[governance] need for regulation ....

[Guru गुरु]

On 03/10/2014 09:19 PM, Adam Peake wrote:
> Hi Guru,
>
> On Mar 10, 2014, at 7:26 PM, Guru गुरु wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Not clear, how in Multistakeholderism, where the private sector has an equal footing in public policy making, we will get Google to agree that its search algorithm, as the key factor organising the worlds information/knowledge for all of us, needs to be public knowledge, not a commercial secret.
> Are you sure about this?  If the algorithm's public then it will be gamed.  Logical extension of this is searches will no return accurate results, no longer be trusted, and a very useful resource will be pretty much be made useless.  Is this your intention?
Good point, Adam.

If the algorithm is public, then it has a high probability of being 
gamed. But is it not already the case that people/entities try to game 
the search, based on their rough understanding of how search is working?
So I would argue that we would need to research ways by which gaming 
could be identified and that knowledge should also be available and used 
as a part of the search processes. I understand this is pretty much a 
cat and mouse game between attempts at gaming and attempt at unearthing 
gaming... but such games are already common in the development of virus 
and anti-virus algorithms/ spam and anti-spam algorithms  ....

So I would argue that more transparency, not less on both counts.

Would you agree that google's search algorithm being proprietary, we 
have NO idea if google is using it to capture information every time we 
invoke it, and using it for its commercial (legal as well as illegal) 
purposes (and also for purposes beyond its immediate commercial goals, 
such as the political goals of the US Government, in whose jurisdiction, 
it falls, as Snowden revealed). While this possibility of manipulation 
is true for any proprietary software, the search algorithm is perhaps 
the worlds-most_popular_on-line_proprietary_algorithm which makes the 
danger of being manipulated for the political-economic gains of certain 
entities far far higher... something that should scare everyone else.

Any advocates working on privacy / surveillance issues should strongly 
support my proposal to have Google make and keep its algorithms public. 
And of course so should anyone working towards open ICTD (open source, 
open resources) paradigms.... And of course anyone who believes in the 
WSIS 2003 Declaration of Principles, of .. "... our common desire and 
commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented 
Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and 
share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and 
peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable 
development and improving their quality of life..." this is not possible 
if we are suffering from global lobotomy (see Eli Pariser article in the 
response to CA).

regards,
Guru
> Best,
>
> Adam
>

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