Maker of addictive tech (Google) criticized by chairman of addictive tech maker (Alphabet) There is no love for online giants Google and Facebook right now, with even their friends sticking the boot in. Audio of a secret address given by Barack Obama last week has emerged in which the 44th US President criticized the monster corporations for not recognizing the dangerous negative impact they are having on society …
I have honestly been wondering when someone, just about anyone, in power, or otherwise involved in any discussion regarding the current political situations of "fake news", election fraud, extremism, political polarization and science denial, just to name a few, would bring this subject up.
Society needs an honest discussion on the negative effects of Google's Personalized Search on an individual's 'freedom of choice'. What I mean by this is that GPS creates a personalized, insular bubble, where blind logarithms feed you nothing but similar information in hopes of gaining more clicks. Used wisely it can speed a search; used without knowledge, as probably 95% of the people of the world do, it creates a sphere of personalized bias, where it only repeats what it thinks you want to hear.
The logarithms are extremely annoying: shop on Amazon Video for a movie, get automated recommendations of the exact same genre, until death takes you away for welcome relief. Not a single human being in Amazon's data core has come to the realization that just because I watched *one* movie or show in this genre means that I want to spend the rest of my life stuck watching the same style, over and over again - their logarithms are simply too simply to be able to see a general pattern (I watched Top Gear, so show me more factual programs, not simply car shows).
This pattern of repetitive feedback can create a single-mindedness in the reader, only exposed to the simplest of data points, ones that match a simple search matrix. So radicalization is easy: start small, the system will involve you, quite automatically, in conspiracy theories and far-out plans, because it meets the search pattern.
I also love the "you've just bought a new high end smartphone, so that must mean that you want to buy lots more high end smartphone," type targeting.
If I've just bought an expensive product (phone, TV, washing machine etc.) then there is a very good chance that I won't be buying that item again, or items in that category, for a few years...
To paraphrase Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones:
"I'll show the Inspector how intelligent my search algorithm is!"
"Right Sir, you get the algorithm and I'll get the two short planks!"
Yeah yeah... >Implying that Hillary lost due to Russian Bots, and NOT because... Well Hillary just isn't electable anywhere outside of the Left Coast, and the North-East Corridor. Hillary has NO ONE to blame about having lost the Rust Belt to Trump, than herself. Since she took it as read that they were going to vote for her anyway. Where as Trump was there pretty much week in, and out, promising to bring their jobs back. Yeah Russian Bots my foot!
Don't downvote him, he's right: the election was Hillary's to lose, and lose she did by failing to campaign in many important districts.
So, of course, the losers in those districts, feeling remorseful and neglected, voted for...yet another loser. The biggest one of the all, Cheeto Jesus. Promise a hillbilly white man the moon, even if you can't ever make it work in the real world, and he'll pray to you like a god.
Yeah, it does. Except opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. That does not mean that everyone's asshole opinion is worthy of being heard.
I blame the first idiot journalist who asked the nearest Joe Nobody what he thought about some event. Ever since then, journalism has been all about getting the opinion of "the people". As if those idiots had a valid opinion. Oh, there has been another school shooting ? Do you really think anyone is going to say that it is not a tragedy ?
Stop trolling the streets pretending to get the "people's" opinion. I don't give a damn about "the people". I want EXPERT opinion. I want to hear from people who have spent decades studying the subject.
I don't have time to listen to the barely-thought-through brain farts of Jersey Shore fans.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
