Google, Google, Just Googling Around By Brian Simpson

     The new class say that the information tech highway is all clear and that no-one has placed landmines on the tracks. Ask Google though what they have got up to under the cover of electronic darkness:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/16/google-youtube-search-blacklist-smoking-gun/

“In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.” The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg. The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.”

     Of course, it does not end there:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/01/16/leak-huge-teams-engaged-in-manual-interventions-on-google-search-results

“Google has “huge teams” working on manual interventions in search results, an apparent contradiction of sworn testimony made to Congress by CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an internal post leaked to Breitbart News.
“There are subjects that are prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content,” said Daniel Aaronson, a member of Google’s Trust & Safety team. “Now, these words are highly subjective and no one denies that. But we can all agree generally, lines exist in many cultures about what is clearly okay. “In extreme cases where we need to act quickly on something that is so obviously not okay, the reactive/manual approach is sometimes necessary.” The comments came to light in a leaked internal discussion thread, started by a Google employee who noticed that the company had recently changed search results for “abortion” on its YouTube video platform, a change which caused pro-life videos to largely disappear from the top ten results. In addition to the “manual approach,” Aaronson explained that Google also trained automated “classifiers” – algorithms or “scalable solutions” that corrects “problems” in search results. Aaronson listed three areas where either manual interventions or classifier changes might take place: organic search (“The bar for changing classifiers or manual actions on span in organic search is extremely high”), YouTube, Google Home, and Google Assistant. Aaronson’s post also reveals that there is very little transparency around decisions to adjust classifiers or manually correct controversial search results, even internally. Aaronson compared Google’s decision-making process in this regard to a closely-guarded “Pepsi Formula.”

These comments, part of a longer post copied below, seem to contradict Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s sworn congressional testimony that his company does not “manually intervene on any particular search result.” According to an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source within the company, a Google employee took issue with Pichai’s remarks, stating that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.” According to the posts leaked by the source, revealed that YouTube, a Google subsidiary, manually intervened on search results related to “abortion” and “abortions.” The intervention caused pro-life videos to disappear from the top ten search results for those terms, where they had previously been featured prominently. The posts also show YouTube intervened on search results related to progressive activist David Hogg and Democrat politician Maxine Waters. In a comment to Breitbart News, a Google spokeswoman also insisted that “Google has never manipulated or modified the search results or content in any of its products to promote a particular political ideology.”

     As readers can clearly see, Google is inconsistent, denying manipulation but just going ahead and doing it anyway. Clearly, these tech giants are not playing fair, and need to be regulated to hell. Not nationalised, which would be even more tyrannical when, as always happens, the elite move upon centralised control, but instead forced to play by fair and equal rules. At present deceptive practices are being engaged in, and this must be controlled.