Google

Omidyar’s Intercept Teams Up With War-Propaganda Firm Bellingcat

October 10, 2018 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Alphabet, Google, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

NEW YORK — The Intercept, along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using “open source” tools — with Bellingcat’s past, controversial investigations for use as case studies. The exact details of what occurred during the workshop have not been made public and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins declined to elaborate on the workshop when pressed on social media. The decision on the part of The Intercept is particularly troubling given that the publication has long been associated with the track records of its founding members, such as Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald...

Groups Backed By Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon Push For Return Of Net Neutrality Rules

August 29, 2018 By Roger Cheng, Cnet.com Resist! Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Net Neutrality

On Monday, the Internet Association, Entertainment Software Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Writers Guild of America filed a brief with a US Appeals Court in support of Mozilla's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission to bring back the rules governing an open internet. The groups represent power players such as Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. "It's indisputable that net neutrality protections help consumers, promote innovation, and foster competition online," said IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman in a statement. This comes a week after attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a brief urging the same court to reverse the FCC rollback, according to CBS News.

Google And Facebook Are Strangling The Free Press To Death

July 29, 2018 Barry Lynn, The Guardian Educate! Facbook, Google, Media

This week’s firing by the New York Daily News of half the paper’s staff shines a different light on the matter. The reason that was given by the publisher – a sharp decline in revenue – is largely the result of Google abusing its monopoly over online advertising, in tandem with Facebook. Vestager’s move against Android does nothing to protect the free press in Europe or America. This means it’s time for other regulators and legislators in America and in Europe to speed the process of bringing Google to heel.

Google Sets Limits But Allows Work For Military

June 11, 2018 Tom Simonite, Wired Resist! Artificial Intelligence, Google, Wars and Militarism

Earier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described artificial intelligence as more profound to humanity than fire. Thursday, after protests from thousands of Google employees over a Pentagon project, Pichai offered guidelines for how Google will—and won’t—use the technology. One thing Pichai says Google won’t do: work on AI for weapons. But the guidelines leave much to the discretion of company executives and allow Google to continue to work for the military. The ground rules are a response to more than 4,500 Googlers signing a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a Pentagon project called Maven that uses machine learning to interpret drone surveillance video. The dissenting employees asked Google to swear off all military work. Pichai’s response? We hear you, but you can trust us to do this responsibly.

SF Protesters Say No To “Techsploitation,” Block Buses With Scooters

June 7, 2018 By Charlotte Silver and Abraham Rodriguez, Missionlocal.org Resist! Google, Protests, San Francisco, Technology

Fifty people blocked 14 tech buses by piling scooters in their path and lighting an orange flare at 24th and Valencia. One bus driver tried to move the scooters, but soon resigned himself to just waiting. A passerby sprayed graffiti on one of the idle buses. The group of housing activists reject what they see as tech companies “littering the city,” while homeless encampments are swept away. “This is a message from the community,” said Tony Robles, a community organizer focused on housing for seniors with disabilities. He says that tech companies like Bird, a scooter company, act with impunity and dump stuff in the neighborhoods without considering the needs of current residents. People testified on a PA system about how their lives have been transformed by what they call a tech takeover.

Amazon Should Follow Google’s Lead And Stop Selling Face Surveillance Tech To Cops

June 4, 2018 Iqra Asghar and Kade Crockford, Privacysos.org Resist! Amazon, Google, Police, Surveillance

In response to internal and external protest and expressions of revulsion, Google yesterday announcedit would stop contracting with the Department of Defense to provide artificial intelligence technology to the US military. Google’s move is a rare instance in which one of the Big Five artificial intelligence firms in the United States takes an action to undercut its own profits in service of its professed ethical commitments. Other companies, including Amazon, must follow suit, and stop selling technology to human rights violators, including police departments. Last month, the ACLU and a coalition of over forty civil rights, civil liberties, religious, and community groups sent a public letter to Amazon demanding that the company stop selling its face surveillance software to law enforcement and other government agencies.

Google Employee Opposition Derails Military AI Project

June 3, 2018 By Kate Conger, Gizmodo Resist! Artificial Intelligence, Google, Wars and Militarism

Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires. Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced the decision at a meeting with employees Friday morning, three sources told Gizmodo. The current contract expires in 2019 and there will not be a follow-up contract, Greene said. The meeting, dubbed Weather Report, is a weekly update on Google Cloud’s business. Google would not choose to pursue Maven today because the backlash has been terrible for the company, Greene said, adding that the decision was made at a time when Google was more aggressively pursuing military work. The company plans to unveil new ethical principles about its use of AI next week. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about Greene’s comments.

Google’s Delisting And Censorship Of Information

April 24, 2018 Julian Vigo, Counterpunch.org Educate! Censorship, Google, Police State, Repression

In early January, numerous websites discovered that they were suddenly removed from the directory of Google News, a process known as “delisting,” with no feedback from Google. Some hypothesized that the removal of smaller news sites could be ascribed to the latest SEO changes. Then on 8 January, Google reported that it was ready to rectify its “mistake” and restore the pages by of these smaller new sites. The vast majority were not restored. Still, a large number news sites have been abandoned and editors have been making updates daily since January on Google’s ProductForum with many users still noting, even this week, of ongoing problems

Pentagon Capitalism And Silicon Valley: Google’s Drone War Project Shows Big Data’s Military Roots

April 9, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Drones, Google, Military, Pentagon

SAN FRANCISCO (Analysis) – Google — the advertising and search engine monolith that once touted its official commitment, “Don’t be evil” — has thrown its full weight behind the U.S. military-industrial complex’s fast-advancing unmanned drone program – and more than three thousand of its employees will have none of it. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, over 3,100 employees invoked the now-discarded slogan in an appeal demanding that the company not allow its artificial intelligence technology to be used to improve the targeting capabilities of the United States’ deadly drone fleet. Google’s Project Maven is an AI surveillance engine that uses footage captured by the U.S. Armed Forces’ unmanned aerial vehicles to detect and track objects such as vehicles, while combing through, organizing, and feeding the processed data to the Pentagon.

Citing ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Motto, 3,000+ Google Employees Demand Company End Work On Pentagon Drone Project

April 5, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Drones, Google, Pentagon, Technology

"By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics." More than 3,000 Google employees have signed a letter that's circulating in the company demanding that the tech giant end its involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon program that could be used to develop drone technology. The project, the workers argue, runs counter to the company's stated mission and motto. "By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics," wrote the employees, who include senior engineers. "The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn't make this any less risky for Google. Google's unique history, its motto 'Don’t Be Evil,' and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart."

Google’s Alliance With Military: Ruling Class Responds To Social Unrest In America

March 14, 2018 Andre Damon, Wsws.org Educate! Google, Internet, Military, Repression

Last week, Google confirmed that it has provided artificial intelligence software to assist the United States military and intelligence apparatus in analyzing data as part of its drone war and assassination program in the Middle East and beyond. The website Gizmodo, which first broke the story, reported that the military program using Google is called Project Maven. A military report announcing the project last year said it “focuses on computer vision—an aspect of machine learning and deep learning—that autonomously extracts objects of interest from moving or still imagery.” Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, identified as the “chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team in Intelligence...

Google ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Intensifies Suppressing ‘Fake News’

February 13, 2018 Eric Zuesse, Intrepidreport.com Educate! Censorship, Fake News, Google

On November 18, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt spoke about how Google will help to defeat Russia. He said that Google helps in this effort not by “censoring” Russian news media, but by “deranking” them in Google web-searches, so that web pages from these sites, which he calls “propaganda,” will show so far down in the rankings in any Google-search, so that users of Google will not encounter (or will be vastly less likely to encounter) Russian sites—or any other non-mainstream sites (such as this one), which refuse unquestioningly to trumpet government lies. Schmidt was speaking to the NATO-sponsored Halifax International Security Forum, which is headquartered actually in Washington, DC, though “The Forum is best known for its annual security summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in order to strengthen Canada’s bond to America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO.

Google Hiring 10,000 Reviewers To Censor YouTube Content

December 12, 2017 Zaida Green, wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Google, Internet

Google is escalating its campaign of internet censorship, announcing that it will expand its workforce of human censors to over 10,000, the internet giant announced on December 4. The censors’ primary focus will be videos and other content on YouTube, its video-sharing platform, but will work across Google to censor content and train its automated systems, which remove videos at a rate four times faster than its human employees. Human censors have already reviewed over 2 million videos since June. YouTube has already removed over 150,000 videos, 50 percent of which were removed within two hours of upload. The company is working to accelerate the rate of takedown through machine-learning from manual censorship, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in an official blog post. The hiring drive by Google is yet another advance in the campaign against any expression of political opposition. Other social media giants have implemented measures against “fake news”; Facebook has altered its algorithms to reduce the visibility of certain news stories, and Twitter has banned the Russian-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on the platform. While railing against “extremist content,” “child exploitation” and “hoaxes” in the interest of “public safety,” the ultimate goal of this campaign is the suppression of left-wing, anti-war sentiment.

From An Open Internet, Back To The Dark Ages

November 26, 2017 Jonathan Cook, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Facebook, Google, Independent media, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Jonathan Cook for Counterpunch. In December the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to repeal already compromised regulations that are in place to maintain a semblance of “net neutrality”. Its chairman, Ajit Pai, and the corporations that are internet service providers want to sweep away these rules, just like the banking sector got rid of financial regulations so it could inflate our economies into giant ponzi schemes. That could serve as the final blow to the left and its ability to make its voice heard in the public square. The social media giants soon responded. It is becoming ever clearer that Facebook is interfering as a platform for the dissemination of information for progressive activists. It is already shutting down accounts, and limiting their reach. These trends will only accelerate. Google has changed its algorithms in ways that have ensured the search engine rankings of prominent leftwing sites are falling through the floor. It is becoming harder and harder to find alternative sources of news because they are being actively hidden from view.

Google Admits Political Censorship Of Search Results

November 24, 2017 Niles Niemuth, wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Digital, Google, Internet

By Niles Niemuth for WSWS - Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, confirmed this weekend that the world’s largest Internet company is, in close coordination with the state, manipulating search results to censor sites critical of the US government. Responding to a question about the “manipulation of information” on the Internet during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Schmidt announced that Google is working on algorithms that will “de-rank” Russian-based news websites RT and Sputnik from its Google News services, effectively blocking users’ access to either site. Schmidt’s remarks at the gathering of military and national security officials confirm the World Socialist Web Site’s charges that Google has been deliberately altering its search algorithms and taking other steps to prevent people from accessing certain information and specific websites through its search engines. The WSWS has itself been a principal target of these efforts. The statements expose as lies the company’s previous claim that changes to its search engine were aimed at “improving search results” and that these changes were politically unbiased. Google’s efforts are just one part of a much wider government-corporate drive to assert control over the flow of information over the Internet, involving Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, as well as Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T.

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