Categories
ethics Google

Google Alters Search Queries

Because of the recent antitrust case against Google, this story about the search giant altering search queries in order to make more money has come to light. It’s almost too much to believe:

Megan Gray writing for Wired:

There have long been suspicions that the search giant manipulates ad prices, and now it’s clear that Google treats consumers with the same disdain. The “10 blue links,” or organic results, which Google has always claimed to be sacrosanct, are just another vector for Google greediness, camouflaged in the company’s kindergarten colors.

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

Google dropped the “Don’t be evil” motto when it changed its name to Alphabet but apparently hasn’t been living up to their new motto, “Do the right thing”.

Update: It has been noted that this is an opinion piece and the sources haven’t necessarily been vetted. Google’s statement via platformer:

Google does not delete queries and replace them with ones that monetize better as the opinion piece suggests, and the organic results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems.

Categories
ethics religion

Truth and Reconciliation

September 30th is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The holiday is also sometimes called Orange Shirt Day and recognizes the legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system. Wearing an orange shirt on this day honours both the indigenous children who never returned home and also the survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.

The schools in Lethbridge (and across the country) have been doing activities and presentations all week building up to this day. I think it’s so important that we continue to collectively acknowledge the harm that residential schools caused.

Both my son (4) and daughter (5) have been very concerned about the stories they’ve heard about the woman1 who had her orange shirt taken away and not given back. They seem to have a pretty good, age appropriate, understanding of the traumatic impact these schools imparted.

I want to point out though, as Canadians share in the collective guilt of the day, one glaring omission is the often-overlooked, deeply disturbing role that the Catholic Church played in the atrocities committed at residential schools. While the reprehensible actions of the church in exploiting children within its congregation are widely acknowledged, it is equally vital to recognize the dark chapter of history where indigenous children, torn from their families, were also subjected to the church’s predation.

I don’t doubt there were also many abuses in residential schools outside Catholic control, but from the sounds of things2, that’s where the bulk of the sexual exploitation happened. I think acknowledging the church’s role should be a a major part of the truth in “Truth and Reconciliation”.

As we come together to commemorate Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and wear our orange shirts in honor of those affected, it’s essential that we acknowledge the elephant in the room — the painful role played by the Catholic Church in these grievous acts.

  1. Phyllis Webstad has written multiple books depicting her experience with the Indian residential school system[]
  2. The Daily episode State-Sponsored Abuse in Canada from July 16, 2023 covers it[]
Categories
ethics

Donald McNeil Follow Up

Yesterday Donald McNeil published a follow up post about his firing from the New York Times on Medium. He blames a culture of hypocrisy and elitism and compares his forced apology to the controlling power of Chairman Mao.

(Previously)

Categories
crime ethics Politics

Lawyer wants inquiry into alleged threats of retaliation against MLA and CBC journalist by Lethbridge police

A Calgary defence lawyer is calling for a public inquiry into allegations that members of the Lethbridge Police Service have threatened retaliation against NDP MLA Shannon Phillips and CBC journalist Meghan Grant for exposing misconduct within the force.
— Read on www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lethbridge-police-threats-public-inquiry-1.6195354

Previously

Categories
advertising ethics

Attack Ad Against WordPress

Matt Mullenweg, the CEO Automattic (the people behind WordPress.org among others) posted a response to the recent attack ad campaign from Wix in which they personify the open source software WordPress as an annoying, neglectful, glitchy father and complain about its problems in a confrontational therapy session.

It’s ironic that they would want to point out WordPress as a father figure considering it’s not a point of pride they copied WordPress’s code but haven’t been following the copyleft terms of share and share-alike that one must abide if you’re going to reuse said code.

From Matt’s post, Wix and Their Dirty Tricks:

I have a lot of empathy for whoever was forced to work on these ads, including the actors, it must have felt bad working on something that’s like Encyclopedia Britannica attacking Wikipedia. WordPress is a global movement of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and community members, coming together to make the web a better place. The code, and everything you put into it, belongs to you, and its open source license ensures that you’re in complete control, now and forever. WordPress is free, and also gives you freedom.

He goes on to explain that Wix itself is more fitting to be personified as an abuser. Their investor presentation explicitly outlines their business model of making it difficult to leave by not allowing users to export their data and consumers complain it’s difficult to get a refund. The for profit company knows that once they’ve got you locked in they can continue to charge more each year.

So if we’re comparing website builders to abusive relationships, Wix is one that locks you in the basement and doesn’t let you leave. I’m surprised consumer protection agencies haven’t gone after them.

Is this simply a difference in opinion between the value of open source versus paid software? He continues:

Philosophically, I believe in open source, and if WordPress isn’t a good fit for you there are other great open source communities like Drupal, Joomla, Jekyll, and Typo3. We also have a great relationship with some of our proprietary competitors, and I have huge respect for the teams at Shopify and Squarespace, and even though we compete I’ve always seen them operate with integrity and I’d recommend them without hesitation.

Here is one of the ads in question it feels like a cheap ripoff of Apple’s 2006 Mac vs PC Campaign. You be the judge.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2JyW4yAyTl0%3Fautoplay%3D1%26modestbranding%3D1

Categories
ethics religion

God Doesn’t Give Refunds

James Huntsman comes from a rich and prominent Mormon family in Utah. Because he had a lot of money and because he believed in donating a full 10% of his income in tithing, he gave the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints millions of dollars over the course of his life.

A couple of years ago he decided the LDS church wasn’t for him. Among his complaints about the church was the fact it had amassed a giant $100 billion+ hedge fund instead of using that money for good. So now, Huntsman wants his money back.

From the washingtonpost.com:

In the suit, Huntsman says he wants back millions of dollars he donated and plans to give it to “organizations and communities whose members have been marginalized by the Church’s teachings and doctrines, including by donating to charities supporting LGBTQ, African-American, and women’s rights.”

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, comes 16 months after a former high-level investment manager with the church filed a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint, which The Washington Post obtained in December 2019, alleged that the Church amassed about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes and misled members by stockpiling surplus donations using the tax-exempt donations to prop up a pair of businesses.

What he doesn’t realize is, God doesn’t give refunds. But all the same, I’m glad he’s pointing out the hypocrisy.

Categories
ethics

The Firing of Donald G. McNeil from the New York Times

I’ve only been a fan of Donald McNeil’s reporting since I first heard him on The Daily podcast last spring when the first wave of the pandemic was just getting rolling. McNeil spoke matter-of-factly and provided some much needed guidance in a world full of speculation and fear. He explained how testing, isolation, and contact tracing were the three tools that were going to get us through this mess. From that point on whenever McNeil was on the podcast I would parrot the information to friends and coworkers, and I felt like I knew what I was talking about concerning the pandemic. It was more than just great reporting — his reporting was full of information and history. They don’t have a prize for this, but they should. It’s reporting that’s useful, timely, and life-saving.

Last month I read about The New York Times’ decision to fire McNeil. Apparently, he had used the N-word while talking with students on a New York Times field trip for wealthy American teens in Peru. His statement:

“I was asked at a dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur. To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself. I should not have done that. Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realize that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful. The fact that I even thought I could defend it itself showed extraordinarily bad judgment. For that I apologize.”

Is it just me or does this apology sounds like it was written by lawyers?

Anyway, more details started to leak out. It was strange that the Times also let go Andy Mills — notorious drink dumper and misogynous Caliphate podcast dude — on the same day. You can’t help but wonder about the timing. What does one have to do with the other? We may never know.

Last week McNeil responded to the students’ accusations in four parts on Medium. It took me awhile to get to all four parts but it’s recommended reading, this guy knows how to write:

After reading his side of the story, and there may be more the story that even McNeil doesn’t realize, but if we take him at his word that this is what happened, I’m left thinking that the Times made a huge mistake and I look forward to hopefully hearing from McNeil at his next gig.

Categories
ethics technology

Zoom Helped Chinese Surveillance

Should we continue to use — and promote the use of — Zoom at institutions and organizations that stand for liberal democratic values when Zoom has been discovered terminating accounts and disrupting video calls about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy activists? Obviously, we should find something else.

From The Washington Post:

Prosecutors said the China-based executive, Xinjiang Jin, worked as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese law enforcement and intelligence services, sharing user information and terminating video calls at the Chinese government’s request.

If our organizations believe in free speech then it behooves us to tell our organizations about Zoom.

Zoom continues to fail us and mark my words, this will not be the last time we hear that this corrupt company is in the news.

Categories
article ethics

Facebook Abusing Your Contact List

As if you needed more reason to despise Facebook, Kashmir Hill reports on Facebook’s truly garbage practise of violating your contacts information without disclosing that’s what they’re doing.

Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn’t hand over at all, but that was collected from other people’s contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I’ve come to call “shadow contact information.” […]

Facebook is not upfront about this practice. In fact, when I asked its PR team last year whether it was using shadow contact information for ads, they denied it. Luckily for those of us obsessed with the uncannily accurate nature of ads on Facebook platforms, a group of academic researchers decided to do a deep dive into how Facebook custom audiences work to find out how users’ phone numbers and email addresses get sucked into the advertising ecosystem.

The researchers also found that if User A, whom we’ll call Anna, shares her contacts with Facebook, including a previously unknown phone number for User B, whom we’ll call Ben, advertisers will be able to target Ben with an ad using that phone number, which I call “shadow contact information,” about a month later. Ben can’t access his shadow contact information, because that would violate Anna’s privacy, according to Facebook, so he can’t see it or delete it, and he can’t keep advertisers from using it either.

The lead author on the paper, Giridhari Venkatadri, said this was the most surprising finding, that Facebook was targeted ads using information “that was not directly provided by the user, or even revealed to the user.”

You’ve got to read the whole Gizmodo article. As John Gruber put it, “[…] Facebook [is] a criminal enterprise. Maybe not legally, but morally.”

(via DF)

Categories
ethics psychology technology

What is Technology Doing to Us?

I highly recommend The Waking Up podcast, and particularly episode #71, in which the host, Sam Harris, holds a conversation with Tristan Harris an ethicist for design. If you’ve ever gone to Facebook to look up something quickly and then wondered how you found yourself caught in a vortex of wasted time, this conversation will surely enlighten you. Recommended listening for everyone that uses technology and especially those that build it.

From Tristan’s bio page:

Called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” by The Atlantic magazine, Tristan Harris was previously a Design Ethicist at Google and left the company to lead Time Well Spent the Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit movement to align technology with our humanity. Time Well Spent aims to transform the race for attention by revealing how technology hijacks our minds, and to demonstrate how better incentives and design practices will create a world that helps us spend our time well.

Tristan is an avid researcher of what persuades our minds, drawing on insights from sleight of hand magic, linguistics, persuasive technology, cult psychology and behavioral economics. Currently he is developing a framework for ethical persuasion, especially as it relates to the moral responsibility of technology companies.

His work has been featured on 60 Minutes, PBS NewsHour, The Atlantic Magazine, ReCode, TED, 1843 Economist Magazine, Wired, NYTimes, Der Spiegel, NY Review of Books, Rue89 and more.

Previously, Tristan was CEO of Apture, which Google acquired in 2011. Apture enabled millions of users to get instant, on-the-fly explanations across a vast publisher network.

Listen to the conversation as Sam and Tristan talk about the arms race for human attention, the ethics of persuasion, the consequences of having an ad-based economy, the dynamics of regret, and other topics.

http://wakingup.libsyn.com/71-what-is-technology-doing-to-us

(or use Overcast to listen at a faster speed — that’s what I do)

Here’s a taste of what Tristan’s all about: