The New York Times Algorithm & Why It Needs Government Regulation | Hacker News Reader

The New York Times Algorithm & Why It Needs Government Regulation

searchengineland.com

120 pointsyanw20 comments

<facepalm>I have a great idea guys, lets have the government run the press! Then we can be like China! While we're at it, why not take over all other forms of free speech - I mean why go half-way when you can go all out? </facepalm> - this is what I get for getting so worked up I post a response before I finish reading the article. Mad props for employing satire.

Sorry, downvoted by mistake, without reading your entire comment.

A well reasoned and informative piece. Any other good responses to the NYT OpEd piece out there?

Conversely, to me, the reasoning in the piece is extremely flaky. A few examples below:

1) The biggest and most obvious one is that the Times has a large amount of oversight already in terms of other papers as well as law. Google has nothing like that, search engines just don't work the same way. You don't get search results compared all the time. That does happen to reporting.

2) People tend to consume a variety of reporting mediums, but only one search engine. For example I read the Independent newspaper, the BBC or Guardian websites, on TV watch Question Time, This week (both BBC again admittedly) and Channel 4 news. And on the radio in the morning, news reports. I'm probably a bit more of an outlier, but I would guess many people are exposed to multiple suppliers of news without even realizing it.

And for search I use... um, Google.

3) The numbers are totally incomparable. How many people in the world rely on the Times' as their exclusive news provider in the world? 1% would be a gross over estimation. And Google for search? 66%.

4) Transparency. There is nothing transparent about Google's algorithm, while everything is supposed to be transparent at a paper. A journalist not declaring a vested interest is abnormal, they will even duck out of stories in which the have such an interest. Again, it's about oversight. Remember that hoo-haa a year ago about the massive argument those tech bloggers had on screen about free gear influencing their reports? That would never happen to a search engine.

There are many comparable intellectual bloopers in the satire just like this.

I've been of the opinion that Google needs some oversight for quite a while, they are getting scarily powerful. While I dislike government interference, the web is too important to leave to a company.

At the moment Google is fairly good, but there's no denying it's been favouring its own services at the expense of others.

We have nothing to gain in trusting it to regulate itself and everything to lose.

Good post but #2 is probably far from the average. A lot of people don't read/watch the news anymore and if they do, they usually watch it on one channel at night. I find it rare for people to do something as simple as use google news or other aggregators. And even if you were to read multiple papers, the Times does get reprinted a lot, so does Reuters and AP, Knight Rider stories etc. The newspaper industry is about as consolidated as the search business. There not that many conglomerates in news and independent newspapers are rare.

I thought it more a parody with 'food for thought' then a deep analysis, but don't disagree with you

I despise MSM's talk about how 'gatekeepers' should get preferential treatment or should be regulated, no matter who those gatekeepers are. It's all a shallow power play: he who directs traffic, shapes minds. The NYT is losing its power to direct traffic & complaints about Google are just misguided survival strategies. There is a problem with power centralization through network effects (Facebook, Google) but regulation is not going to solve that.

What is going to solve it?

> If Google was seriously abusing its “gatekeepter” status, you’d expect to hear billions of complaints about anti-competitive behavior in those billions of searches.

Ah, because people are never duped. Google's done an incredible job creating a do-gooder image for itself, which shuts off people's warning systems. (For contrast, consider Microsoft's long-standing reputation for being ruthless, especially in the 90s.) To be sure, I don't think it's all image, but you'd be a fool to think do-gooder sentiments are the driving force behind that company.

Since Sullivan is so interested in pointing out cute similarities, here's a serious difference for you: Google is insanely profitable and has an extremely effective positive feedback system for acquiring power. The Gray Lady, meanwhile, is on the verge of collapse.

The problem is power, and there isn't nearly enough concern over how much of it Google has. Good on The New York Times for trying to raise it, I say. I don't know if I agree with their proposal, but this is a conversation that we need to be having.

And by the way, it's not really about Google as such. If it were Yahoo or Lycos or whoever else in Google's position, the same arguments would apply.

>> If Google was seriously abusing its "gatekeepter" status, you’d expect to hear billions of complaints about anti-competitive behavior in those billions of searches.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1518545 for one case where the (French) govt ruled that Google was abusing its monopoly power in the ads market.

but you'd be a fool to think do-gooder sentiments are the driving force behind that company

so what is the driving force behind google? you say power. what do they want the power for? they want to tell you how to live your lives? they want to tell you how to raise your kids? so far the political policies they've supported aren't bad... free speech, equal rights, etc.

Lycos? How cute! I agree that the problem is power, but I'm not convinced regulation is going to do anything. On the one hand we have network effects at play creating major power hubs (The Kingdom of Facebook) but on the one hand we also have blogs run by local city-state tyrants like Techcrunch. Yes, stupid blogs are about power too. Should government regulate major blogs like Huffpost of Techcrunch because they have the power of shaping opinion in respectively the field of technology and liberal thought?

I've never been convinced by the argument that opening Google's algorithms would make it really vulnerable to spam. In the short term, I don't doubt it would, but I suspect a million eyes on the code would find and fix the bugs (where bugs are the easily spammable weak points), much as they do with crypto algorithms.

But the thing is, weak points in Google's algorithm at this point in the game are probably not bugs. The algorithm is probably doing what it was written to do, but the problem is that Google is essentially trying to create an AI that can pass a worldwide Turing test with highly trained professional testers working to outsmart it.

Wouldn't having the government step in defeat half the point of a newspaper?

How's that diff from th government deciding how we find stuff online?

Harder for the government power grabbers to make the "child porn" argument against newspapers.

google is doing well and forcing other companies to innovate and compete. the folks who run or are involved in these other shitty companies are pissed and just want to rant. so far, most everything google is doing and has done has benefited the end consumer in one way or another. so far.

as an average user who doesn't own a company or hold a financial stake in google or their competitors, i feel like all of this rant is bullshit.

I agree with you on this. I remember that shortly after Google announced the Android operating system, Apple announced that it would be releasing an SDK for developing native applications in the iPhone.

When geeks attack.

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