this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates.

The leaked documents touch on topics like what kind of data Google collects and uses, which sites Google elevates for sensitive topics like elections, how Google handles small websites, and more. Some information in the documents appears to be in conflict with public statements by Google representatives, according to Fishkin and King.

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[–] dojan 23 points 6 months ago (14 children)

It's honestly quite strange that this sort of black box system is allowed to exist. How are governments around the world OK with a vast majority of the internet being filtered through a private company's lens without any sort of insight into how it works? That sounds skeevy as shit.

[–] yokonzo 2 points 6 months ago (13 children)

Better than those governments having control. Ideal scenario is everything is decentralized

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Why is that better? It may not be ideal but governments have at least some accountability.

[–] aramova 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Did you notice the US President from 16 to 20?

Even after felony convictions, there is no accountability or consequences.

Have you seen the US Supreme Court?

Don't tell me a government has any accountability when minds are twisted by misinformation engines like Fox & Friends.

Not that a company is any better, yet alone google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

It's hard to draw meaningful conclusions form a single 4 year period. There have been several instances of corruption (and significant externalized costs) in private firms that went on for much longer than 4 years.

I agree that there is a lot of corruption in government but there's a long gap between that and no accountability. We see various forms of government accountability on a regular basis; politicians lose elections, they get recalled, and they sometimes even get incarcerated. We also have multiple systems designed to allow any citizen to influence government.

None of these systems and safeguards are anywhere close to perfect but it must be better than organizations that don't even have these systems in the first place.

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