What Google And Facebook Are Hiding...

What Google And Facebook Are Hiding... from me and from you. And it is different for each of us. When can "customization," unbeknownst to the customer, become problematic? And that's putting it nicely.

We are not on Facebook.

Nor am I at this point.

I'm NOT intimating that Facebook is evil.

I think what I'm expounding is it's just the beginning of what appears to be coming. WHY?

Because of the amounts of MONEY that can be made by doing so.

"The LOVE of money is the root of evil"

Time for some real data.

Google, while signed in to an account over 50K searches in its search history.

Google, after signing out and clearing all cookies

From search engine in Former Evil Empire.

LOL! Even after a strong hint, the Rooskie search engine still doesn't have a clue!

I think Google's results are influenced far more by recent history than by my search behavior.

For instance, after the DSK story broke, I found the name of the accuser in the French Media. Plugging it into Google yielded references to an obscure, deceased Senegalese woman who wrote books in French. In order to get anything at all relevant, I needed to add hints, such as Sofitel or rape. The next evening, Google's results for just her name were all about her, and you really had to dig if you wanted to read up on the Senegalese author.

“Keep in mind the MACHINES cannot operate without first being given their filtering parameters by HUMAN BEINGS... that, I believe, would include Liberals with MOTIVES for CONTROL and GAIN.”

Of course. The speaker wants (although he probably does not admit it to himself) a Chinese model for the internet, except that the filters would be run mainly by cool progressive guys like him.

But the algorithmic filters are, today, designed to attract customers. “Use our search engine and we will find stuff that you like.” That is inherently less dangerous than “Watch our news show filters and we will report only stuff that will keep the current left-wing nut in power.”

TV and newspapers are inherently more oligopolistic than the internet. OTOH, Google is always watching over its shoulder because disruptive technologies emerge so quickly on the internet and the internet is inherently non-monopolistic. So Google will tweak it’s algorithms a little to the left—because it has to keep customers happy and that is unrelated to making them eat their liberal peas.

The left’s monopoly on old-media made that seem unnecessary to them. So when Dan Rather became a liability, they threw him under the bus and replaced him with someone just as bad.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t be watching for algorithmic political filters. But they are of less concern to me than the sixty year domination of information dissemination by the left in America via TV and Print media.

Keep in mind the MACHINES cannot operate without first being given their filtering parameters by HUMAN BEINGS... that, I believe, would include Liberals with MOTIVES for CONTROL and GAIN.

It's hard enough to make filters that simply work, namely, push the relevant stuff to the top, as perceived by the user, whose attention is all that Google, et al, have to sell to their paying customers. Filters that deliberately slant the results would be even harder to make and would be perceived to be less effective by the users, leaving fewer eyeballs to sell to the customers. Not what Google needs.

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