NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Cato / Public Citizen: Tim Wu is wrong claiming search engines aren't protected by the First Amendment
It's Not Computers Whose Speech is Protected -- It's Their Owners http://j.mp/MBkQxi (Public Citizen) We're Not Censoring YOU-Just Your Computer! http://j.mp/MBkWFd (CATO) - - - The algorithms that generate search engine results are the result of *human minds* -- they do not spring forth as miracles in an empty cosmos. In the case of Google, those algorithms are tweaked hundreds of times a year, as the result of human beings brainstorming on ways to create better, more relevant results. Google posted a video of one such search quality meeting sometime back: http://j.mp/MBmizT (YouTube) Google now also routinely publishes reports listing changes being made in the algorithms. To try (as Tim Wu does) to divorce search results from their human creators is senseless. If it can be demonstrated that search results are unfairly biased, that is the fault of their creators, not the algorithms, or the software that implements them, nor the hardware that executes them. In Google's case, it's clear that there are outside parties upset that they cannot achieve the result rankings that they wish (there is only a single organic number one slot for any given set of search results). But it has not been demonstrated that natural results unfairly favor Google, and empirical testing suggests that Google's natural results are indeed not unfairly biased: http://j.mp/KSNCg0 (Lauren's Blog) --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad