White House Asked Google & Facebook To Change Their Algorithms To Fight ISIS; Both Said No
from the overreaction dept
Earlier this year, we wrote about how ridiculous the federal government's view of Silicon Valley seemed to be, in that they had this weird belief that by nerding a little harder, we could somehow "disrupt" ISIS. The thinking seemed confused, and somewhat typical of people who don't understand technology or how Silicon Valley works. It's "magic wand" thinking. People who don't understand technology tend to view technology as a sort of magic -- and thus, they assume it can do anything. And, right now, a bunch of those people in the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.Buzzfeed's Sheera Frenkel has a great detailed report looking "inside" the administration's attempt to have Silicon Valley help in the fight against ISIS. The main focus of a (not very secret) meeting held on Wednesday seemed to be entirely about fighting ISIS propaganda with American propaganda. As if that ever works. And, from the sound of it, the meeting was equally clueless about why ISIS propaganda is effective, while American propaganda flops.
“They wanted to figure out how to fight ISIS online, how to understand the psychology of those who support ISIS, and they invited almost no one who speaks for those of us in the Arab world, and from Arab communities, who have everything to lose from ISIS’ growing popularity,” said one Arab attendee, who estimated that less than 10% of the attendants were of Middle Eastern descent. “They don’t understand this community. That has been proven time and time again with their tone deaf messages. Why hold an event like this where there are ten white men outnumbering every Arab?”Instead of taking on the real challenges and understanding why ISIS propaganda is effective (or even recognizing that it's likely not nearly as effective as they fear), the White House officials went for the pointless superficial plan: maybe try to make Google and Facebook change their algorithms to play up anti-ISIS stuff and play down pro-ISIS stuff. This is a profoundly ignorant idea, and thankfully one that both companies told the White House was not in the realm of reasonable:
Tech executives who have met with the Pentagon team told BuzzFeed News that some of their requests have been “jarring.” In at least one case, the Pentagon spoke with several companies — who asked not to be named as a condition of discussing the meeting with BuzzFeed News — about tweaking their algorithms to promote certain types of content. Both Google and Facebook have made it clear that they would not make changes to their algorithms to bury results supportive of ISIS.Of course, to be fair, Google already cracked open that Pandora's box when it allowed its search results to be impacted by copyright takedown requests.
“That’s something that is always brought up in meetings. And it shows how little they understand us,” said the Google representative. “This is a pandora’s box we won’t open, because if we answer a request by the U.S. government to feature one search result over another what’s to stop other countries from requesting the same? What’s to stop each country from tailoring the search results of their citizens to their agenda? It’s not a path we are willing to explore.”
Even so, as the quote above notes, even suggesting this to companies is profoundly pointless. Not only is it a bad idea for the precedent it sets, it's unlikely to work at all. It's magic wand thinking of desperate people who don't want to actually confront the real reasons why ISIS has been successful.
Oh, and of course, the decision to force Apple to hack into the iPhone isn't helping matters at all if the federal government wants Silicon Valley to "work" with the government on this issue.
“It’s like, you’ve been asked to partner up and dance with the bully at school who keeps trying to trip you in the hallways,” one attendee told BuzzFeed News after the event. “And even though you want to learn to dance there isn’t a lot of trust to build on.”We keep hearing from the White House how Silicon Valley has to stop treating the government like an adversary, and the only proper response to that needs to be: you first.
An attendee from the government side told BuzzFeed News by phone, “We need help, but it’s like, one part of government keeps fucking this up for other parts of government. We can’t seem to get it right.”
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Filed Under: algorithms, extremism, isis, search, social media, white house
Companies: facebook, google
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Government efforts in a nutshell
You've got one part of the government insisting that torture is a horrendous crime and never excusable... and then another agency engages in it and completely guts their ability to effectively protest against the practice.
You've got one part of the government saying that slavery and murder is not acceptable, ever... and then another agency comes by and shrugs both off in the name of a 'trade' agreement.
One agency insisting that encryption is a valuable thing and protects the public from criminals... and then another agency(or even the same one) comes along and insists that no, only criminals are protected by encryption, and it's a terrible thing that risks the public.
Hard to get much done when your 'co-workers' are sabotaging your efforts left and right like that, I pity the handful of honest government workers in that position, as it can't be easy.
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Re: Government efforts in a nutshell
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Re: Re: Government efforts in a nutshell
It's understandable that within a large government(or any group really) you'd have people taking opposing stances and working at odds with each other, but to screw up the big stuff, the really important stuff... that takes a stunning level of incompetence and/or idiocy.
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Re: Re: Re: Government efforts in a nutshell
Government is nothing but one huge agenda driven machine and it will never be anything other than.
When government does something, it was intentional. People keep trotting out that line... never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. When it comes to government you should always assume malice, because it is the only way to help beat back the corruption that shows up when people accept it for just being stupidity.
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Re: Re: Government efforts in a nutshell
It's almost as if there's no hierarchy in the government. No "Office of the President" or anything like that. Like individuals in the government can do what ever the hell they want with no central control. Yeah, I see what you mean.
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Re: Re: Re: Government efforts in a nutshell
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Clueless Wonders
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Re: Clueless Wonders
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...the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.
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Re: ...the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.
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Re: Re: ...the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.
They're looking for the DoWhatIMean key.
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How did they do it before
we dump so much money into the war machine and they have to go to private industry to help them.
Maybe the wrong people are in charge?
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Politics by Other Means
Destabilize.
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Assumed monopoly
Remember how the US gov behaved during the brief period of atomic bomb monopoly and how quickly that behavior changed when the monopoly was gone? Yeah.
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Correlation vs Causation
or
Arrogance = Deafness
or
Arrogance = Blindness + Deafness
or, is it the other way around?
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Re: Assumed monopoly
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The lack of understanding about technology cuts both ways. There are many things that people assume are impossible simply because the existing software doesn't allow it.
For example, the maximum key repeat speed in Windows XP is quite slow. All the advice on the net says that you can speed it up by editing the registry, but you HAVE to enable FilterKeys, otherwise Windows will ignore the registry settings. Yet the key repeat speed is a limit built into Windows. If one knew how to patch Windows to change this limit, you could speed up the key repeat speed without using FilterKeys.
People are so used to working within the limitations of the existing software that they forget that many software limitations are artificial.
Why don't I want to use FilterKeys? When I enabled it, it had some undesirable effects on my system (it appeared to freeze on the desktop for a fairly long time while booting).
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Takes a load off everyone else's shoulders. Your tax dollars at work!
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Because even though there are still plenty of antivirus programs and anti-malware programs for XP (MS themselves even still provides a monthly download of the Malicious Software Removal Tool), without the ever watchful gaze of the almighty Microsoft, no computer on the planet can be trusted.
How did anyone ever function before the sainted Microsoft had a direct line into everyone's system???
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Weird Science
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Smoke and mirrors
There's no fourth amendment protection since it's all third party data.
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Re: Smoke and mirrors
technically correct, it's all subject to the 3rd party doctrine...If Facebook and Google were willing to give it up voluntarily. Which they aren't.
Unlike a cell phone companies CSLI data, which has value in terms of troubleshooting, diagnostics, future cell site placement, etc but otherwise isn't otherwise of particular interest to them. So they'll hand it over to law enforcement if asked nicely.
The information you list for Facebook and Google is one of their primary sources of income. It has immense commercial value to them, and they protect it accordingly.
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So how long before the White House and government officials get the idea that asking didn't work so they will try the DMCA route?
Because often a question leads to the mental workings of the questioner, one has to ask this as a valid question. Not because it is what the DMCA is for but rather because of the results of one.
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Why are we involved at all with ISIS? There are lots of bad groups out in the world that we are not fighting. Why fight ISIS and not them? Why fight any at all.
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The rest, as they say, is history.
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Obama had to waive a provision that made it illegal for the white house to provide support to terrorists groups just recently. can't have what you have been doing illegaly for years come out, unless of course you make it legal.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/updated-obama-waives-ban-on-arming-terrorists-to-allow-aid-t o-syrian-opposition/article/2535885
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The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are
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Re: The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are
https://mises.org/library/sad-legacy-ronald-reagan-0
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really?
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"...stop treating the government like an adversary..."
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Threat-level?
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Of course that would remove the excuses they use about removing people's rights in order to fight the terrorism they created.
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