[governance] FW: [IP] Google's Lawyers Work Behind the Scenes to Carry the Day - NYTimes.com

[Milton L Mueller]

Pariser's "filter bubble" thesis has very little scientific grounding. It is one of those things that has acquired credibility primarily through repetition, and the fact that some people always badly want to believe that "the media" are manipulating us.

I recall seeing him on a television program when his claim was put to the test and they conducted searches using two different accounts and got virtually the same results. He was embarrassed.

On the other hand, I was quite grateful this morning when using a generic professional term to search for an office and discovering that the search had been limited to Syracuse area.

Guru, if you get badly personalized results from Google without asking for it, what is to stop you from not using Google?


From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Guru ????
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2013 12:29 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [IP] Google's Lawyers Work Behind the Scenes to Carry the Day - NYTimes.com



On 01/06/2013 10:22 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
So do you get all your news from just news.google.com<http://news.google.com> and other google search results, instead of Facebook shares, Riaz gleefully posting every article he sees about google being investigated for, say, giggling in church?

And did Riaz find this news item anywhere other than google search?

And does this reality distortion field google is supposed to have actually hide any search results from you that are negative to it?  Like search for "google FTC" and you get the EU action, statements from Microsoft slamming the decision etc.

Does 'personalised search' (without your having asked for, it or having any role in such pesonalisation) not in a sense 'reality distortion' ....by offering different people different views on the same keyword search.

See attached aticle (the web link is not available anymore)

Guru

And the last link on page 1 of the search results showing just where google got spanked by the FTC.  http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111650/why-does-everyone-think-google-beat-the-ftc#<http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111650/why-does-everyone-think-google-beat-the-ftc> is worth a read as a kind f counterpoint to all the commentary about how google got a get out of jail card because of intensive lobbying.

Can we please

1. Have a reality check here
2. Go back to discussing Internet governance

--srs (iPad)

On 06-Jan-2013, at 22:00, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com<mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks Riaz (and sorry for the really awkward phrasing…

To put that in English…

I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to "investigate" Google for possible "freedom of thought" violations rather than issues concerning "freedom of speech"… Google has the potential for much more serious impacts on our capacity to know (or not know) certain things, than on what we can say or not say…

M



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