Misleading Project Veritas Accusations of Google " Bias " Could Prompt Bad Law

Tomorrow, the Senate ’s Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on The Constitution willhold a hearing on Google ’s alleged anti-conservative bias and “censorship.”  Ina video released last month, James O ’Keefe, a conservative activist, interviews an unnamed Google insider. The film, which has been widely shared by conservative outlets and cited by Sen.Ted Cruz (R-TX) and PresidentDonald Trump, stitches a narrative of Orwellian, politically-motivated algorithmic bias out of contextless hidden camera footage, anodyne efforts to improve search results, and presumed links between unrelated products. Although the film ’s claims are misleading and its findings unconvincing, they are taken seriously by lawmakers who risk using such claims to justify needless legislation and regulation. As such, they are worth engaging (the time stamps throughout this post refer to the Project Veritas video that can be viewed here). Search algorithms use predefined processes to sift through the universe of available data to locate specific pieces of information. Simply put, they sort information in response to queries, surfacing whatever seems most relevant according to their preset rules. Algorithms that make use of artificial intelligence and machine learning draw upon past inputs to increase the accuracy of their results over time. These technologies have been adopted to improve the efficacy of search, particularly in relation to the gulf between how users are expected to input searc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs