
Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets - zymhan
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/01/google-facebook-2016-probe-secrets-243319
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mc32
$1.5 billion was spent in the federal election season. 100k was bought by
Russian interests and were questioning those 100k when we spend much more
destabilizing other governments we oppose.

Still, we should look into why a campaign season wastes 1.5 billion on one
contest and no one bats an eye, or some do a little but the media couldn't
care less. It's one of their cash cows.

~~~
askvictor
Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a
lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising
takes.

~~~
mc32
That's ridiculous.

There is no way that a crack Russian/Ukranian team understand or have better
info on the American public than American "pundits" and campaign
professionals.

Why couldn't Bernie buy 200k of highly targeted ads and beat Hillary or why
couldn't a very well connected Hillary (who has good connections to Russia as
well) not buy highly targeted and effective ads?

I don't buy that narrative. There is no way a rag-tag team with $100k beats a
political machine with real connections in DC, Wall Street, etc. which
happened to also spend over $1billion. It's a ridiculous assertion.

Why don't we, the US, buy these highly targeted ads in a place like Venezuela
and get people to vote against Maduro (or any other gov't we don't like).

It just does not work that way. Or, if it were to, the likes of FB and Google
are doomed. Whoever this band of propagandists are they can undercut Madison
ave and rake in the money for pennies on the dollar from corporate America.

~~~
askvictor
This argument seems to fly in the face of the startup ethos (which I guessed
had some currency at HN). It is precisely a rag-tag team with $100k and _a
different way of thinking_ that brings down a $1bn machine. I'm not saying
that this is what happened in this case, but it could happen (or have
happened), so don't dismiss it just because of the resourcing asymmetry.

~~~
dmach
But it's likely true that it wasn't all their doing if they do exist. They
could handy fall guys for whomever did the real work.

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alehul
It was apparently $100k spent by RT to promote news stories. Why is it so
unusual for a news company to spend money promoting news stories on social
media sites?

This is nothing out of the ordinary (including if a government did try small
actions to impact an election), and yet it has become such an intense witch
hunt during the 2016 election.

~~~
pm90
> Why is it so unusual for a news company to spend money promoting news
> stories on social media sites?

Because its not a "news company", it is a known propaganda arm of the Russian
Govt. masquerading as a news company. If it was an independent news agency, it
would be OK.

~~~
alehul
So where do you suggest we draw the line between what state-sponsored news is
allowed vs forbidden to do? Should we only forbid them from buying
advertising? Why not forbid their reporting of news altogether?

Also, I don't think people have similar complaints about Al Jazeera's
reporting on Russian election campaigns?

Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country.
It's something we live with and I don't get the overreaction.

~~~
pm90
> Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country.
> It's something we live with and I don't get the overreaction.

Please don't normalize this kind of behavior. Every country does not do
"this". There is no major news agency supported directly by US Federal Funds,
except perhaps NPR, but that has been openly critical of the US all the time.

And that is perhaps the test of truly independent news outlet: if its willing
to criticize its own Government, if its able to do so, even when the
information paints the Govt. in a really bad light.

~~~
rtpg
Pedantic, but Voice of America is basically a US "propaganda" outfit. But a
lot of countries do not really have this.

RT is totally at a different scale. It's clearly being used as a political
outfit. Other state-owned media in many countries have rules about editorial
independence. RT clearly does not.

~~~
joshuamorton
>Voice of America

Anecdotally, I've literally never heard of this before.

~~~
rtpg
It's not allowed to target Americans, so its profile in the US is pretty low.

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jstewartmobile
The "Russia, Russia, Russia" Democrats are the same ones who want to regulate
everything _except_ silicon valley, this isn't even on the radar for the
Republicans, and even Europe is somewhat in their thrall thanks to branch
offices and the Dutch sandwich.

All of this just proves to me that my US public school education on communism
and the eastern bloc was simple propaganda. We are perfectly OK with having an
unaccountable surveillance state as long as it makes money.

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noncoml
FB, Amazon and Google have to be split up. It is not in the interest of the
society or safe to have such huge companies with such huge power.

For Google at the very least the search engine has to become a separate
independent entity with restrictions on how and what information is exchanges
with the rest.

~~~
sabalaba
Many of the valuable projects that we get from FB (AI Research), Amazon (Echo,
Kindle, etc.), Google (Brain, Waymo, GMail, Android, etc.), are due to their
strong market position and a product that throws off cash. They have this
market position because they are the best at what they do. These companies
don't have monopolies because of government mandate, they have them because
they make the best products.

It's frightening to think that there are people out there who want to kill the
goose that lays the golden eggs but comforting that they are nowhere near the
majority opinion. I hope it stays that way. I would hate to see Google Brain,
Waymo, and Deep Mind go the way of Bell Labs.

~~~
snarf21
I generally agree with you that they are doing good things but the bigger
question is what harm are they doing? We need to stop having these huge
mergers. Think what a different landscape we'd have if Facebook didn't own
Instagram and WhatsApp. Those companies had a choice, fight FB with limited
money or cash out. (I'm not judging them...) Look at Snap. They've said no and
so FB threw all their money at duplicating all their features in _all_ their
own properties. This is the downside of the products that just throw off cash.
All the money and time in the world they can devote to squashing all
competition.

It reminds me of the same things that happened with the banks and Comcast.
Most people who have Comcast got there because Comcast bought their provider
and the investors wanted to cash out, not because people voted with their
dollars. The banks got too big to fail, not because everyone rushed to switch
all their money to bank X but because bank X bought up all the smaller players
with money bet on the bubble.

I think they do need broken up but I would argue all we really need to do is
"unmerge" these acquisitions and spin them back out separate. Absolute power
has always corrupted absolutely. To be fair, this isn't new. Gates did a lot
of the same things but now their foundation is doing wonderful things.
However, it is easy to be a philanthropist with spare billions. What I would
love to see from one of these founders is to attack one of the world's biggest
problems personally and with the same ruthlessness they did their main
companies. Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the walk".

~~~
mehrdada
You lost me at "Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the
walk"", which is inconsistent with the rest of your theory, but luckily for
you that was the last sentence. :)

It's clear Musk is also interested in consolidation and expansion of his
empire, probably one day under X.com brand, but I guess since he is good at
working on his fan base and talking about imaginary ideas, he should be
treated differently than Larry Page or Jeff Bezos.

When you think about it from another perspective (playing devil's advocate
here for the sake of illustration), SpaceX is not about going to Mars, it's
just another satellite launching business working its underpaid employees
80-hour-weeks with that line; SolarCity was just another put solar panel on
your roof business you see a ton of in Costco without any clear
differentiation (how about "unmerging" that too, by the way?) Heck, look at
Tesla "Autopilot", nothing but a joke.

If what Musk does is Good, I like to point out Larry Page's company had a
self-driving car project since ages ago; they tried doing breakthrough work on
life sciences, and a lot of other things. Perhaps Larry Page should have dated
Hollywood actresses all-year-long to get more positive press coverage.

The point is, yes, there are pros and cons. And you basically agreed to the
parent post's when you brought up Musk's example.

~~~
snarf21
What you say is fair, I wasn't saying Musk is 100% altruistic. I think the
push for solar and electric cars are good for the planet though even if they
are good for his checkbook too. I was using him as an example of someone who
is actively working on the projects not simply funding others to do good work.
(Incidentally, I don't think self-driving cars is something that I'd call
altruistic)

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dmach
Does anyone know how FB is planning to adhere to GDPR coming into force next
year? Google are said to have stopped analysing peoples gmail. Could it be as
simple as reducing the variables collected/predicted to a unashamed set that
can be shown to users about themselves and could FB afford that?

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tanilama
Well they are about to find out they are may be billions of features/factors
that could involve those algorithms.

