With this, Google controls how content you read is summarized, they could introduce biases, intentionally or not, and I'm not sure we should trust such an actor for this.
It's one thing to get recommendations in a place where recommendations are appropriate, and the dangers of the feedback loop you are talking about. It's another thing entirely to actively push it in other contexts.
"I know you are searching for programming topics, but might you be interested in this political outrage instead?"
We can thank Netflix for starting the trend of "we don't have this, but how about this other thing that we do have?"
Google does not give a fuck what you think you want, because they know better than you
How long is that typical list? How often do you pick the things at the bottom of that list vs the results near the top?
I don't think that can be assumed at all, actually. At least, it sure doesn't look that way when I search for most things, on YouTube or elsewhere. Most of them run out of relevant results pretty quickly and then start including obviously irrelevant results.
And if I wanted to find more in depth material to support my firmly held beliefs I just had to go to the right bookstore.
How do you know it works well? How do you know it misses nothing? How do you know it's not subtly biased (intentionally or not) in a way you would not notice, or you would think it's good enough?
> I can read articles against my view and still get only what I want. My world view will become increasingly polarized, and it's already quite biased.
Yes, of course we all do, but it's another thing to involve a third party in this process.
I wish I had your experience. My YouTube recommendations can definitely be said to be “my fault” in some sense of the word, but wherever the blame lies they’re still mostly terrible. YouTube will watch me skip a video for a whole week, but keep showing it to me “just in case.” I’d rather it were just a dumb search at this point.
I might feel more kindly toward YouTube recommendations if they did this for me.
This was always the case.
That's an individual solution. I'm interested in a world that's as good as possible not only for me, but for the other people too. Most people around still use Google. They might find this new feature useful and start using it, and possibly suffer this bias. Not only they may get manipulated individually, but it can have broader consequences, even to those avoiding the feature. If Facebook can influence which president get elected in a country, it will also affect people avoiding facebook (sometime for this very reason).
Avoiding stuff for oneself is a first step but it's hardly a solution, these big corporations have a non negligible effect on the world, still with you as a member.
We'll have to start to raise awareness around these things, in addition to all the subjects on which we already need awareness.
But same old same old I guess, Google already puts you in a bubble, just even more concerning I guess. It was manipulating us, now it's another, new, potential manipulation angle.
If the Snowden revelations did anything is to show that people ultimately don't care about being exploited, as long as they can continue to enjoy technology. Trading convenience for privacy is not something most people would even consider.
Things will quickly spiral out of control once everyone has their personal AI assistant, that is controlled by a major corporation with government ties. It's the wet dream of any aspiring autocrat, and we're building that future.
Here we are, on a tech forum among people who work at these companies, and all we can do is type at the void. These companies continue to build products that on the surface seem enticing and useful, which is surely how they also pitch it internally so engineers that build it have a clear conscience, yet lead us to a further breakdown of society in ways we haven't imagined yet.
I'm not sure if all this is over the top, doom and gloom thinking on my part, but it feels frustrating to be part of this industry, seeing how it's tearing apart society, and having the concerns ignored and dismissed by both users and companies alike.
There are places in this industry that are not so bad. Of course it has drawbacks and require effort, but you can get paid for doing things that align (as best as possible) with your values.
Their entire business was built on this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisit...
I know this is HN and all, but to wait all of these years of acquisitions, poaching, project terminations, Chrome shenanigans to destroy the internet, main product "SEO" degradation and literally every single sign of enshittification...Google has always been one of the prime examples of enshittification. That's why they are very successful at making money.
You won’t find info about any merely “controversial” idea on Google, it’s all censored, it’s all disinformation already. Try even finding memes, you generally won’t find them. Try finding info that doesn’t paint some politicians in a good light, you won’t find it, even though it exists with the exact keywords you type in and the crawler returns a success for that page.
So what do you mean, while you already trust Google to give its bias to the current world?
I will Google it and report back…
The most completely batshit insane groups I’m willing to google anymore are flat earthers, young earth creationists, and Facebook mom groups, and google happily indexes and returns favourable results for all of these.
Even looking at off the deep end alt-right content like men’s rights, red pilled, trucker convoy, anti-masker, Tate, etc, google has zero issues return favourable results for all of them in a private window.
Really begs the question of just what level of illegal shit this dude is trying to get google to return.
1. Bunch all people who disagree with you into one and claim they are some kind of group. Bonus for listing 12 or more "groups".
2. Raise suspicion about the user you're replying to. Maybe they belong to one of those people you just listed? Maybe they are a terrorist? Maybe they voted for the wrong guy? Should we call the police? Of course we should! He's even trying to make Google show "bonkers shit, bat shit and illegal shit".
No matter how hard you try to follow the line, one day you will find yourself in one of those groups who people like yourself try to bunch together, and be exposed to the same level of suspicion and hatred that you yourself are unloading in your comment.
I am not going to give up on calling out this purposefully vague, bullshit commentary just because you dislike it. If you don’t like having your sides bullshit being called out, don’t post it.
It’s actually hilarious how eerily similar your group is.
>oh woe as us, we’re such big victims
Someone responds shutting it down
>why do you have to call out the posts. Can’t you just not respond
Every single time like clock work. It’s like you guys all belong to a forum of AI generated comments and responses and you just copy and paste them.
Google does censor content, and they are kind enough to inform the owner of a website by e-mail when they have censored the content from their search results, so it is a fact that is just undeniable.