Thread: A New Kind of Web Censorship, and why you should care

Originally Posted by joesixpack

Google used to just give you what you searched for, but now they give you what they think you're most likely to want to see. The example from the video is telling. Two people googled "Egypt". One person got news of the revolution, the other got travel bargains. Just from a practical viewpoint, I'd like to know about a revolution at the same time that I'm booking my flight there.

Nah man - google used to give you whatever someone else coded into a web page. The big problem now is that Google is filtering the trash for you!

James.

I honestly don't see how this is censorship

The cookie/cache clearing doesn't work too well. The moment google/facebook/etc identify you as yourself (i.e. you login into an account that they can link to you, or they match your IP address) they can apply the same personalization/filter to the full extent or just partially depending on the confidence of the match.

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself. An after school special for the modern days if you will.

BTW as far as I know the filtering that google does is ordering, so it's not hiding information which would be censoring, but rather prioritizing it in the way that you've trained it to do.

+1 to what Gugi said. This is not censorship.
I agree that it is a bit fishy that search result relevance should be person dependent, though it is of course not know whether the preference is short term or long term (i.e. in the egypt example: was I looking for holiday stuff the half hour before the comparison or not).

With personalized advertizement, this has been going on for ages. And iirc, it's not the first time that search result ordering has happened.
As long as all information is still presented, I don't think it can be classified as censorship.

This fits perfectly with Google's mission statement.

If it is a problem for enough people, a new search provider will emerge as king.

Originally Posted by gugi

The cookie/cache clearing doesn't work too well. The moment google/facebook/etc identify you as yourself (i.e. you login into an account that they can link to you, or they match your IP address) they can apply the same personalization/filter to the full extent or just partially depending on the confidence of the match.

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself. An after school special for the modern days if you will.

BTW as far as I know the filtering that google does is ordering, so it's not hiding information which would be censoring, but rather prioritizing it in the way that you've trained it to do.

I think that gugi's definition of "amplifying" is quite precise.

Originally Posted by gugi

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself.

I agree that censorship isn't the correct word, but I disagree that they're doing things that we would do ourselves; the entire point of the talk is that these algorithms are increasingly tailoring their future results and applying filters based on past searches against what some (many?) people would want. If I search for razors and click through to "Wade & Butcher" then those are the filters I want at that time, but by no means do I want my future searches for razors to include more Wade & Butcher while leaving out Genco.

There should be a toggle. If I want tailored searches then that's fine, but if I want to find out things going on in the world, particularly current events, then I don't want my past searches to have an affect.

Of course if it ever becomes a serious issue then an alternative will pop-up. Right now I think the legislation being proposed by the RIAA, MPAA, and other similar organizations (see: SOPA / PIPA) are much greater threats to how the Internet works, particularly in America.

SOPA/PIPA is possibly the most dangerous thing in the pipeline by miles. It would give the federal government the power to basically censor the internet like China does (blocking websites) on the mere allegation by say Sony or Universal that someone has "pirated" something from them (whether it happens to be true or not), potentially shutting down a small e-commerce business (self published ebook or music album).

RIAA does not like the fact that nowadays you can do a far better job (& keep far more money) publishing albums yourself rather than having to go through their cartel & I wouldn't put it past their members to engage in outright lying about a website containing "copyrighted material". "If we can't have money from your work, you can't either". I realize this sounds a little far fetched, but this has happened before: Universal Music Keeps Trying To Claim Zoe Keating's Royalty Checks, Despite Having Nothing To Do With Her | Techdirt Now imagine what they could also do under SOPA/PIPA?

The thing is, do you think the average Joe Bloggs has the resources to defend himself against this?

EDIT: forgot to mention this: I am not really a fan of Justin Bieber at all,but the fact remains, without his singing songs on YouTube, he would not have a career today. As it is, under SOPA, he could face up to 5 years in prison.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I honestly don't see how this is censorship

It puts you in a box and controls your intellectual feeding. You no longer get contradictory viewpoints, only similar ones to reinforce what you may already believe or lean towards. Without dissenting dialogue or debate(censorship) or the sharing of DIFFERENT facts/ideas you can not make a rational or well thought out opinion/decision . My father was an over the road driver for many years, spending weeks and months in a truck with little human interaction, it has taken years since his retirement to even consider an opposing idea or fact. I believe this was due to his being intellectually "cut off" from the rest of the population. He had no thoughts/ or ideas/opinions to consider other than his own.

good points. However, funny, I googled "what is nun2sharp's opinion on this matter?" and it said that you basically agree with me

Seriously though I don't expect google to give me biased or unbiased data. When I search, I usually know what I want to find - when I don't, I know I'll have to research it out anyway If someone expects google to hold their intellectual hand they might not be served as well by whatever changes google has to made as far as how it presents their search results