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Is Google Our Puppet Master?
Incensed to have been taken hostage by Google’s 2015, “The Year in Search” during the previews for my first visit to the movies in years, I’m on a tear and a rant. I felt certain the ad was filled with items from Google’s progressive agenda — but unrepresentative of the most searched items.
I did an experiment with Google searches. I noticed the mind-reading autofill feature seemed inconsistent with the premise of the ad. Here are some ad phrases, followed by the Google autofill:
How can I help…
*Syrian refugees
*you in spanish
*you
*you to say goodbye
Google 1. Me 0.
Why can’t women be…
*priests
Army Rangers not on the list.
Google 1. Me 1.
What does the Confederate Flag
*stand for
*symbolize
*look like
*mean today
Google 2. Me 1.
How can we overcome
*sin
*temptation
*discrimination
*obesity
*racism
Discrimination is fed by prejudice, but #3 on the autofill. Why did Google leave sin and temptation out of the ad? I win.
Google 2. Me 2.
Why was there a Cuban
*revolution
*embargo
*missile crisis
Google 3. Me 2. (But this query is a sad commentary on a supposedly educated citizenry.)
What color is the
*dress
*milky way
*sun
*sky
*universe
I never knew what color that dress was. I helped feed that autofill.
Google 4. Me 2.
“How can the world find” brings no relevant autofills.
“How can the world find peace.” Zero.
Google 4. Me 4.
But the query, “How can I find” yields
*someone in the world
*my twin in the world
*my place in the world.
We are doomed.
The query, “Are you born…”
*gay
*with autism
*with freckles
*with lupus
Zero autofills for transgender.
Google 4. Me 5.
How can we rebuild…
*ozone
*trust
*our economy
*America.
A phenomenal zero autofills for rebuilding Nepal.
Google 4. Me 6.
I challenge the Ricochetti to search Google daily for “Will we ever defeat,” waiting to see if that query ever gets an autofill of “the progressives.” Anyone care to wager?
If I enter that query, the auto fill is:
*ISIS
*death
*cancer
Enter the entire query, “Will we ever defeat the Progressives?“ (Hat Tip to Arahant.)
#1 hit on google for that question.
#2 hit
#3 hit
Ricochetti unite, and carry the torch against Progressivism!
And someone help me find a different search engine.
Published in General, Science & Technology
It’s very intrusive and creepy. LinkedIn does it too, and they once admitted to me that they had some kind of deal with Yahoo whereby they got access to all my mail contacts. I was infuriated. And I let them know. Want to know what the girl at LinkedIn said to me? “Don’t worry, we don’t keep your password.” (!?!)
My sister works in state government – before about a year or two ago, they used state gov. email – now whole state has switched to…..Google – when they first switched she said porn was flooding the email as spam – can you imagine?? They had to adjust the filters?! Why are state governments going to the private sector for email and what does this remind you of? Talk about making it easy for foreign hackers! Maybe that’s the answer…..the private sector has better controls?
The Reticulator, you are making me wish I could have my Compuserve account back.
There are many ways they can know, especially if you’ve linked your Facebook account to, for example, your LinkedIn account. But people shouldn’t be surprised. Facebook is “free.”
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
If nobody has yet made a gangster movie based on Eric Schmidt, Hillary Clinton, and their evil plot to rule the world, it’s an opportunity waiting for the right persons to come forward. I’ll let others offer casting suggestions. And the filmmakers should keep journals and notes, because the documentary about their thwarted attempt to make the movie would be even better. Perhaps there is some Georgian filmmaker who could take it on.
Since protectionism is in favor these days among populists left and right, maybe free internet services could be outlawed. Put it in the statute books next to the anti-dumping provisions.
I am joking, but not entirely.
I never link my Facebook to ANYTHING. But when I think of how many of my Facebook friends have done it, I realize I’m still exposed through them. I’m probably going to delete my Facebook again soon.
You’re on Facebook?
There’s an excellent reason why there should be no law about this. You want it? Here goes:
“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”
Whether or not a person can use their money to influence an election is entirely up to them, and shouldn’t be the subject of laws. Now, if you say that their ability depends on their ability to compile data on each individual citizen and that the shouldn’t be allowed to collect that data I’m amenable to listen. You’re going to have to explain how they can be restrained in a way that doesn’t have too many unintended consequences, and doesn’t unduly burden an individual though.
Not for long! I deleted my page last year, and then I made a new one with no friends and no personal info, just to keep an eye on my daughter. But the next thing I knew, people from high school were adding me and now I’m back to feeling exposed again. I won’t miss it at all. If I never see another Bernie Sanders meme or photo of what someone had for lunch, it’ll be too soon.
I just discovered that there was a Facebook program on my computer. I uninstalled it.
I’ve been there for over 8 years. No high school friends on my page, and only three liberals. Everyone else is conservative.
Magic Mike! Or: Magic, Mike. How’d you do that!
I imagine living in Texas helps.
The only recourse is to fake your death.
Probably the unfriend button. And not accepting friends he already knows are crazy.
Living in Texas and having high Facebook security settings.
That, too.
Being an INTJ also helps, no doubt.
Let’s not give LaRoche too much credit for his vigilance. Folks tend to stay away on their own when your profile picture features you in the woods with a rusted deer hoist and a 1987 Ford conversion van with all the windows except the ones up front spray-painted matte black.
The best and the brightest and the most likely to get things done that nobody else can.
I’ll have to get me one a them pitchers. Keep the riffraff away.
In the immortal words of Sawyer Brown: some girls don’t like boys like me, but some girls do!
My Facebook is not linked to anything else, as far as I know – they have stepped it up as far as encouraging you to post more personal info and add more friends I have noticed – I think they’re in cahoots with Google (not kidding)…yes I can see that documentary coming……by the way, a new movie starts this month in theaters about Benghazi…wonder if it will do well –
There’s no bigger supporter of the 1st Amendment than I am, But for this, a search engine that most people use unknowingly, there should be some kind of disclaimer. Not a law that restricts them, but at least people should be aware so they can’t throw an election by stealth. I wouldn’t approve of their doing it for the Right either. An internet search engine should be impartial or everyone should know it isn’t.
But your friends on Facebook have friends. And if you belong to any groups, the group members might have friends. It’s all about the network.
It occurs to me that the idea of using some search engine other than Google is kind of pointless. Google does not make money from people using their search service. Nor do they make money from Gmail, or Android, or Google Docs, or any of their other “free” services. As has often been said, we are not Google’s customers: we are the product.
Google makes money by gathering usage data (collected from all of the data that flows through their free services) and selling that data to advertisers. They also make money by selling services to corporate clients.
Here’s my point: we, as individual users, have no meaningful leverage with Google (not unless enough of us left that their product became less valuable, and that’s not realistically going to happen.) However, Google’s corporate clients might have such leverage. I wonder how comfortable those companies are with Google’s overt political activism?
What concerns me is the number of things you click on there where they want access to all your friends and contacts’ info. When I see that, I leave, but how many people just agree and continue? How many of my Facebook friends willingly give access to my information?
I can get behind that. Same principle with newspapers.
The linked article though was talking about a different company financed with Google money. Having acquired that money I see no reason to prevent them from spending it on what they want.
I think everyone should be able to spend their money however they want. But our election laws should catch up with this nefarious practice, or people should be made aware of what Google is doing and of their close ties to Al Gore. I can guarantee you if the close ties were with the Koch brothers, every idiot low-info voter would know about it in five minutes.