🐱 Trump administration 'taking a look' at regulating Google

http://thehill.com/policy/technolog...nistration-taking-a-look-at-regulating-google


White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Tuesday said that the administration is “taking a look” at potentially regulating Google, following President Trump’s tweets criticizing the search giant.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning that Google search results for “Trump News” showed results for “only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media," he wrote, referencing prominent news outlet CNN.



“Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out,” Trump’s tweet read.
Kudlow's comments were in response to being pressed by reporters on if, in light of the president's comments, the administration is considering imposing regulations on Google.

In his tweets, Trump went on to accuse Google and other tech companies of being biased against conservatives, an increasingly common attack from Republicans.

“Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Trump tweeted.

Google shot back at the president's claims, refuting charges that it is biased against conservatives or any other political groups.

"When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology," the statement continues. "Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

Trump joins high-profile Republicans like House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in accusing technology companies of treating conservatives on their platforms unfairly.

With support from McCarthy, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to hold a hearing on the matter on Sept. 5, which Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is set to testify.

Dorsey will also testify during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing that day on how foreign governments have run misinformation campaigns on American tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Politicians and journalists have taken to platforms like Twitter as a standard means of communication. Companies of certain dominance need to be held to higher standards. It wouldn't be acceptable for a telephone company to censor phone calls because they're regulated as a common carrier.

We need to consider the infrastructure of the digital world, infrastructure that is completely private. Financial transactions, hosting services and social media companies. In the global internet world private companies have ultimate control over speech, arbitrarily. Not all means of communication are equal and your voice is significantly limited if restricted to handing out paper pamphlets.

When does ICANN and ARIN start restricting domains and IPs based off social pressures?

 

[Lipitor]

Listen... dude googled himself and saw bad press about himself and decided the search engine must be biased against him, despite not having any clue how the back end worked...

All this in a week where his campaign manager got convicted, his fixer flipped, the head of his charity flipped, and then he chose to be disrespectful as fuck about a dead fucking war hero.... fucking biased search engine..

Nevermind we just went through a Net Neutrality fiasco where it was decided the internet needs to be deregulated... just not so long ago, despite an overwhelming lack of public support.

 

[wellthathappened]

Obama proposed making internet access a public utility right like water.

Just because you can't post on Twitter doesn't mean your rights are violated.

 

[AssRapistDude1488]

Why did you just conflate public policy with moral perspective? Are you presenting the latter as justification for the former?

If so, I must politely disagree.

I did not intend to conflate the two - the thing I am mad at google about has nothing to due with issues of speech, or morality in general. In clearer words, I meant to say that no one I've ever met gives a damn about internet advertising vis-a-vis public policy or morality.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Obama proposed making internet access a public utility right like water.

Just because you can't post on Twitter doesn't mean your rights are violated.

The US courts said it does if it's a politician doing it.

 

[MarineTrainedTard]

Yeah, no, this is a terrible idea.

If anyone thinks it's a good idea, wait until some administration you don't like follows the precedent this would set and see how you feel about it.

 

[QI 541]

Yeah, no, this is a terrible idea.

If anyone thinks it's a good idea, wait until some administration you don't like follows the precedent this would set and see how you feel about it.

Any law can be abused through selective interpretation or enforcement, and we already have a million precedents for regulating businesses by limiting what they can do in ways that a private citizen wouldn't be. Libertarians already lost that battle decades ago and they still don't know it.

 

[wellthathappened]

If the idea of individual liberty died out decades ago, why are you still arguing against the concept?

Edit: you are also a revenge rating faggot.

 

[QI 541]

Corporations aren't really individuals regardless of what that one court case says.

 

[MarineTrainedTard]

"The government should stay out of business" - The right in 1998

"The government should stay out of business unless they do things I don't like" - the right in 2018 apparently and also SJWs

 

[mindlessobserver]

Yeah, no, this is a terrible idea.

If anyone thinks it's a good idea, wait until some administration you don't like follows the precedent this would set and see how you feel about it.

The duty of an elected government is to preserve the integrity of its existence. A fundamental feature of any democracy is "The Agora". The open space at the heart of society where the electorate can speak their minds on the issues facing the state. In Athens "The Agora" was literally the Agora. The central market of Athens. In our modern democracy, "The Agora" is unquestionably the internet.

fortunately or unfortunately the State does not own the Internet. It is owned by private companies. This would be fortunate, if these companies were uninterested third parties. Much like the market stalls in Athens Agora. Not giving a shit about who was screaming about what so long as people kept coming to buy the fish.

But as the Damore lawsuit shows, the market stalls in our modern agora are not disinterested third parties. They are activists. They view their ownership of the Agora not as a public duty for all, but as a political duty for their own interests. Which are virulently left wing. To the point where their own management proudly claims membership in ANTIFA, and views their power as a means of controlling the Demos (The people) rather then providing an open forum.

The US government therefore has no choice but to seize control. It cannot allow unelected third parties to dominate the political discourse. The government of the United States rules this land.

Not google.

 

[wellthathappened]

The US government therefore has no choice but to seize control. It cannot allow unelected third parties to dominate the political discourse. The government of the United States rules this land.

Not google.

This is a fundamental disagreement between conservatism and Trumpism that will never, ever be resolved. They are utterly contradictory.

 

[Marvin]

The James Damore v. Google thread over at lolcow and lolcow can really illuminate some of this. Suffice to say, the media is pearl clutching and going oh noooo....its not true! And it totally is. Senior managers of Google are self identified members of ANTIFA and even use Antifa icons on company discussion boards.

No it doesn't. All the Damore thread shows is that people who work at google have stupid political opinions, there's no reason to think they're manipulating search results, at least not in the way that that phrasing would lead you to believe.

This is the "tech I don't understand" cycle. We saw it to a small extent with Snowden's NSA leaks. We saw it with the Cambridge Analytica situation. And now we're seeing it with google "manipulating" search results.

They discuss regularly how they can adjust search results to bias left wing outcomes and how to deal with "the YouTube problem". I.e, all those nasty right wingers on YouTube.

There's a big difference between youtube and google. Youtube is substantially more curated than google.

Politicians and journalists have taken to platforms like Twitter as a standard means of communication. Companies of certain dominance need to be held to higher standards. It wouldn't be acceptable for a telephone company to censor phone calls because they're regulated as a common carrier.

We need to consider the infrastructure of the digital world, infrastructure that is completely private. Financial transactions, hosting services and social media companies. In the global internet world private companies have ultimate control over speech, arbitrarily. Not all means of communication are equal and your voice is significantly limited if restricted to handing out paper pamphlets.

When does ICANN and ARIN start restricting domains and IPs based off social pressures?

"Certain dominance" should be defined in how feasible competition is, not in how successful the company is. It's an important distinction.

Domains and IPs need to be regulated. Regulating twitter is a disturbing precedent.

I mean, if we look at the history of these sorts of regulations, newspapers have had like 30 year cycles before getting regulated. Even then there's still plenty of room for them to censor because of the first amendment.

See, the thing is, in the physical space, it's much harder to compete. Like if we're talking about ISPs, a super good lineman might be, what, 2x as efficient as a shitty one. Maybe 3x?

A really good programmer might be 10x or even 100x as good as a shitty programmer.

The example I bring up a lot is medium.com. They've got like 85 employees and they're in the top 300 websites worldwide.

When these are the numbers we're talking about, regulating twitter just sounds silly.

Again, bureaucratic barriers like IP space and DNS? I'm totally down with that. But not anything content-related.

 

[QI 541]

This is a fundamental disagreement between conservatism and Trumpism that will never, ever be resolved. They are utterly contradictory.

Trump is a liberal, what's your point?

 

[wellthathappened]

He is not a liberal as I understand it in the American context. He doesn't represent anything I am comfortable associating nationalism with. It isn't fair to associate him with racists and shit just because racists were/are nationalists.

 

[mindlessobserver]

This is a fundamental disagreement between conservatism and Trumpism that will never, ever be resolved. They are utterly contradictory.

Agreed. But it seems it's coming to the climax here. The US government has ALWAYS controlled the Agora, in as much as it has set the ground rules for the newspapers, and has heavily regulated television and radio. The internet has been the wild wild west. And that has been fine. Chaotic media is better then controlled media, and for the last 20 years this has been policy.

But Google, Facebook, and the rest have shown they are putting their own brand of order on the chaos. Their near monopolistic control of the major social media platforms also means they can do so. Sure they cannot outright control EVERYTHING, but they control enough to represent a significant political threat to the Government.

and theirin lies the problem. The major tech companies no longer see themselves just as businesses out to make a buck. They view themselves as political actors out to influence the course of the nation. And since they have aligned against the Republican party they better be ready for the fight this entails.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Any law can be abused through selective interpretation or enforcement, and we already have a million precedents for regulating businesses by limiting what they can do in ways that a private citizen wouldn't be. Libertarians already lost that battle decades ago and they still don't know it.

Nah we know it. Doesn't mean we have to like it or accept every new affront to freedom.

 

[wellthathappened]

Companies have always seen themselves as political actors. Otherwise Rhodesia wouldn't have existed.

I am philosophically opposed to enacting laws that restrict private companies in order to fill a cultural or political desire. Sorry.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Companies have always seen themselves as political actors. Otherwise Rhodesia wouldn't have existed.

I am philosophically opposed to enacting laws that restrict private companies in order to fill a cultural or political desire. Sorry.

And I am opposed to ceding power from my elected representatives to unelected corporate boards. It's infuriating enough to see the elected representatives dancing to the tune of these companies in exchange for money. To see these companies deciding to bypass the elected government entirely and go right to the people is beyond infuriating.

 

[ICametoLurk]

Does anyone have a link to that youtube video that was made by someone around 2010 that the hatred of the mainstream media would lead to someone who hated it becoming elected or something like that?