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Google Employees Discussed Tweaking Search Results To Counter Trump's Travel Ban (wsj.com) 211

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed how they could tweak the company's search-related functions (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails. The email traffic, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows that employees proposed ways to "leverage" search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be "islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms 'Islam', 'Muslim', 'Iran', etc." and "prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms `Mexico', `Hispanic', `Latino', etc." The email chain, while sprinkled with cautionary notes about engaging in political activity, suggests employees considered ways to harness the company's vast influence on the internet in response to the travel ban. Google said none of the ideas discussed were implemented. "These emails were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented," a company spokeswoman said in a statement. "Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology -- not in the current campaign season, not during the 2016 election, and not in the aftermath of President Trump's executive order on immigration. Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies."
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Google Employees Discussed Tweaking Search Results To Counter Trump's Travel Ban

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  • Manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rfengr ( 910026 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:05PM (#57357310)
    I’m sure they’ll be tweaking results this upcoming election.
    • I’m sure they’ll be tweaking results this upcoming election.

      Pretty much a given. Facebook opened a war room to deal with "Election Interference" (Yeah other than their own), Google has also been on that bandwagon, and has long been putting it's thumb on the scales with Youtube.

      What's really funny though is you manage to torque some twit who thinks people won't be able to figure this out if they don't see your post.

  • by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:09PM (#57357322)

    LOL.

    Anyone who's ever had a job with a BigCo and isn't terminally naive knows this is a steaming crock of delusion.

  • Non-story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:12PM (#57357346) Homepage

    So let me try to summarize this:

    Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

    Folks did their jobs, nothing bad happened, and everything worked as it should. It's nice to have a story that isn't sky-is-falling panic, but there's literally nothing newsworthy to report here.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      there's literally nothing newsworthy to report here.

      If only I had mod point! +1

      • Re: Non-story (Score:2, Insightful)

        It is newsworthy. Google and other tech companies argue that they should not be liable for content on their servers because they do not exercise editorial control. An employee suggests that they should exercise such editorial control, which will put the company in legal jeopardy. How is that not newsworthy?
        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          How is that not newsworthy?

          Because their bosses said "LOL No" to their suggestion. Like, it's almost as meaningful if you emailed them a suggestion to do it.

          I mean, it sounds like they're pretty low level employees from the story, but then again there are almost no details.

          • by hjf ( 703092 )

            Clinton also said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". On record.

            • Were there any evidence Google actually was doing this, I would agree that the denials fell pretty flat. But that's not what happened. The WSJ got copies of some low level employees saying "wouldn't it be cool if..." to each other, before their managers told them to stop fucking around at get back to work.

              According to the same standard of evidence, almost every franchise of almost every fast food restaurant, hell, every retail store, also has a weed-dispensing vending machine in the lobby.

        • An employee suggests

          Key word: suggests.

          Hold you hat because I'm going to drop a bomb. There are some among the 70,000 Google employees that don't like Trump. Also, some of them talk about it.

    • Re:Non-story (Score:5, Informative)

      by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:25PM (#57357388)

      Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

      Now that's funny.

      This would be the same Google that plans to closely track users of it's search services for the Chinese government and silenced people talking about it ?

      https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

      Really it's still on the damn front page as I type this.

      • Re:Non-story (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Raenex ( 947668 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @08:48PM (#57357926)

        This would be the same Google that plans to closely track users of it's search services for the Chinese government and silenced people talking about it ?

        It's also the same Google that used their platform to drive [slashdot.org] Latino votes during the election, in the hopes of upending Trump. But the Slashdot gatekeepers didn't want to tell you that story. They pulled that from the stories you could vote on within hours of my submitting it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          This would be the same Google that plans to closely track users of it's search services for the Chinese government and silenced people talking about it ?

          It's also the same Google that used their platform to drive [slashdot.org] Latino votes during the election, in the hopes of upending Trump. But the Slashdot gatekeepers didn't want to tell you that story. They pulled that from the stories you could vote on within hours of my submitting it.

          And the same Google that altered your search when you looked for "crooked hillary" last election. I remember reading that and then trying it, and sure enough it seemed dumbfounded by what was an extremely common phrase at the time. You could even throw any other politicians name in there and it didn't have a problem.

          Sorry, but I am absolutely convinced Google is already tweaking search results and I don't believe them for a second when they pretend they won't do it again.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Your link [slashdot.org] links to your submission which links to Breitbart [breitbart.com]. The very first line that you wrote was

          Here's a story you'll never see on the front page of Slashdot

          You already knew that it would not be accepted because Breitbart is not news. Breitbart is propoganda - the word that we used before alternative facts.

          • by Raenex ( 947668 )

            You already knew that it would not be accepted because Breitbart is not news. Breitbart is propoganda - the word that we used before alternative facts.

            Breitbart is news. If it isn't, then point out what that story got factually wrong. There's no such thing as non-propaganda outlets any more, if there ever was. They all have a bias and an agenda. They report on some stories and not others. They leave out some facts and not others. And sometimes they just outright make shit up [newsbusters.org].

            Remember how all those "trusted" media outlets kept on insisting that censorship of the right on social media was a "conspiracy theory" [nbcnews.com]?

            Except it wasn't -- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey adm [slashdot.org]

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The memo you link to doesn't support your conclusion.

          Google tried to get Spanish speakers out to vote with Spanish language tools. No admission it was too help Clinton, in fact the memo is careful to remind readers that Google made efforts to be non-partisan with the information it provided.

          Trying to get more people to vote probably did help Clinton, because most people who don't vote (because of apathy or suppression or lack of information) are Democrat voters, but that's democracy for you. You can't serio

          • by Raenex ( 947668 )

            The memo you link to doesn't support your conclusion.

            It wasn't "a memo". It was an email chain.

            Google tried to get Spanish speakers out to vote with Spanish language tools.

            Huh, and do you think it may be the case that the majority of Spanish voters almost always vote Democrat? And that it was expected, given Trump's rhetoric, that they'd be even more inclined to vote Democrat?

            No admission it was too help Clinton, in fact the memo is careful to remind readers that Google made efforts to be non-partisan with the information it provided.

            They tried the fig leaf of "non-partisan", but the main person behind this effort kept dropping the mask. Just couldn't help herself.

            First, note the keen interest in "key states":

            "A large percentage of Latino voters in Florida were new voters who had become citiz

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              So basically you think that trying to get people who might vote democrat to vote is a bad thing and in the interests of democracy fewer people should actually participate.

              • by Raenex ( 947668 )

                I destroyed your lie, and now you come back with this weak strawman. Low effort.

              • by stdarg ( 456557 )

                and in the interests of democracy fewer people should actually participate.

                also you in this thread:

                in fact the memo is careful to remind readers that Google made efforts to be non-partisan with the information it provided.

                If you try to get specific groups with known voting patterns to vote more, and you're doing it to help one particular side, then you cannot say you are non-partisan, pretty simple. If Google really wanted to further the "interests of democracy" then they would ensure a broad segment was helped, not specific groups. When they start sending Google buses to bring evangelical Christians to the polls, while also getting Hispanics more access, THEN I would believe they are just trying to b

                • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Every sizeable under represented group at the polls leans left. Doing almost anything to improve participation helps the democrats.

                  So either you decide voting should have lower participation because that helps the republicans, or you prefer a more representative democracy in principle.

                  • Google could have targeted voters in Red states like Montana, Nebraska, Kansas..... they specifically avoided those states, because they didn't want to help Trump.

                    They wanted to help Hillary... therefore they were biased.

                  • by stdarg ( 456557 )

                    That's not true. Actually the largest underrepresented voter group is men, since 1980. http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/si... [rutgers.edu]

                    Now if a company started a program to help men get out and vote, I would say that is pretty biased as well.

                    Anyway, your point about non-voters leaning Democrat (I'm not sure that's true unless you're excluding all white non-voters, or all male non-voters) is about inequality of outcome, which I'm fine with. If you help everybody across the board and that happens to help Democrats, that doe

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Thought about it and decided not to. What kind of Orwellian thought crime are you accusing them of?

        • I dunno. Is lying a concept you aren't familiar with ?

          You know things like "Do no evil and hello mr Jinping"
          Or
          "We welcome diverse viewpoints Mr. Damore"
          or
          "We don't track where you are via your phone or what you do when not using our services"

    • Re:Non-story (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Etcetera ( 14711 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:42PM (#57357470) Homepage

      Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

      Compare it to: Somebody at Google said "hey, men and women are different and if we consider that then we could help increase actual diversity here for good!" and management came back saying "you're fired", and that was the end of it.

      It's bad enough that Google even has this power, but between it and Facebook, there's clear pressure from the bottom up (thanks to the prevalence of thought in the Bay Area) to end up doing this. It's naive to think effort to effect these types of things end here.

      • Re:Non-story (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:53PM (#57357528)

        Dalmore was fired amidst hate-filled rants and threats from far-left fellow employees, and Google said "He was fired for violating company policy (we don't know which one). Our employees are not far-left, and we would never act on those views (that they don't have)."

        Then recently we discovered that right after the 2016 election, Google executives held a meeting, where employees expressed dismay at Trump's election. Many people, including multiple CEx officers, spoke about why it happened, and started brainstorming about ho to make sure that 'fake news' could never make it happen again. Google responded, saying "Yes, we have far-left employees, but they were just expressing their opinions (even the CEO). They would never think of acting on it."

        Now we see that employees felt comfortable publicly brainstorming how to use Google's search results to manipulate public opinion and political views. Google's latest response: "Sure, we have far-left employees, and they spend their time thinking of ways to oppose the other political party. However, they would never actually do it. Our search result algorithms, which we will never show you, certainly don't include any deliberate bias for our chosen political views."

        As you said, it is naive to believe them when they've lied so much in the past.

      • by davecb ( 6526 )

        Please read Mr. Damore's thesis, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

        I read it as an honest statement of belief, based on traditional beliefs about sexual dimorphism. My own opinion? He's assuming some specific human social traditions, rather than "Mrs. Bear has the same job description as Mr. Bear. Find lunch!"

      • It's bad enough that Google even has this power

        Power to effect their own business? I know, shocking.

    • I guess you missed the story about Google abusing their power to suppress search results in China [slashdot.org]. Or Google management suppressing an internal memo discussing the details of their deal with the PRC [slashdot.org] to track users search request.

      If you really think management said no because it was "abusive", you're naive. The only reason management said no was because there was no money in it (yet).

    • Re:Non-story (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iMadeGhostzilla ( 1851560 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:51PM (#57357508)

      So you have one confirmed instance of employees' serious intent to rig search results, you have the management's *word* that it didn't happen, and from that you conclude that the story is not newsworthy because it follows no other instance of such intent ever occurred, or if it did it must also have been blocked by the management -- according to the management? After the leaked video showing clear and unequivocal political preferences of the management?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NaCh0 ( 6124 )

      Management? More like the PR department said they didn't do it.

      The social justice engineers probably still did it because everyone knows certain keywords get tuned by hand. Google has become a company whose denials have to be read with the same skepticism given to a lawyer/politician's statement. The specific carve outs and what is not said is as important as what they have told you.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Actually, they should have been fired.

      Google is losing public trust that their search is trusted. Which is the sole source or income for Google (Google employees are confused about where the $ come from). This is akin to sales reps chatting about how they'll inflate quarter end sales.

    • Re: (Score:3, Troll)

      > management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it"

      which is, of course, objectively untrue. In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to meet with statesâ(TM) attorneys general next week to discuss possible criminal action against tech firms that bias their products against conservatives. Because who could ever forgot how Trumpâ(TM)s electoral victory caused such âoepanic and dismayâ among top Google executive

      - Also one can't help but be skeptical consid

      • which is, of course, objectively untrue

        Which of course it is objectively true.

        See how I did that. No links, no references, nothing. I just had to type and it became true.

      • In fact, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to meet with statesâ(TM) attorneys general next week to discuss possible criminal action against tech firms that bias their products against conservatives

        Which proves this whole thing is politically biased by conservatives who think they run the world and no-one should be able to oppose them. Why isn't he discussing criminal action against firms that bias their products against the non-right?

        • by OYAHHH ( 322809 )

          Why isn't he discussing criminal action against firms that bias their products against the non-right?

          Um, What firms would that be?

          • Fox News? Chick Fil A? The NFL?

            • FOX is usually considered "centrist" in most media studies (while CNN, NBC are "left") so there's no reason to prosecute FOX.

              - Chick Fil-A is no more anti-left than In N Out with its bible verses on the burgers/fries. Have we really reached a point where business people who are Christian are not considered "liable for criminal action" by the AG?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      good = stuff the country with foreigners?
      Why do so many people think that way?

      Foreigners from terrorist heavy nations, no less.

      This news will be most shocking to people who think immigration should be slowed, but don't want to be ostracized / attacked / blacklisted for being a "nazi".

    • by Anonymous Coward

      They're lying. Google's algorithm used to show me all kinds of things in my feed that I'm actually interested in. But someone, somewhere decided that I shouldn't be interested in those things and they stopped showing up. Literally over night. Now I have to explicitly search for DefCon presentations when they used to just show up in my feed.

      They've done it before, they will do it again as long as they think they can get away with it. And they will.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Anonymous Coward

      'Do no evil' has become 'We decide what is evil, according to what is fashionable among the Elite, which is Us'.

      Lord Acton was right.

    • Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

      We can't be so sure, and it's generally unwise to consider only the company's word for this. But you have to read more news beyond this story to understand the debate over the issue. Ironically, you'd have to read stories that we're told aren't so easy to find if you depend on Google to bring them to your attention.

      According to RT [rt.com], one of the

    • "we're not doing it"

      Everyone knows Big Brother Google regularly manipulates search results for social and political purposes. When they say they didn't do it, they're lying.

    • by Agripa ( 139780 )

      So let me try to summarize this:

      Somebody at Google said "hey, we could abuse our power for good!" and management came back saying "it's still abuse, so we're not doing it", and that was the end of it.

      Folks did their jobs, nothing bad happened, and everything worked as it should. It's nice to have a story that isn't sky-is-falling panic, but there's literally nothing newsworthy to report here.

      Just like Google is not in the process of implementing custom services to support authoritarian police states. Oh, wait, they are, there is a memo about it, and some employees have protested it by quitting.

      Just like Goggle does not censor search results in favor of gun control.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    At this point, I am expecting it to be revealed that Google deliberately engineered the downfall of Firefox by working behind the scenes to remove functionality and implement the current horrible UI.

    At this point, it really would not surprise me if it was suddenly revealed that the core Firefox developers are in fact Google plants.

    It would certainly explain the last 10 years...

    Seriously, what the hell is Google going to get up to next ?

  • Google's problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21, 2018 @06:23PM (#57357382)

    Google needs to realize that by moving away from a neutral platform to one that is politically biased that they have lost the public trust. Not all of the public yet, but enough that people are talking about, even those that are not political. Whether it's here on Slashdot, at work or at the dinner table people are talking about Google's bias, even in liberal states.

    Google needs to damage control and it's going to take more than claims of not being biased to do it. Google needs to come clean about past bias, remove the SJW weighting and be honest with people about what they did. Nothing less than a full mea culpa is going to work at this point.

    They can claim they aren't biased all day long, but people keep seeing (and not seeing) the same results. Nothing has changed. When Google declined congresses invitation it showed a lot of people a company that is that is arrogant and completely out of touch with the average American.

    As it is right now, your starting to see a lot of people who are looking at Google and declaring that their monopoly is overdue for antitrust action. This is starting to become much more prevalent in conservative media which has traditionally stood against antitrust actions.

    • Re:Google's problem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by davecb ( 6526 ) <davecb@spamcop.net> on Friday September 21, 2018 @07:09PM (#57357592) Homepage Journal

      The cited discussions suggest that the majority, and even the management, was against political bias. I'm constantly surprised that companies (like mine!) succeed in actually discussing both sides of questions instead of jumping in on one side and firing anyone who disagrees.

      I once had an ex-CTO that wanted to do evil as a matter of policy. He still gives me nightmares (;-))

    • Google needs to realize that by moving away from a neutral platform to one that is politically biased that they have lost the public trust.

      As opposed to all those companies exercising their corporate personhood's right to free speech that haven't lost the public trust?

    • Why is Google not allowed to be political in a country where even fast food outlets are openly homophobic? And where Fox News can run far-right propaganda 24/7?

      • by stdarg ( 456557 )

        Google is allowed to be political, however making a corporate statement or donating to support various candidates is different from manipulating search results without telling them. It's dishonest. It's providing an inferior product to certain people. It would be like the difference between a fast food outlet that is homophobic in the sense that they support things like Proposition 8, and a fast food outlet that secretly overcooks burgers and uses cold fries for customers they suspect of being gay.

  • Wow.

    Sounds like a contribution-in-kind to Democrats.

    And therefore a violation of campaign finance laws!

    Or maybe campaign finance laws really ARE restrictions on free speech?

    Are you "'progressives" who want to "no-platform" those you disagree with willing to have the laws you clamor for applied to YOU?

    Why'd I even ask...

    • Sounds like a contribution-in-kind to Democrats. And therefore a violation of campaign finance laws!

      Thank you for admitting that the Republican platform is one of bigotry and racism (since you seem to be insinuating that no Republican could possible oppose such shenanigans).

      • 95% of the American racists I've met in recent years were Democrat partisans. Dems think it's cool & trendy to be racist. Now the Euro racists - I met way more racist Euros than racist Americans - that's a whole different story.

        Shit, bro - I was at a bar downtown last week and I met this old geezer German tourist. Dude claimed to be a real, live, formal member of the Nazi party! I was like, holy fuck - for realz??

        But dude was kinduva failure as a Nazi. He seemed to enjoy drinking and talking with my d

  • from an ad company.
    Time for a search engine that just presents search results without the leverage.
  • That's fine... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @07:04PM (#57357572) Journal

    ...as long as the Federal regulators now recognize that Google DOES exert editorial control over its content.

    Therefore, they are no longer simply a 'blind carrier' of information but in fact are showing that they are functionally liable for whatever they link, right?

    • Wasn't PageRank always a mechanism of editorial control?
    • they've been doing that for ages on their Youtube platform. As for search results they maintain they use a proprietary algorithm that focuses on putting the most desirable search results first (minus things removed due to legal constraints like DMCA or European privacy laws) and based on the article that is correct. Specifically somebody said "Let's modify our algorithm to fight Trump) and Google management said "No, because our algorithm is supposed to generated correct search results based on ranking, no
  • by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @07:06PM (#57357580)

    I loved google when they delivered search results relevant to my query. But increasingly they've been tweaking results. You can do the same search in google and then in other search results and there are certain things that should be in the google search that aren't.

    Lots of things are still good about google... their translate service is pretty cool, their maps service is great, their image list thing is pretty good for finding random images that are similar to search results.

    Lots of positive things. But... the company has abandoned their "don't be evil" motto.

    Time to recognize that and pop over to DuckDuckGo or something.

    Whatever your politics, if you put any stock in classical Western Liberalism, then you can't be okay with the search engine trying to bias your political opinions by biasing the search. They've been doing it. Everyone knows. Time to acknowledge it and move on.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Google results are a product. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. If you don’t like that most people think they are just fine, then that is your problem.

      You can argue that they are bad. You can promote a competitor that you feel is better.

      Arguing that they are “evil” because they don’t reflect your priorities is stupid. Arguing that they have some obligation to promote views that they disagree with or suppress their own views is stupid.

      Just because you can’t ima

      • As to google products, their search engine is so ubiquitous that it actually has the ability to affect public perception. That is well beyond just a product. Indifferent to whether I stop using it or not, I have reason to be concerned.

        Consider the "russian influence of the election" which was mostly a bunch of posts on facebook. If "that" is worth an FBI investigation, what is Google playing with search results worth? Or does it only matter when there's some alleged link to the Russians?

        What if we just make

  • Google MUST be broken up.

  • So their attempt to fight back against Trump was that if someone who disliked Muslims, etc, searched for them... they would find positive results? Not sure how this would affect the ban or someone who was already prejudiced. I doubt someone who hated Muslims would be like: "Oh look at this link telling me that immigration is good, time to read it and give it a good think and change my opinion!" They would instead just search more or look elsewhere.
  • Newspapers, Radio, TV have been doing this as long as they've existed and they are controlled by power capitalists continuously pushing their agenda.

    e.g. It's The Sun Wot Won It (1992) [wikipedia.org] a meme that predates even Eternal September (1993) [wikipedia.org]

    The idea that Google, FB, Twitter and the likes are really interested in pushing an agenda that doesn't also promotes their own self interest is deluding themselves.

  • Google was screwed from the moment the post-election video was released. Scott Adams on Periscope, who has worked in the upper management levels at both big banks and telecoms, pointed out that it would be unthinkable for the CEO of those to hold an 'all hand's on deck' meeting where the company's distaste for a specific election outcome would be announced and it would be openly stated that the company would make sure that a different outcome occurred next time. The speeches at that meeting showed that, whi
  • We already know they're modifying results in China, they've admitted it. Isn't that the definition of evil? I have no doubt they're modifying everyone elses results. It's easy. I type something in on a co-workers machine and I get very different results.

    Just give it to us straight. What we need is honesty. Not some leftist bullshit world that doesn't work anywhere in the world.

    Google needs to do some serious soul searching. First step, get rid of all the leftists.

  • The revelation comes as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to meet next week with state attorneys to discuss concerns about anticonservative bias. Earlier this month, Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to address online election meddling ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, as well as perceived conservative censorship on social platforms.

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