lost, it is gone for good.
The odd thing is, that this proposal is a really poor business strategy for Google – unless the objective is to create paranoia and drive a large segment of the population to use rival search engines or create new ones free of elite political gamesmanship.
April 13th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Zen,
Thx for pointing this out. Absolutely incredible.
As for not being "treated as a stranger" that reminds me of a few people I know in Germany who are nostalgic for the GDR on the grounds that an all-knowing communist state and its security apparatus were looking after them with parental solicitude. I kid you not. Most of these people are too old to be promising customers for google though.
Never believed in the honest broker much, we are looking at a very lucrative business here. As it is, though I am by no means an expert I always use alternative search engines in addition to google and compare results.
At present I am also switching from googlemail to another provider because I do not like to see ads making reference to words I use in my mails.
In jurisdictions with strong data protection laws the approach outlined above is probably quite illegal. I for one wd not consent to have data about my interests monitored in this way and wd certainly take the necessary steps.
Further, the right to wallow in ignorance as you so aptly put it, is protected by the concept of "negative freedom of speech/opoinion" in certain countries i.e. a citizen can simply demand to be left in peace.
The position of doctors, lawyers and other professions with rules for professional secrecy is intersting in this respect. What if google searches made by them are used to get information about their clients / patients ? Interesting, though it may sound far-fetched…at least at present.
April 13th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Sail Away…
In America you’ll get food to eat Won’t have to run through the jungle And scuff up your feet You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day It’s great to be an American Ain’t no lions or tigers……
April 13th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
"a really poor business strategy for Google "
Really?
What if the quid pro quo is regulatory advantages which will shut down or keep out rivals?
What it the goal is to get into a rent-capturing government-enforced monopoly?
And what if the alternative is to have Eric Holder’s guys looking for reasons to arrest your executives?
Sunstein is a fascist who knows what people should think. And now he and people like him have access to power, to try to compel people to think the way he wants.
Keep your eye on this one. It is major.
April 13th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Lex,
Interesting idea. Meanwhile, in Merry Old England …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7577712/Labour-used-personal-data-to-send-cancer-patients-post-about-Conservative-health-policies.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7584097/General-Election-2010-Doctors-condemn-Labour-emails-as-appalling-tactic.html
And that`s without the govt having access to google`s data and coms capacities. Is that OT ? I seem to recall that there were occasional spin doctor exchanges in the past (on both sides of the political spectrum) so maybe this is of interest.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
If Schmidt follows through on this idea, he will only belly up Google in a 2-3 year period. Google came to prominence only because Digital’s Altavista was caught selling placements in what was supposed to be the objective results of searches. Schmidt is saying that he plans to do a similar thing. The founders of Google will, no doubt, throw Schmidt out if he follows through on this loopy idea.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:04 am
I’ve been predicting this for the last few years, but I see it as a matter of time before free speech as we know it is gone in the US. It appears that free speech isn’t possible in an multiethnic/multicultural state? Some may say this is hyperbole, but I don’t think we can deny the trend-line. In the 60’s Americans lost freedom of association for these same reasons. The next logical step is loss of free speech.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:55 am
I think this is a bit of an overreaction at this point, particularly the notion that Google would of course try to stifle news outlets that are at odds with the Obama administration in exchange for regulatory favors. We can kick the idea around, but beyond that there is no reason to treat this as highly probable or currently occurring. While Google does control a huge share of search it doesn’t necessarily control the flow of news. The number of outlets is massive and people seem to find them just fine all on their own. If the worry is that people will come to rely solely on Google to tell them which news stories from which outlets to read that is a legitimate concern, expect for the fact that it is their right to do so (as Zen pointed out above) and it is frankly no different than people freely making the choice to only read Drudge and Fox or MSNBC and Kos. Furthermore, I am confident that this will not be the only option—people will be able to choose to have the news they see chosen by a sophisticated recommendation algorithm (which we are all used to at this point) or to browse news on their own. Google is too savvy and users these days have too much say in what digital companies do with their products.