Among the 23 recommendations is a call for the government to set up an office in the commission to scrutinize the algorithms used by Google and Facebook to rank news and advertising. The report said the office would have the power to order Facebook, Google and other tech giants to hand information over to regulators.
“This particular branch of the [commission] will be able to be approached by various companies who believe that the algorithms have been misused,” Mr. Frydenberg said. He promised the government would “lift the veil” on how tech firms made money out of user data they collect.
No proper person who believes in freedom, democracy, and an open society would ever advocate for the government to tell newspapers and TV stations what they can and cannot print and broadcast. Yet, plans like this Australian one seem to advocate for complete control over Google, Facebook, and others to do pretty much the same thing.
Somewhere, a line has to be drawn between what constitutes the free press on one side, and non-press websites on the other. Current laws and lawmakers seem quite inept at drawing this line in a consistent, safe way, but you can’t really blame them for that – we’ve entered a new era, and the lines are ever fuzzier and more difficult to discern.
Even if lines can be properly drawn, we have to worry about the potential for government abuse. Especially in countries with winner-takes-all two-party systems – such as the United States and the United Kingdom – where one party tends to have pretty much total control over the branches of government, the potential for abuse towards the opposing party is incredibly tempting.
Many countries will be facing this issue head-on over the coming years, and don’t be fooled – it will have a tremendous impact on how societies in those countries function.
No proper person who believes in freedom, democracy, and an open society would ever advocate for the most powerful corporations in the world to have control over what newspapers and TV stations can and cannot print and broadcast, with no transparency and accountability whatsoever.
People are free to choose what to read/watch. No one force people to use Facebook/Google products/services. Even though I don’t quite like the idea that my life is stored and analyzed by private corporations, yet it’s their algorithms, their storage, their market. I wouldn’t trust much governments either as their political goals might change across time.
Kochise,
I understand and I don’t much trust the governments either, especially under such corrupt & dishonest leadership. I don’t like the idea of governments running the news any more than private corporations. However there is a difference between transferring data/algorithms from private corporations to government control versus mandating private companies to be transparent about what they’re doing. A government policy mandating corporate transparency does not create a “trust issue” whereas government taking over control does/would create a trust issue.
I’m skeptical whether australia is able to force companies to reveal their corporate secrets, however in terms of trust, more openness would be a good thing in principal.
Kochise,
No they’re not. People really have to stop pretending we live in an ideal world when reality easily demonstrates we are not.
At no point does the recommendation ever suggest the government take over. Calling on corporations to be more transparent is not the same thing and people should stop jump to strawman extremes.
Governments, that are far from being transparent, requesting corporations to be transparent is just BS.
Kochise,
Irrelevant.
Factually wrong. Requesting corporations to be more transparent on some aspects of their product is not asking them to be fully transparent. 1% is not the same as 100%. I know it’s hard for computer nerd types to imagine numbers other than 0 or 1, but please try.
I don’t think the algorithm matters, it’s about the data and who gets it. A bunch of SE Asia countries now see their data as the property of their citizens and have decided to make Google, Facebook and others pay as a way of recouping taxes the big multinationals do not pay!
You can’t complain about the freedom of the press, because this issue is actually being pushed by the large traditional media organisations, they seem to report Google and Facebook are bad citizens, not restricted and mostly unaccountable for their actions hiding behind and pointing a finger at the behaviour of “Users”. The politicians need little excuse because they fear what happened in the USA, they want everything open.
Would it be somewhat ironic for Europe to cry foul about SE Asian countries having enough of Google or Facebook treating them like piggy banks, while Europe ploughs ahead with anti-trust restrictions on Microsoft? Especially given Europe and the US just fined FB $7B, at least the SE Asian way is pay as you go tax, make the data public up front, not theft of profits after the fact the data has been used and manipulated!
cpcf,
To the extend that companies like google, apple, facebook, amazon, etc control so much of the market (ie millions/billions of people’s livelihoods are extremely dependent upon the tech companies at the top), I think it’s a combination of data, access, control, and algorithms. When a private company holds all those cards, the potential for abuse is virtually unlimited especially behind closed doors. It’s easy to argue “oh they would never abuse their position”, but if the motive is there and the risk of getting caught is low, then it at least should be a concern worth looking into. It makes sense to ask what tools do we have or do we need to get to make sure corporations at the top don’t become industrial dictators. It has become pretty bad.
Where does it say that?
Far more likely is that the commission would respond to complaints by asking Google “who clicked what and what results did they get” and scrutinizing the data they receive (from both Google and the complainants); without ever asking for (and without ever getting) any of the algorithms involved.
From my understanding of the news reports here, this seems more the case. Not sure where press freedom got mixed up in this. The AUS Government through (Senator) Josh Frydenberg I believe is most interested in how these two companies manipulate news/media and search results to suit themselves rather than the millions that use these services. If it’s following the lead of the EU (wrt anti-trust/pro-competition/anti-monopoly) it should be a good thing.
A balance needs to be found and maintained. Currently, Google algorithm often just bring up garbage results. I wouldn’t mind knowing why and if advertisers have a say in how results are presented in response to a search query.
Thom, I think you fell for inflammatory the headline.
This is just a report by the ACCC, Australia’s respected consumer protection agency, and scrutinizing how rankings are determined is just one of many recommendations. These aren’t laws. These aren’t even plans. The government decides which, if any, recommendations will be enacted.
And this is hardly controlling what they are allowed to publish. This is just being transparent about how rankings are determined.
“… we have to worry about the potential for government abuse. Especially in countries with winner-takes-all two-party systems – such as the United States and the United Kingdom – where one party tends to have pretty much total control over the branches of government, the potential for abuse towards the opposing party is incredibly tempting.”
I know this is a distraction, and a regular opinion of Thom’s regardless of the story, but I’ll bite:
What evidence is there that two-party systems, Westminster systems in particular, have a greater potential for governmental abuse? Do they rank lower in international freedom reports? No. Are they more unstable and more likely to tend towards dictatorship, fascism, communism or other abusive government types? The opposite is generally accepted to be true. Are they more likely to either ride rough-shod over or accept the reforms of previous governments? The latter.
Here are some of the branches of the state that the Tories/Labour don’t control once they win an election in the UK (meaning they don’t appoint their party yes-men or ideological bed-fellows): The judiciary; the police forces (even though the Home Secretary is in charge, Chief Constables are not appointed along party lines); the armed forces; county and municipal governments; devolved governments in Scotland and Wales; the head of state; the Electoral Commission; Speakership of the House of Commons. Most British governments even fail to control the Lords, despite having the power of patronage. Hell, they don’t even get to appoint their own people into the Civil Service, which has to remain above politics. (I emphasise that I’m not addressing the American system, which is very different indeed.)
M.Onty,
Two party governments are pretty bad for voter choice. There are so many ideas and concepts to have an opinion about, collapsing those into a single binary choice offers a ridiculously limited pallet. In the US 3rd parties are so non-viable that voting for them is known as throwing away one’s vote because the two parties are so entrenched. It’s especially harmful in instances where both parties are endorsing unpopular candidates, and the last election is a prime example. 66% of voters were against both candidates, and yet because of our electoral college, the incumbent parties got 100% of the electoral votes between the two of them and 3rd parties got 0%. That is not a natural distribution that represents voters. Make no mistake about it, the contrived choices of a two party system are extremely harmful for democratic choice..
Maybe not as bad as a monopoly, but still really bad for anyone who values having a meaningful choice. A two party system enables all sorts of unscrupulous behavior by pumping up and getting elected on the partisan issues like abortion, gun rights, etc, but then giving politicians nearly free reign to abuse their power on a whole host of issues. I feel democracy is important, however I’m fully aware that there are politicians who use it as a tool to give us the illusion of choice, meanwhile go against public interests behind the scenes. The trend towards authoritarianism by democratically elected leaders has become a serious issue that might even lead us to WWIII if we forget our history. The contempt for constitutional norms and the rule of peace should be extremely alarming for everyone, yet politicians can get away with it by leaning very heavily on partisan issues to get votes, particularly with poorly educated voters who vote on face value rather than understand what’s truly being sold to them.
Indeed, I’m unfamiliar with UK politics. UK news here is mostly limited to brexit.
Party1: We’re going to give people free chocolate on Mondays and mandatory sodomy on Thursdays!
Party2: We’re going to give people free ice-cream on Fridays and mandatory sodomy on Tuesdays!
Voters: We like chocolate and ice-cream, and someone has to win I guess.
** Election results: Party1 wins 50.0001%. of the votes **
Party1: Due to how close the election was, it’s obvious everyone wants sodomy on Tuesdays, so we’re going to implement that too (in addition to the sodomy on Thursdays)! Sadly, there won’t enough left in the budget, so we had to cancel the chocolate.
Brendan,
It’s a real shame. Change is possible, but it’s hard to see the opening when politics is so fraught with corrupting forces. You’ve got politicians who deliberately undermine public policy on the one hand while lying to voters on the other. Those qualifications will almost certainly get you a stable job in washington. Granted, you won’t be serving your country so much as serving affluent individuals and corporations, but with your affluent connections you build you may no longer have to worry about lower/middle class needs.
The solution is simple. Google and facebook simply need to determine if they are platforms or publishers. As of now they are behaving like publishers yet they get the protections of platforms. They must change their bias and remain platforms or continue as is and be subject to libel lawsuits when content appears on their service that is libelous.
Yes, I suspect this is what the mainstream media is on about and why there is a wider push for transparency. As it currently stands they only need one relatively senior corrupt, criminal or radical employee out of the many thousands that work in those large organisations to have significant influence over large swaths of population.
When mainstream media publish their name is attached to the news and commentary by default, in contrast for many situations Google and FB can publish under any name they like and bare no responsibility!
When Joe Public sees the same advertisement published on every page of a newspaper he can just ignore the repetition. When Google or FB do the same by way of pushed adverting it’s like millions of unique opinions, maybe the real opinions do not even exist! Google Ads are counted more like newspaper impressions or media listener ratings, but they are not the same!
some companies secret sauce is their algorithm.
with AI, it’s the generated model that is secret. i think they might actually just go that way and keep their advantage.
[email protected]
In the case of Facebook and Google, I think their secret sauce now is how large they are. They’ll always have more advantage simply by having more money. That’s why they give away a lot of software to open source. They can afford to and they know that competitors can’t keep up.
Any startup that could become big enough by copying Facebook or Google’s algorithm would be subject to the same laws, meaning Google or Facebook would be able to similar copy that startup’s algorithm and out pace them.