Google will stop targeting political ads based on behavior. That’s a start. I call on every platform to end all targeted political ads (except by geography) — and for Congress to make this the law. Here’s what happened with political ads so far in 2019: Twitter banned all political ads. Google just announced that for…
A battle is waging between humanity’s evil side and the cleverness of Silicon Valley social network engineers. The evil side is winning. And it will always win. The Verge published some insightful articles on this topic in the last few weeks. Casey Newton published the second in a series of exposés on the outsourced operations…
The White House launched a new site to collect reports of Americans banned on social media. This is a good idea. I expect to get flamed for this opinion. I’m no fan of Trump. But let’s take this apart, independent of who is collecting the information. I’ll analyze it the form of a Q &…
The New York Times described several instances of sexual harassment by senior executives at Google. Now Google staff are protesting. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, sent an internal email about the company’s policy, and it stands out for its directness. In the wake of so many harassment allegations in the #MeToo era, it’s clear that there’s…
Google announced it would shut down its social network Google+ yesterday after revealing that it had given outside developers access to private data. At least that’s how the media is describing it. Google’s own statement just buries the news amid a whole bunch of other announcements, like a radioactive pellet in a big bag of…
Donald Trump has accused Google of bias, saying that 96% of Trump News searches result in media with a left-wing bias. His economic advisor Larry Kudlow has said the government will look into regulating sites like Google. To determine the validity of Trump’s complaint, let’s invent a new Google search called “Truegle” that would live…
Senator Mark R. Warner’s office wrote a paper with 20 legislative ideas on how to restrain the excesses, abuses, and ill effects of internet giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple; Axios got a copy and published it. With problems from fake news to data sharing and bullying, these platforms certainly deserve scrutiny. Of course,…
I used Google’s chat support. The result was infuriating, because the support person didn’t listen. Humans doing support need to listen and use context — and you’d think algorithms could help with that, especially at Google. Here’s what’s happening. I just set up a new web site for my nonprofit, wellnesscampaign.org. The next step is…
Here’s a story that appeared on Dow Jones newswires yesterday: DJ Update: Google, Apple Join to Create Tech Giant By Josee Rose In a surprise move to everyone who is alive, Google said it’s going to buy Apple for $9 billion. Google Chief Executive Larry Page had secret talks with the now deceased Steve Jobs…