Google: Please Stop Telling Lies About Me
ehudreiter.com
ehudreiter.com
However, looking into Israeli citizenship law, I learned that Israel does not have birthright citizenship. So he was not automatically a citizen despite being born there. Had his parents been Israelis (and that doesn't appear to be the case), he would be Israeli.
It's true that he's likely eligible to claim Israeli citizenship through the law of return. But being eligible for Israeli citizenship isn't the same as having it.
So I do understand the annoyance. It's not just a technicality--he actually doesn't have Israeli citizenship. Google's algorithm appears to assume all countries practice birthright citizenship like the US (when many, probably most, do not).
So unless therhttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jnbichee's a country where this is not the case, the situation you're describing would not occur. And if there is such a country, the problem would not be unique to Israel, since birthright citizenship is not practiced in many (most?) countries.
Edit: Interesting. As user cwzwarich points out, it appears that India is indeed such a country. So looks like it's possible to be stateless at birth if you're Indian and born in one of the many countries without birthright citizenship. That said, all an Indian citizen has to do if that happens is to report the birth at an Indian embassy within 1 year of the birth, and then the child is an Indian citizen. But if your parents are irresponsible or unaware of the law...
For the UK at least, it's not that simple, unless your parents were born in the UK. If your parents citizenship is due solely to one/both of your grandparents being UK citizens (i.e. your parents were also born overseas), you might not be entitled to UK citizenship.
I don't recall the details, but IIRC you need to live in the UK for some time in order to pass on citizenship to your child.
The US has similar rules.
US doesn't have citizenship by descent (the grandparents situation you're describing). So it has no similar rules.
This may just be a terminology disagreement, but that's typically not what is considered "citizenship by descent".
What we're describing is considered by the US to be "citizenship by parents" or "acquired citizenship". On the other hand, "citizenship by descent" is the European tradition of awarding citizenship to grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of citizens. The US doesn't have citizenship by descent (in fact, it's true that there's a single situation when your grandparent's citizenship can matter to someone trying to assert US citizenship, but it's only as a kind of "tiebreaker" if your parents weren't married and one was a US citizen).
Interestingly it's even more subtle than this: you can be a US citizen, but if you haven't spent enough time living in the US (for a definition of "enough" when years spent as a child count for more) then your citizenship doesn't automatically pass on to your children.
> I'm well aware of this, since I have close family that your situation applies to. Actually, if your parents are married and even one is a US citizen, you will be too, always.
You are both wrong.
If both parents are US citizens and at least one of them has ever been a resident of the US or one of itd outlying possessions, you acquire citizenship at birth.
If your parents are married, one is a US citizen, and the other a non-citizen national, the US citizen parent must have been resident in the US for at least one year for you to automatically acquire citizenship at birth.
If the non-citizen parent isn't a national, the citizen parent must be resident in the US for five years, at least two of which were after the age of 14.
https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/HTML/PolicyManual-Volume1...
I'm describing a situation in which:
- grandparent was a UK citizen born in UK
- parent was born outside UK, but had UK citizenship at birth
- child was both outside UK, and is not automatically a UK citizen, because parent didn't ever live in the UK
The US has similar rules. They determine what happens to a child if at least one parent is a US citizen, but that parent was born outside the US. If the parent lived in the US for many years (I don't recall the exact #), then the child gets US citizenship. If the parent never lived in the US, then there are other conditions that may or may not result in the child getting citizenship.
His father had emigrated to Australia from Fiji, met a Cambodian woman and had a child. Father and son eventually became Australian citizens.
In any case, Australia enacted a law recently that allowed them to revoke citizenship of terrorists if they held dual citizenship.
The Australian govt revoked Prakash's citizenship, asserting that he also held Fijian citizenship.
The Fiji govt disputed this, asserting that Prakash was not a Fijian citizen, had never been one, and hadn't so much as stepped foot in Fiji. They said that he had qualified for Fijian citizenship by virtue of being born overseas to a Fiji citizen, but that since his father had never applied for citizenship for his son, it was never granted to him. Fijian citizenship is only granted automatically to children of a Fijian parent born on Fijian soil.
By stripping this Aussie of his citizenship and making him stateless, Australia acted illegally according to both their own laws as well as international law.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/02/neil-...
Indeed, as a rule of thumb ius soli is found mainly in American countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
And Google notes this in the knowledge box. Above where it says he is born it states: Israeli computer scientist
I would say in most cases you could make the leap that someone born somewhere is an X computer scientist. In this case, it isn't correct.
The more concerning thing about this is Google's lack of attention to the feedback reports they solicit for knowledge box. I've put a couple through in the past and they haven't change the information. Who knows.
Maybe the feedback process exists to gauge what actually needs to change? <100 requests and it is ignored.
EDIT
After I posted this I made a feedback request and immediately received this back from Google:
"Thank you for submitting feedback for Ehud Reiter.
We're currently processing other feedback related to this topic so the changes you requested might already be underway.
Here’s your submission:
====================
He is not Israeli.
====================
If accepted, this suggested edit will be added to the Knowledge Graph, where it will help Google return richer information and more meaningful results to users’ queries. Your submission is governed by Google's Terms of Service and will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. If you are the authorized representative for this entity, please review these guidelines on the process to get verified."
In most countries of the world, this is not the case. As a general rule, only the countries North/South America practice ius soli, or birthright citizenship.
What will it take before you consider them to be lying?
Being wrong is not the same thing as lying, or else everything wrong becomes lying and the word "lying" loses its meaning. No one wants to be wrong. That is where intent comes into play.
I was actually interested in at what point this should be considered intentional. At what point should Google be obligated to hide this (mis)information, or show some disclaimer? After one "feedback"? After 10? After this blogpost? After a newspaper article?
Lying is about intent.
If, for example, I write that MIT has assembled a robot army with the aim of taking over Canada, I don't know for a fact that is false.
Slander and libel use that standard.
TLDR: Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
'The sentence below is true
The sentence above is a lie'
Well no, it just means one is wrong. Though I imagine the philosophic roots had more nuance than the sci-fi that came from it.
In this case, Google continues to repeat wrong information long after being corrected multiple times. At this point, it's fair to say they are lying.
I wouldn't call it lying, I'd call it a sub-optimal algorithm design.
If saying: "it's not me, it's the algorithm" gets you out of the responsibility you can do all kinds of morally questionable things.
(edit: grammeer)
In seriousness, though, I agree and we're already way behind the eight-ball on this one, given predictive policing and bail algorithms.
At what point does it become fake news or just being wrong?
But I agree that Google is almost certainly not lying, which implies intent. They're simply wrong.
(The distinction between being "wrong" and "lying" I'll grant you, but I suspect the author is a bit peeved, and should be excused for using hyperbolic language when being ignored by Google's famously amazing customer service.)
Is the dividing line between wrong and "plain lying" whether someone has cold customer service? Is that why my buggy programs are just wrong, whereas Google is engaged in dishonesty? Or is hyperbole just dishonesty here.
That the argument is semantic is irrelevant. It may be the case that Google is only wrong because of a technicality, but they are wrong nevertheless. (Unless you believe that Google is right and the author is actually Israeli, but that is a different discussion.)
If someone is incorrect about the time when you ask, it's possible they are deliberately misleading you. It's also possible they are not, and their clock is also incorrect. Would you consider both cases to be lying?
It's one thing to show things in search results, a very different thing to have a little box saying "We Google have deduced that this is true." They should take more responsibility.
In my opinion they should be required to do something about it. It is very similar to how you can tell google your privacy is invaded by something on Google Maps and they will fix it (with blurring, in that case).
[1]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... See Article 5, Paragraph 1d and 2 and Article 16
What I assume you're thinking of is the journalistic use of a colon as shorthand for attribution, normally used in headlines. In that case, the colon and person/organization fall at the end of the sentence. So you'll see things like, "We'll never pass upcoming bill: Rep Smith".
But that's not what the author of the blog post wrote. Instead, he placed "Google" at the beginning of the sentence, writing "Google: Please Stop...". As such, he used the colon in accordance with one of its most common usages--as a means of address in correspondence, similar to common letter opening "Dear Mr. Smith: Please find enclosed...".
When used in a letter it is commonly preceded by a salutation, as in your "Dear Mr Smith:" example.
> similar to common letter opening "Dear Mr. Smith: Please find enclosed...".
It's been some time since I've written a letter, but I remember that the typical format uses a comma and not a colon. For example:
Dear Mr. Smith,
Please find enclosed...
[1] - https://techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-...
[2] - https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...
[3] - https://www.fotolip.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/How-to-Wr...
And using a colon in a salutation is recommended for business usage according to most style manuals. Traditionally, style manuals discourage letter writers from using a comma unless they are friendly with the recipient.
And then hope they don't call you something outrageous like: the grandfather of X. Or: some people call her a Y. Because that will be in the article lead as a cold-hard machine readable logical fact for the ages.
In her case she apparently got a response saying "our systems don't allow us to fix this type of error", she escalated, then she got a response saying "good news, it's fixed!", but it's not fixed.
If Google is just summarising info from other sources (and in many cases, they just repeat what Wikipedia has), that's fine, but in cases (as here) where they're acting as an independent source of truth, they really need some process for fixing mistakes...
It used to be.
Per-user algorithmically customized search results now means that it shows you what you want to find on the internet - which is not the same thing.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ehud+reiter&oq=ehud+reiter
to indicate the person box isn't authoritative, or isn't intended to be authoritative...
Google seems to be pushing very hard lately to be considered the source of truth, picking information out of context and putting it in their infobox with no explanation as to where they grabbed it from.
I would argue that organizing and making incorrect information universally acceptable meets some of the criteria, but it fails to be "useful."
Both of those convey information. Both are expressed frequently. Only one is backed by research. And only one of those is true.
At best, Google might be able to tell you which is backed by research. But that's no guarantee that it's the true answer.
The study of epistemology is fascinating.
The info top-right is presented as factual not as 'search results'.
Surely if we use search engines most of us try to obtain relevant and factual information about the world, instead of trying to get some tautological answer out of the engine.
The comparison here to journalism is apt. Technically, journalists could simply declare everything to be the mere invention of the journalist's mind, but we don't think that's acceptable for a lot of good reasons.
If you want to find a book declaring that vaccines cause autism, you can find that book.
Google tries really hard to have the Card Catalog system be as good as possible, but "solving" that problem is basically impossible.
That is what a librarian does, one of the oldest and in many cultures respected professions you can choose. In contrast to Google, which might give you wild conspiracy theories about vaccines on page 1, with no help or indication whatsoever that something funky is going on, a library actually personally assists you.
If Google was a library then that library would have no employees. The books would initially all lie around randomly, and whenever you want a book, you simply shout into the library, and some guy randomly throws 20 books at you. If you take one of the books the next time, the chance will be higher that someone else gets that book as well. Let me just say that I don't think that it would be a great library experience, especially if you try to fit the entire worlds information into a single one.
I'm not sure, but a cursory search suggests it's perfectly fine to publicly lie about a private citizen with no recourse, as long as you avoid financial or related damages?
"In order to determine the damages from a slander or libel suit, there must be quantifiable damages. Defamation of character damages a person’s or company’s reputation, and it must be proven that the damage to reputation correlated with a loss of money, property, relationship or was subject to harassment that led to any of the above losses."
https://thelawdictionary.org/article/when-to-sue-for-defamat...
Pardon me, Mr. Google and Mr. <consider who you're dealing with in these scenarios>, how are you sir? Would you kindly consider not publishing false statements about me?
Of course you may not be compelled to do so. However as a gentleman I'm sure you would ageee the ethical and trust implications are philosophically untenable. Therefore I assume you are intrinsically highly motivated to immediately take corrective action. Thank you!
Regarding the first sentence, please take it at face value. If that's your point of view I'd be glad to count you as a friend if you'd have me - ping anytime.
However, I'd probably not guess well how long Ehud will have to remain an Israeli computer scientist.
Which is exactly what happened here. (whether they change their course is yet to be seen)
He's listed as "British screenwriter". I guess you could argue that he's that, sure, but a director first, so it doesn't get this one exactly right, either, but for different reasons. Anyway, although British is technically right, I'm probably not the only one that will forever consider him American.
BTW, the Wikipedia snippet underneath says "Terrence Vance Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor, comedian and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe." Makes you wonder...
We shouldn't need legislation or lawsuits.
Google might care, but not enough to fundamentally do something about it.
FB and G are profitable because they have 'very low touch'. They don't have legions of tellers, fact checkers, CSR reps and people to handle the myriad of details other business have to deal with.
These issues are not only 'high touch' - they are hard.
G is not going to start hiring thousands of people to do such things, it's just not in their DNA.
Maybe some issue will be the straw on the camels back.
Edit:
> > If a journalists says something incorrect about me, I can complain to him or his newspaper/magazine, and this will be taken seriously; indeed most journalists give me an opportunity to fact-check anything they say about me before it is published. If Experian says something wrong about me in its credit report, I can report this and they will take this seriously. In fact almost all organisations which give out information about me allow me to complain and point out problems. Except Google, who clearly doesnt care.
That's what I was commenting on.
That's what I was commenting on. This quote came from the article.