Google Ethics™
May 15th, 2007
Heard an interesting thing on Radio National last night (yeah, I know, what a fuddy duddy), about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The part that intrigued me (more than the other parts that just made me want to cry) was that they described the fact that South African President Thabo Mbeki was thought to have been strongly influenced towards denying the link between HIV and AIDS because of the prevalence of AIDS-denier propaganda on the Internet, and specifically in Google rankings. Which had me pondering: what responsibility does Google have for the influence of their rankings on issues that can (indirectly) influence the mortality of hundreds of thousands of people? Just a thought - let me know what you think back.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
In short, no, they don’t have a responsibility.
If anything, you’re talking about the leader of a people group failing in their responsibility to understand and to be informed about decisions that will affect those people whom they serve.
Arguing that Google have a responsibility to preserve truth?
That’s asking a lot of Google, when Wikipedia can’t even define it!
May 16th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Well, maybe wikipedia can’t define truth, but conservapedia can (of course) and with such brevity too!
May 16th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
oops, the link…
May 16th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Its an interesting question Geoff..
How dependant is google indexing on random database processes, and how much of it is deliberately priotised or interventionally ranked?
If its a databasing monster then effectively goolge can’t be blamed for the fact that the s#!t floats to the top… whether they want to decide to have an ethics committee who look for and adress such bais is another question.
I was thinking about that in relation to a christian publishing company that published a book out of context that had some pretty damaging ramifications for australian young people as compared to what it meant in america where it was written.
Are they responsible?
They certainly have the opportunity to respond… but are they obliged to? I guess it depends on how you construct your ethics!
May 16th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Either way, I think we need to stop relying on just one source (like Google) for finding information.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:17 pm
How can Google be held responsible for verifying facts (or otherwise) on pages it indexes? Surely it is up to the free-thinking individual to weigh up the facts themselves. It seems to me that tweaking results like that to get the ‘true’ answer, is only a very small step away from giving the public the answers you want them to have.