Free Republic

The Southern Poverty Law Center helps Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter determine what organizations are “hate groups” Amazon gave the SPLC the most direct authority while pretending to remain unbiased The SPLC has been plagued by inaccuracies Four of the world’s biggest tech platforms have working partnerships with a left-wing nonprofit that has a track record of inaccuracies and routinely labels conservative organizations as “hate groups.” Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter all work with or consult the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in policing their platforms for “hate speech” or “hate groups,” a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found. The...

Here's how I got to bottom of the ads-coinciding-with-conversations mystery. A couple years ago, something strange happened. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, iPhones in pockets, discussing our recent trips in Japan and how we’d like to go back. The very next day, we both received pop-up ads on Facebook about cheap return flights to Tokyo. It seemed like just a spooky coincidence, but then everyone seems to have a story about their smartphone listening to them. So is this just paranoia, or are our smartphones actually listening? According to Dr. Peter Hannay—The senior security consultant for...

The original slogan of Google was "Don't be evil." When Google changed its corporate name to Alphabet in 2015, it changed the slogan to "Do the right thing." If it were to be true to its values, Google should have changed its slogan from "Don't be evil" to "Don't fight evil." Here is The New York Times report from this past Friday: "Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work ... "Google's work...

A new column the Wall Street Journal argues that companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are heading towards monopoly status in their respective industries. A Thursday column in the Wall Street Journal by Christopher Mims argues that several Silicon Valley giants are gaining monopoly-sized market shares in their respective industries. Mims explained that modern monopolies look much different than monopolies of the past. Mims cited the example of monopolist Andrew Carnegie using armed guards against his striking workers. One way today’s monopolists are different from the robber barons of old is that they’re not exactly ​behaving like, for example, Andrew...

Google has apologized after an image labeling North Carolina state Sen. Trudy Wade (R) a “bigot” showed up as a top search result for the lawmaker. The search engine issued its apology after media aggregator Drudge Report tweeted out a link to a Vice story about the photo, an old image of Wade with the word “bigot” superimposed on it. The image appeared in the “Knowledge Panel,” a fast-facts section that appears for Google searches of well-known figures. Google said that the featured images are either chosen by “verified users” or automatically sourced from other websites. “We apologize to Senator...

A small group of Google employees, in response to a company contract with a Pentagon-backed program called Maven, have discussed the idea of staging a protest at a conference in July. Employees fear that the project, which provides artificial intelligence tools to the military, could be used in fatal drone strikes. The protest, as discussed in preliminary exchanges over Google’s internal communications platform, would take place at a Google Cloud conference in San Francisco, according to messages obtained by HuffPost and an interview with an employee. More than a dozen Google employees have resigned over the project, according to Gizmodo,...

The world's most powerful search engine listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party—a week before the GOP primary. Companies, like people, make mistakes. And Google came fire on Thursday for making a big one. As first reported by Vice, the powerful search engine company listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party—less than a week before the GOP’s primary. Needless to say, Republicans were not pleased. “It is disgraceful that the world’s largest search engine has labeled millions of California Republicans as Nazis,” said Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Majority Leader. “This...

Google was set to rent out its D.C. headquarters to a progressive group running a fundraiser for top Senate Democrats, but canceled it Friday just days before. The group “Run For Something” cultivates up-and-coming Democrats for all levels of government. Its event, “Party For Something,” was supposed to occur June 6 at a location only disclosed if tickets ($100 to $1,000) were purchased. “June 6th: Games, drinks and building the bench with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand & Cory Booker!!” the invite states at the top. “Why? Because Run For Something set a goal of recruiting 50,000 new voices this...

Less than a week before the California primary, Google listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party. In the “knowledge panel” that provides easy access to information next to search results, Google was showing “Nazism” as an “ideology” of the party as of Thursday morning. The word “Nazism” was hyperlinked to a secondary page that shows “Nazism” alongside other “ideologies” of California Republicans like “Conservatism,” "Market liberalism,” “Fiscal conservatism,” and “Green conservatism." California voters have been casting their absentee ballots for weeks ahead of Tuesday’s statewide primary elections, which will help determine the majority in the House of...

Google labeled Republican North Carolina state Sen. Trudy Wade as a “bigot” in its “knowledge panel” for the pro-Trump lawmaker. According to Vice News Friday, searching for Wade on Google would show users an image of the state senator with “BIGOT” in bright red letters displayed at the bottom. Wade is currently in a tough reelection battle. It’s likely not helpful for her campaign to have the image as one of the first things voters would see if they Google her. Google did not respond to Vice’s request for comment on the matter, but the tech giant did take down...

The tech giant will stop working on its piece of the military’s AI endeavor known as Project Maven when its 18-month contract expires in March, a person familiar with Google’s thinking told The Washington Post. Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google’s cloud-computing business, told employees of the decision at an internal meeting Friday, first reported by Gizmodo. Google, which declined to comment, has faced widespread public backlash and employee resignations for helping develop technological tools that could aid in warfighting. The person said Google will soon release new company principles related to the ethical uses of AI. … Project...

Google search results for a Republican politician from North Carolina on Friday displayed a photo of the woman with the word “bigot” written across the bottom before it was taken down. The photo that appeared on the right side of the page, first reported by Vice News, showed a photo of North Carolina State Sen. Trudy Wade with the word "bigot" written in capital red letters under her headshot.

Google blamed “vandalism” at Wikipedia for inaccurate search results on their platform, which claimed the California GOP promotes Nazism, however Google failed to note that they prioritize results from Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information. “We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened here,” claimed Google in a statement. “This would have been fixed systematically once we processed the removal from Wikipedia, but when we noticed the vandalism we worked quickly to accelerate this process to remove the erroneous information.” Despite Google’s efforts to shift...

London paper ‘sold its editorial independence,’ Open Democracy claims.The London Evening Standard is facing accusations it sold “favorable news coverage” to six major companies, including Uber and Google, in a £3 million deal. Open Democracy, a political U.K.-based website, accused the paper of offering positive news coverage to the likes of Uber and Google in exchange for corporate partnerships worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, as part of an upcoming campaign called London 2020. According to the report published Wednesday, the Evening Standard told corporate partners they would not just get the usual, clearly labeled “advertorial” content, but also news...

Less than one week before the California primary, Google listed “Nazism” as the ideology of the California Republican Party. In the “knowledge panel” that provides easy access to information next to search results, Google listed “Nazism” as an “ideology” of the party. The word “Nazism” was hyperlinked to a secondary page that shows “Nazism” alongside other “ideologies” of California Republicans like “Conservatism,” "Market liberalism,” “Fiscal conservatism,” and “Green conservatism." California voters have been casting their absentee ballots for weeks ahead of the next Tuesday’s statewide primary elections which will help determine the majority in the House of Representative and the...

On Tuesday, Christian comic writer Adam Ford announced he had sold the popular satire website "The Babylon Bee" for a variety of reasons. While Ford said he sold the Bee for personal as well as ideological reasons, his statement emphasized his battle against the "tyranny over information" stemming from the centralization of the Internet around sites like Facebook and Google. Ford noted that the Babylon Bee succeeded largely thanks to social media and Facebook in particular, "but the power that Facebook held over me as a content creator began to make me very uneasy," he said in an extended statement....

A precious tool in my hand is the one I am able to wield to build and construct My Temple in each and every child I have given life to. So be the trowel of My hand laying the mortar of Unity my children for I AM building My Temple in others as I have built My temple in you . . . 1 Peter 2:1-10 2 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in...

How frustrating. I asked google home (gift from brother) to "Hey google, play some patriotic music". What I got was a bunch of condescending bluegrass crap. No battle hymn of the republic, no star spangled banner, no lee greenwood, no armed forces western.....just a bunch of crap that only the CA libtards actually think is patriotic music.

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Plans for a “Google headcount tax” moved ahead Wednesday in Mountain View after a municipal panel recommended that the full city council approve the proposal. A three-member subcommittee of the Mountain View City Council endorsed the concept on Wednesday of a tax on the number of workers a company employs within the city limits, although government officials refer to it formally as a “restructuring” of the business license tax. The Mountain View City Council is scheduled to meet June 5 to make a final decision on whether it will order the city staff to prepare a ballot...

Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show. “Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, “do the right thing.” However, Google retained its original “don’t be evil” language until the past several weeks. The...