🐱 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.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

What do you mean "no one uses the alternatives?" Bing search comes pre-packaged in all kinds of applications and shitboxes.

Honestly, the slam dunk case is facebook's to seize because Alex Jones' followers harassing Sandy Hook families.

Alex Jones is considered responsible for that in a legally binding sense?

 

[Marvin]

Alex Jones is considered responsible for that in a legally binding sense?

No, but platform operators have a lot of leeway in banning someone. They've got a straightforward reason why he's bad for business.

 

[ICametoLurk]

https://www.bloombergquint.com/busi...for-trump-would-crack-down-on-google-facebook

(Bloomberg) -- The White House is considering a draft executive order for President Donald Trump that would instruct federal antitrust and law enforcement agencies to open probes into the practices of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., and other social media companies.

Bloomberg News obtained a draft of the order, which a White House official said was in its early stages and hasn’t been run past other government agencies. Separately, Lindsey Walters, deputy White House press secretary, said in an emailed statement that the document isn’t the result of an official White House policy making process.

The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed, actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”

Read the Executive Order draft on bias in online platforms

The document doesn’t name any companies. If signed, the order would represent a significant escalation of Trump’s aversion to Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies, whom he’s publicly accused of silencing conservative voices and news sources online.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company has no comment on the order. The press offices of Google and Twitter didn’t respond Saturday to emails and telephone calls requesting comment.

Trump’s Complaint
“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” Trump said on Twitter in August. “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.”

Social media companies have acknowledged in congressional hearings that their efforts to enforce prohibitions against online harassment have sometimes led to erroneous punishment of political figures on both the left and the right, and that once discovered, those mistakes have been corrected. They say there’s no systematic effort to silence conservative voices.

Stiglitz Calls for Tougher Antitrust Stand to Fight Market Power

The draft order directs that any actions federal agencies take should be “consistent with other laws” -- an apparent nod to concerns that it could threaten the traditional independence of U.S. law enforcement or conflict with the First Amendment, which protects political views from government regulation.

“Because of their critical role in American society, it is essential that American citizens are protected from anticompetitive acts by dominant online platforms,” the order says. It adds that consumer harm -- a key measure in antitrust investigations -- could come “through the exercise of bias.”

The order’s preliminary status is reflected in the text of the draft, which includes a note in red that the first section could be expanded “if necessary, to provide more detail on role of platforms and the importance of competition.”

The possibility of an executive order emerged as Attorney General Jeff Sessions prepares for a Sept. 25 briefing by state attorneys general who are already investigating the tech firms’ practices.

Federal Case
The meeting, which will include a representative of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, is intended to help Sessions decide if there’s a federal case to be made against the companies, two people familiar with the matter have said. At least one of the attorneys general participating in the meeting has indicated he seeks to break up the companies.

Growing movements on the right and the left argue that companies including Google and Facebook engage in anti-competitive behavior. The companies reject the accusation, arguing they face robust competition and that many of their products are free. Bias has not typically figured in antitrust examinations.

In July, for instance, Twitter algorithms limited the visibility of some Republicans in profile searches. Jack Dorsey, the company’s chief executive officer, testified before Congress in September that the limits also affected some Democrats as the site tried to enforce policies against threats, hate, harassment or other forms of abusive speech. The moves were reversed.

A Few Misgivings
A Pew Research Center survey earlier this year found that 72 percent of Americans, and 85 percent of Republicans, think it’s likely that social media companies intentionally censor political viewpoints that those companies find objectionable.

Even on the right, however, there are misgivings about a Trump administration crackdown on the companies. On Friday, libertarian-leaning groups including FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council sent a letter to Sessions expressing “fear” that his “inquiry will be to accomplish through intimidation what the First Amendment bars: interference with editorial judgment.”

Content on Facebook and Google is delivered to users by computer programs using thousands of signals to rank what may be most relevant to them in that moment. Those programs, which are written by humans, mostly try to serve up what other people have found useful in the past, or what the user seems to like seeing. That means it could be difficult to prove or disprove bias, since most people already have a somewhat personalized experience on the internet.

Facebook has said it has no reason to believe its algorithm is biased. But in order to answer to critics, the company hired Jon Kyl, a former Republican senator from Arizona, to run an internal probe. Kyl has returned to the Senate after being appointed to replace John McCain, who died in August, but his team is continuing the work at Facebook.

 

[XYZpdq]

The document instructs U.S. antitrust authorities to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” It instructs other government agencies to recommend within a month after it’s signed, actions that could potentially “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.”

wtf now I love big government interference in the tech world

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

On that same token, for all of the talk about Trump looking to appoint himself president-for-life, I don't think he'll actually go through with it.

Make no mistake. Trump is definitely going to do away with term limits and install himself as president-for-life.

Just like George W Bush was going to. Just like the next republican president is going to. Ohmygod it's such a terrible danger.

...What is a problem is Trump suggesting its his place to do anything about Google beyond supporting anti-monopoly laws. Jesus our country is fucked in that regard. But it's not Trump's job to get mad because a search for "european scientists" shows exclusively black people in the results. That's not the government's job. That's the kiwis' job.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Not mentioned in the (((Bloomberg))) article: the fact that Google was caught on tape discussing how to bias their search engine to "fight back" against Trump's travel ban. I'll take "Solid Circumstantial Evidence" for $200, please, Alex.

 

[Medicated]

Make no mistake. Trump is definitely going to do away with term limits and install himself as president-for-life.

Just like George W Bush was going to. Just like the next republican president is going to. Ohmygod it's such a terrible danger.

...What is a problem is Trump suggesting its his place to do anything about Google beyond supporting anti-monopoly laws. Jesus our country is fucked in that regard. But it's not Trump's job to get mad because a search for "european scientists" shows exclusively black people in the results. That's not the government's job. That's the kiwis' job.

I thought Democrats were hoping Obama would declare himself Emperor of the US to stop Trump, they would've loved him. Although Hillary probably would've had him shot then.

wtf now I love big government interference in the tech world

As we move further and futher into the internet age, you see how the internet giants are trying to see what they can get away with. They can't help themselves since they are publicly traded companies, if they can sell customer data, if they can take money to promote certain narratives or prioritize search results, you don't think they'll do it?

At some point they'll push a bit too hard and hit someone other than a small time youtuber or an Alex Jones, and you'll see the Government will step in and have to say "okay this is too much corruption even for us, now you are pissing off people with money and friends"

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Make no mistake. Trump is definitely going to do away with term limits and install himself as president-for-life.

Just like George W Bush was going to. Just like the next republican president is going to. Ohmygod it's such a terrible danger.

...What is a problem is Trump suggesting its his place to do anything about Google beyond supporting anti-monopoly laws. Jesus our country is fucked in that regard. But it's not Trump's job to get mad because a search for "european scientists" shows exclusively black people in the results. That's not the government's job. That's the kiwis' job.

As long as it sticks to existing anti-trust laws and nothing else I'm actually ok with this.

 

[Pur Sang]

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/22/google-ceo-employees-need-to-keep-politics-out-of-their-work/

Spoiler: article text

Faced with growing criticism that his company’s best known products and services may be biased by its employees’ political views, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has urged those who work at the internet giant to keep their opinions on politics to themselves.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Pichai sent a memo to Google’s employees, also known as “Googlers”, on Friday warning them to that if they do anything that “undermines (users’) trust, we will hold them accountable.”

“We do not bias our products to favor any political agenda,” Pichai said, in a copy of the memo that Journal said it obtained. “The trust our users place in us is our greatest asset and we must always protect it.”

Pichai’s laying down of the law regarding employees’ political bias in their work comes after the leaking to the public of some discussions by Google employees that appeared to show those workers lamenting the policies and administration of President Donald Trump.

Among the matters that the Journal said Google employees talked about was President Trump’s January 2017 travel ban, and ways that they could alter Google search functions to connect people to organizations and efforts opposed to the travel ban.

In his memo, Pichai said no such changes were put in place.

“Recent news stories reference an internal email to suggest that we would compromise the integrity of our search results for a political end,” the Journal reported Pichai as saying in the memo. “This is absolutely false.”
Last month, President Trump, took to Twitter to call out Google for what he said was promoting stories critical about his presidency and tamping down reports by more friendly outlets. Trump called the actions a “very serious situation” that “will be addressed.”

 

[Mrs Paul]

I remember people claiming Bush was going to do so, because 9-11, (which of course, he was behind). Remember? And then he was going to declare marshal law and anyone who protested would be put into fema camps.
And then Obama, who is secretly a Muslim who was actually born in Kenya was going to institute Sharia law and take away everyone's guns.

Of course, he'd have a really hard time doing so, since JFK already put us under the authority of the Vatican. Wild times.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I mean... what the fuck are the anti-trust people doing if they aren't already looking into google. That's not to say they definitely are breaking laws, but jesus obviously you have to keep an eye on giant supermassive tech companies with tons of subsidiaries. I hope they're looking into amazon too, since the attorney generals have utterly dropped the ball on them.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

I mean... what the fuck are the anti-trust people doing if they aren't already looking into google. That's not to say they definitely are breaking laws, but jesus obviously you have to keep an eye on giant supermassive tech companies with tons of subsidiaries. I hope they're looking into amazon too, since the attorney generals have utterly dropped the ball on them.

The trouble is that antitrust jurisprudence has shifted over the last few decades from "percentage of the marketplace" to "outcomes (read: low prices) for consumers." This made sense in the 70s and 80s, when all of the industries that could reasonably be considered infrastructure (water, power, telephones) had already been classified as common carriers, had arrangements made with regulatory bodies w/r/t natural monopoly status, and were otherwise under control to prevent the Guilded Age from happening again. Then the internet happened, and a whole new layer of infrastructure emerged and rapidly turned into the new Standard Oil, because like Rockefeller, they're operating in a political environment that allows them to gobble up an effective controlling interest in the marketplace with little resistance. If Google or Amazon had appeared in the 50s, they'd have been nuked from orbit by the FTC long before they got to the point they're at now. Basically, the law not keeping up with technology allows people like Google and Amazon to have their cake and eat it too (see: the fact that the USPS basically subsidizes Amazon by shipping their stuff at a loss, due to an outdated pricing model. This is what happens when a service gets nationalized: it stops responding to price signals, because it's business and it's funding aren't inherently intertwined.)

There's a saying that generals are consistently fighting the last war, and so it is with regulators. Additionally, in this particular case, I don't think I'm crazy to assume that the career bureaucrats are turning a blind eye to the misbehavior of Big Tech because they sympathize with their positions, which is why the president and AG need to force the issue.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Broadly I think they should be able to do what they want but not if they're receiving government funding. Which is a whole other issue.

 

[RadicalCentrist]

We have the best anti-monopoly laws in the world. Please don't let them go to waste.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Honestly I'd rather they blocked those recent pharmacy and telecom company mergers but I guess it's a start.