Tag: google

SOPA didn’t matter. What’s next?

That SOPA had little to no measurable effect on the election results in Congress is not surprsing. While the online protest against the bill was an unprecedented moment for the Internet industry and social media, I believe the reality is that the average voter actually didn’t give a damn about SOPA or even know what it was. Of course, I have already asserted on numerous occasions that the majority of Web users who clicked on the online petition against the bill didn’t know what they were protesting either, but I won’t retread that ground here.

Presumbably, Internet issues will gain footing among the electorate as the Millenials age into the process. They already outnumber the Boomers, many who are still figuring out how to use AOL; and they way outnumber us meager and motley GenXers, who are net-savvy but still lived half our lives without these technologies. I am eager to read Chris Ruen’s new book Freeloading, but my understanding is that Ruen asserts that we see these tools, social media in particular, as extensions of ourselves. I tend to agree with this premise, and it stands to reason that a generation born using these technologies is going to have an even stronger association in this regard. Hence any threat, real or perceived, to these tools and media is going to be taken personally; and as the manipulators of politics know, it is emotion not reason that tends to win the day.

Still, I don’t believe it is inevitable that the Internet industry will be able to replay the same charade indefinitely that it did so well with SOPA/PIPA. In particular, the veneer that all web-based companies are the guardians of free speech will likely begin to wear thin among progressives, traditionally the voters with whom such a message tends to be effective. In the months since the defeat of SOPA, we have seen the formation of a lobbying juggernaut called the Internet Association; we have the disturbing, anti-labor components of the Pandora-backed Internet Radio Fairness Act; and we have more than a few privacy concerns with regard to how Internet companies collect personal data and how that data is used.

Combine these manifestations with the generally libertarian (at times Ayn Rand-like) ideology of Silicon Valley, and progressive voters may start to make that critical distinction between the products and the the producers — between the tools we like, or even need, and the corporate practices of those who make the tools. It’s true that if one crticizes Google, Facebook, Pandora, et al, this will often result in some reactionary response involving accusations like “technology luddite,” but such fallacious reasoning brings a very simple example to mind. Several years ago, General Electric was locked in an ongoing battle with envrinomental groups and the EPA over its disposal of PCBs into the Hudson River. At the same time, the company’s national consumer-focused ad campaign was a neo-Rockwellian vision of the world with the slogan “We bring good things to life.” And yes, a refridgerator is a good thing, as are all the jet engines that ever carried us safely from point to point around the world. But that doesn’t mean we’re okay with the PCBs in the river, does it now?

It will certainly be interesting to see how these dynamics play out over the coming year, but as a progressive, I found it telling (and more than a little pitiful) that on election eve, Google co-founder Sergey Brinn went out of his way to state publicly he was “dreading the elections” because party politics will still dominate and that his plea to either victor is to “govern as an independent.” Call me a cynic, but when a billionaire executive, who practically rules the Web, makes an ambiguous political statement I can hear from any Joe on the street, my Spidey Sense tingles.  If progressives listen carefully, they will hear the familiar refrain an anti-institutional song coming from Northern California that is more reminiscent of the Tea Party hymnal than anything else.

For Whom the Search Trolls

Photo by Ross Williamson

One of my main topics of interest with regard to the Internet is the notion of what my friend, the writer Jeff Turrentine, calls “epistemic closure.” Let’s face it:  when it comes to information, it’s all too easy to find evidence out there for just about any bias or belief we can name; and I am far from the only person to ask what effect this has on our political process.

It seems self-evident that an environment like Facebook is generally an echo chamber when it comes to socio-political issues, and I do believe this plays a role in maintaining, if not increasing, balkanization.  After all, it’s hard to find a more potent ideological brew than a peer group armed with quips and clips that favor one’s established politics.  Additionally, social media tends to increase the number of headlines we see without necessarily increasing the volume of in-depth reporting we read.  While this may not matter much in a macro view (i.e. whether we’ll vote democrat or republican), it does matter a lot more in the day-to-day micro complexities of governance; and I would not be surprised if the 140-character attention span we’re fostering aggravates the tendency to adopt associative political positions. The fact that any given issue can generally be placed in either a blue or red column is not necessarily good for us citizens, but it is a boon to most marketers, especially now that news and entertainment have irrevocably mated to produce a mutant child as yet unnamed. And that brings us to the matter of search engines.

This video from the founders of an alternative search tool called DuckDuckGo touts a small study they’ve done indicating that Google’s personalized search can have a negative impact on our democratic process, precisely by providing the aforementioned epistemic closure. In other words, their initial research shows that Google has enough data about each of us to tailor results on a polarizing term, say abortion, to deliver what we most likely want to find.  Of course, DuckDuckGo has something to sell, but that doesn’t make the question they raise invalid.

This article by Gregory Ferenstein at TechCrunch addresses the issue dispassionately, concluding that more research is required to determine whether personalized search really has any effect on people choosing to seek out information they need, regardless of whether or not it’s what they want to hear. Scientifically, I’d have to agree with Ferenstein; but anecdotally, my instincts lean toward the hypothesis offered by DuckDuckGo.  Multiple times a day, both conservative and liberal friends post articles from news aggregators that sound just a little too spot-on to be taken at face value; and in fact many of these stories are full of holes and editorial hyperbole.  Stepping back and watching the posts roll by, I am reminded to consider the question of who benefits from all these collisions that seem to cancel one another out like particles and anti-particles.

And so, the big-picture concern is this:  a very tiny consortium of corporations, much smaller than the consolidated media conglomerates, own the revenue streams generated by our online activity. In fact, for now, one corporation owns almost all of search and ad service on the Web. So, if it is in the interest of advertisers to narrow rather than broaden our paths through cyberspace, and this winnowing can be made to look like a service to us users, are we in danger of having our perspectives constricted while being sold the promise of limitless access?

Keep in mind that as users we may want the world at our fingertips but that the brass ring for marketers is the targeted advertisement.  While there’s no question that a search for a local merchant or restaurant is more convenient when Google uses contextual data to second-guess what I’m looking for, there are other circumstances in which sorting based on my profile feels just a tad invasive and manipulative.