Post by Justbec on Aug 15, 2024 16:50:04 GMT
Harris headline hoodwink faces House GOP investigation, news publishers already mad at Google
Second time since Harris became presumptive Democratic nominee that Google has blamed technical bugs for search results that favor her. California false advertising law, Google settlement on "deceptive prompts" could cause legal problems.
By Greg Piper
Published: August 14, 2024 11:06pm
Twenty-six years ago, a new search engine company received its first investment, and rapper Will Smith taught Americans to get jiggy with it.
Facing a potential breakup following a devastating antitrust ruling, Google is getting glitchy with it to discount its search engine's alleged preferences in the 2024 presidential race.
Google has blamed technical bugs for results that favored Vice President Kamala Harris since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee: omitting the attempted assassination of her GOP opponent and former President Donald Trump from "autocomplete" suggestions. It also let the Harris campaign falsely attribute her narratives to media organizations with search ads in which she replaced news organizations’ headlines with her own.
The House Oversight Committee opened a formal probe of the autocomplete omission as well as similar actions by Facebook's AI chatbot Wednesday. A spokesperson told Just the News the committee also "intends to press Google for details about the Harris campaign reportedly manipulating Google’s ad features and news headlines.”
"Big Tech has leveraged their businesses to influence public opinion and have engaged in an alarming pattern of speech suppression and censorship," the spokesperson said.
The left-leaning New Republic expressed puzzlement at the Harris campaign's bait and switch, noting "plenty of positive coverage of Harris since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her to replace him."
California law and a 2023 settlement with the Golden State could even spell legal trouble for the Harris headline hoodwink, which may also feed into renewed gripes from publishers about Google profiting off their content without a license, the subject of legal and legislative pushes.
A very broad Business and Professions Code punishes advertising "which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading," with up to six months in jail and a $250,000 fine. It applies to "any newspaper or other publication, or any advertising device … or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet."
Google paid California $93 million a year ago to resolve an investigation over its representations about "Location History," which the company called "outdated product policies that we changed years ago."
Attorney General Rob Bonta — who succeeded Harris in office — alleged that Google showed users "deceptive prompts" from 2014 to 2018 to mislead them to enable geolocation data collection while telling them it was turned off by default, and that it gathered location data in other ways, such as the default-on "Web & App Activity."
The Silicon Valley behemoth ponied up $1 billion for partnerships with international publishers four years ago, giving them opportunities for "deeper storytelling and more context" in publisher-curated Google News panels.
More Here
Second time since Harris became presumptive Democratic nominee that Google has blamed technical bugs for search results that favor her. California false advertising law, Google settlement on "deceptive prompts" could cause legal problems.
By Greg Piper
Published: August 14, 2024 11:06pm
Twenty-six years ago, a new search engine company received its first investment, and rapper Will Smith taught Americans to get jiggy with it.
Facing a potential breakup following a devastating antitrust ruling, Google is getting glitchy with it to discount its search engine's alleged preferences in the 2024 presidential race.
Google has blamed technical bugs for results that favored Vice President Kamala Harris since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee: omitting the attempted assassination of her GOP opponent and former President Donald Trump from "autocomplete" suggestions. It also let the Harris campaign falsely attribute her narratives to media organizations with search ads in which she replaced news organizations’ headlines with her own.
The House Oversight Committee opened a formal probe of the autocomplete omission as well as similar actions by Facebook's AI chatbot Wednesday. A spokesperson told Just the News the committee also "intends to press Google for details about the Harris campaign reportedly manipulating Google’s ad features and news headlines.”
"Big Tech has leveraged their businesses to influence public opinion and have engaged in an alarming pattern of speech suppression and censorship," the spokesperson said.
The left-leaning New Republic expressed puzzlement at the Harris campaign's bait and switch, noting "plenty of positive coverage of Harris since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her to replace him."
California law and a 2023 settlement with the Golden State could even spell legal trouble for the Harris headline hoodwink, which may also feed into renewed gripes from publishers about Google profiting off their content without a license, the subject of legal and legislative pushes.
A very broad Business and Professions Code punishes advertising "which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading," with up to six months in jail and a $250,000 fine. It applies to "any newspaper or other publication, or any advertising device … or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet."
Google paid California $93 million a year ago to resolve an investigation over its representations about "Location History," which the company called "outdated product policies that we changed years ago."
Attorney General Rob Bonta — who succeeded Harris in office — alleged that Google showed users "deceptive prompts" from 2014 to 2018 to mislead them to enable geolocation data collection while telling them it was turned off by default, and that it gathered location data in other ways, such as the default-on "Web & App Activity."
The Silicon Valley behemoth ponied up $1 billion for partnerships with international publishers four years ago, giving them opportunities for "deeper storytelling and more context" in publisher-curated Google News panels.
More Here
