
Report Reveals Google’s Financial Support for European Academics and Think Tanks - dredmorbius
https://campaignforaccountability.org/new-report-reveals-googles-extensive-financial-support-for-european-academics-and-think-tanks/
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ocdtrekkie
Yesterday I saw an article in favor of the CLOUD Act, which has received
support from Google. Given that almost every other article suggests it's bad
for privacy and human rights, and these folks were saying the opposite, I
checked, and sure enough, both authors' employers were listed here:
[https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html](https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html)

Of course, given that this page is for "U.S. Public Policy", my guess is that
organizations fully arranged and supported in the EU can be left off the list.
Sure enough, if you look for a handful of the organizations mentioned in this
report, none of them are disclosed on Google's site.

EDIT: Note that not every organization on the list is inherently "bad", many
don't involve competition or Internet policy at all. One in particular, the
EFF, of course, has continued to argue against Google's positions, including a
massive condemnation of the CLOUD Act. (And even directly taking Google to
task with an FTC complaint about school Chromebooks violating student
privacy.)

But almost every article in support of Google's goals comes from a writer who
is employed by one of the organizations on this list, which makes those on it,
suspect until demonstrated otherwise.

~~~
cromwellian
Microsoft and Apple also back the CLOUD Act.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
True, but neither of them pump the level of money into convincing academics to
covertly promote their political agendas as your employer does.

Whereas Apple and Microsoft will settle for a trade organization that openly
represents them to state their views on the topic, Google's got professors who
aren't disclosing their financial interests involved.

(Also, this is known as "whataboutism", it doesn't change the fact that Google
is supporting this legislation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism))

~~~
cromwellian
The CLOUD Act, however bad it may be, is a reaction to the US vs Microsoft
case, wherein Microsoft tried to resist the government grabbing data.

Microsoft doesn't pay academic shills? Come on.

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whatyoucantsay
This is about what a reasonable person would expect from Google.

Also concerning is that one of YouTube's primary stated goals this year is to
tighten their content control. At first, it will likely be used for preventing
content most objectionable to their advertisers and their leadership. Over
time, it will almost inevitably morph into a system that distorts the
worldwide flow of information to privilege Google's interests. It may not even
be intentional, depending on how much ML is involved.

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dredmorbius
The problem: that a wealthy, often newly-emerged, corporate powerhouse funds
"research" baldly in its own interests, isn't new. See Microsoft, IBM, AT&T,
the military-industrial complex, Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the auto industry in
the 1950s-70s. Standard Oil and the funding of the University of Chicago with
its famously pro-monopolist economics department.

The question is: how can this be minimised?

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Multicomp
Fat lot of good it did 'em; they still have to comply with right-to-be-
forgotten requests.

Meanwhile lots of EU users still deeply distrust Google and expect their
respective governments to reach across sovereign borders for enforcement
(ignoring the GDPR controversies for now) - if their motivations really are as
bad as this article implies (and it is certainly plausible to this humble
poster), they sure wasted a lot of time/money.

