Google Exec: If you break us up, we can't stop Trump | Hacker News Reader

Google Exec: If you break us up, we can't stop Trump

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45 pointsdaenz16 comments

I'll try to practice some charitable interpretation[0] and point out that she might not mean this in the sense of "small companies can't undermine democracy." Rather, I see this making sense if we consider it to be about how companies providing platforms and tools for mass information will always exist, as it makes economic sense for them to exist. But at the same time, if these companies are small, their platforms are prone to be attacked and abused by adversaries. And they need to have a certain size to stand a change against there adversaries, to be able to protect the people from them.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

So much bias, had this been liberal news media coming out with quotes from Google employee on how they plan to stop Bernie or Warren, then shit would have hit the fan. This post would have had 1000's of comments on why Google should be broken up.

This thread got flagged off of the front page within 20 minutes of being posted. It had a crazy velocity, then suddenly, gone. I guess some people aren't interested in relevant tech news if it hurts their narrative.

I can remember trying to recall details of political stories. I type the breadcrumbs into Google and am unable to find what I'm looking for. I then realized that I have better luck on certain subjects when I try duckduckgo, and I know it's not because they have a more mature search algorithm.

Wow, I didn't realize duckduckgo had gotten so good. I'm sure you remember a couple of these for examples that I could compare, right?

If anything, I implied that DDG was worse in general, but only better when it came to certain political subjects. I take your meaning as rhetorical, but I'll answer anyway.

Several months ago, I read an article on Reddit about how the USPS was raising prices. In the comments, the discussion was of why it was cheaper to ship some goods from China than it was to ship from state to state. I had recalled something about Trump taking some measure against this, but apparently at that time nothing had changed. I tried finding more info on Google, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. On DDG, I located an article from Newegg describing the UPU, and how these deals were established many decades ago and gave 3rd world countries at the time, such as China, a break. I then found another article from thehill.com that explained that Trump had begun the one-year notice of withdrawing from the UPU, but until then the rates would be the same.

On another occasion, I was in a thread that was talking about middle class wages, and I noticed that on Google, I could find many articles about how the middle class was shrinking. On DDG, I found some of those articles, but also found information on how if you control for inflation and hours worked, middle class wages actually increased since the 90s.

I am no fan of Trump, but this is exactly why Google should be broken up. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.'s control of the digital public square is a threat to discourse and free speech. And Google is the worst offender of them, given how monolithic and ideologically skewed their internal corporate culture is.

Google is the worst offender of them

What are Google’s offenses in this domain?

given how monolithic and ideologically skewed their internal corporate culture is.

How are you measuring that?

She openly admits in the video on using the AI to stop Trump’s re-election. Full video https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-24/google-using-ai-me...

The quick cut editing between her and an anonymous “insider” seems questionable. When she says “next Trump situation” perhaps she is speaking of all the Russian bots and trolls. Otherwise, why didn’t she say “prevent the next Trump” but used the word “situation”?

2020 is likely to be worse with the improvements to Deepfakes. Most people can barely detect false stuff now and constantly reshre bullshit on Facebook that takes all of 5 seconds to debunk, just imagine GAN and GPT-2/BERT powered trolling.

Let Google decide which politicians stand a chance... I'm sure they'll limit the use of this power to Trump.

I would have gone with Baidu. I don't see anyone breaking up Baidu. How will Google compete with Baidu if its broken up?

Given the arbitrary blocks to Google from the Great Firewall of China, I don't see how it can compete in the first place.

Well first you have to invade the country Baidu resides in, then you can break it up.

Why does it need to compete with baidu?

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