Comment by petcat
1 month ago
> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.
Because "business" isn't just "business" in Denmark and many other countries. Journalism for example, isn't just about the financial bottom-line, journalism has a societal role, and also the move could be seen as trying to avoid paying publishers under EU rules designed to support a free press.
I think a lot of friction between businesses and countries in Europe can be better understood if we better understood the difference in how countries treat things like "business" and other stuff. I understand in the US it's different, money basically rules, you can fire people whenever you want and so on, but in many places in the world, people have a different relationship to businesses, it's not just about money there.
Particularly when it comes to journalism. From reading news from Denmark about it, politicians been repeatedly argued that Google's framing reduces journalism to a revenue input, ignoring its democratic function.
If journalism really weren't just about the financial bottom line in Denmark, then why are they quibbling over what Google will pay them at all? It sounds like they'll be happy with just Google listing and driving traffic to their content for free.
You're missing the point. I speak American so I can translate. He's basically saying journalism is a matter of National Security. It needs to be done correctly to a high level at all costs, much like education. Google (Silicon Valley) is messing with it.
29 replies →
In this context "journalism" usually refers not to a crowd of Mothers Teresas seeking to improve society in voluntary contradiction to their own market (or guild/class/whatever) interests, but a bunch of business entities which were born out of printed newspapers, feeling uncertain about their revenues after changes in technology of information delivery ruined their niche. And trying to leverage their established relations with politicians to extract more profit. It's not like Google is offending little pixies here. After all, there are youtube channels which have a societal role too, and search engines too I guess can make a similar claim.
Other commenter's note about national security issue is more on point but then I doubt that bailing out failing news platforms would make them as influential as they used to be in the bygone era.
This does not support freedom of the press. This policy is essentially a tax on web indexers (in practice, Google) that is paid directly to the news companies. This means that they are entirely dependent on government authority for their revenue, which is the opposite of freedom of the press. On top of that, only companies that are defined as "news outlets" by the government are eligible for forced indexing and payment. So not only is the government setting itself up as the revenue source, but it gets to choose who gets the money.
lol only on this forum can you construe the government regulating big tech as an anti freedom stance.
Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are society destroying companies. They are Walmart times a trillion. Any country that is not directly taxing these wildly profitable companies are leaving free money on the table.
3 replies →
It sounds to me like Denmark's media and news isn't very valuable from an ad sales perspective. So Google has set their price reflecting what they think that value is: not much. And Denmark is now getting their lawmakers involved because they think it's worth a lot more and they want to force Google to buy it for a lot more.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot of these EU countries are interested in digital sovereignty or developing their own services. They just want to force the American companies to sell their services at rates favorable to them by getting their regulators involved.
Yeah it seems like if they were really struggling to break up then they wouldn't be trying to force Google or Meta to the negotiating table. They would be simply kicking them out and not utilizing their services at all.
But it's actually the opposite. They are trying to get their lawmakers to force Google and Meta to provide them their services at below market value!
It seems like Google and Meta are using their dominant position to take as big a part of ad revenue as they possibly can, and if that means independent news companies where actual journalism is conducted can’t survive, then they don’t really care.
Danish media are trying to survive, as high quality journalism is necessary for democracy to function. They can’t avoid being on the big platforms, as Google and Meta have this dominant gatekeeper position in the market - this is where the media pull new users into their sites.
People who are capable of building things don't go into government. "Bureaucracy" has a connotation of where creativity and innovation goes to die for a reason. The personality type that goes into bureaucracy thinks about this like "why would I put in the effort to build something when I could just use the state monopoly on violence to shake down the suckers who already did all that hard work for me?" Of course they lie to the public, and most importantly to themselves, that they have higher motives, but that is the underlying logic.
At it's worse yes, at it's best absolutely not.
The role of government, at it's best, is to ensure the system as a whole benefits the democratic majority as a whole.
The argument that unregulated free markets will deliver has a key flaw - people who work in private companies don't want endless free and fair competition, especially if they are currently in the lead, they are also incentized to dump as much of the true cost of what they are doing on to other people.
So companies will chose cartels and monopolies over competition, choose pollution over responsibility, offload infrastructure and people costs onto others etc, minimise tax rates ( avoid paying for stuff they use ) etc.
Assuming an unregulated market is best is like assuming a football game is better if there are no rules. Turns out cheating is easier than competing almost everytime - and without government to set and enforce the rules you end up with pollution, crime ( people decided the rules don't work for them ), stagnation, and a feudal society.
Take something as simple as rule of law. A free market approach to that is there is no law, everyone negotiates each interaction and enforces their will with personal force. Turns out that's both exhausting and chaotic - much better to collectively agree what is legal or not and then have collective enforcement.
Sure it's slower to change, sometimes unfair, but pretty much every group of people in every country in the world has evolved a system of government rather than go with anarchy.
So good government is all about building - building complex systems - constantly adjusting them as people try and game them - that result in optimal outcomes for the majority of people.
> People who are capable of building things don't go into government.
Spoken like an American who doesn't know what government actually does.
1 reply →
The criticism was that Google have a dominant position on search market, Google selected 1% of their users to run the experiment on, but without informing them. That is users didn’t know that their search results were manipulated and articles they would otherwise have found didn’t show up.
So the argument presented by Danish authorities and media companies were that information should flow freely in a democracy and by doing a huge experiment like this without informing users is against the rights of Danish citizens.
"Manipulated" is a loaded and meaningless term here. All results are generated by algorithm, so that means 99% see the output of algorithm A and 1% see the output of algorithm B. Neither is more "manipulated" than the other.
It is possible that neither are more manipuled tough it's impossible to tell. What seems clear from your example above is that both are manipulated, just in different ways and with google's incentive. It is understandable that countries came to the conclusion that this is posing a threat to their national security.
2 replies →
Of course they wouldn't tell users if they're in the control group or experimental group. It would destroy the validity of the experiment.
You still should have to consent to be studied.
I’ve been part of multiple clinical trials and consent was always there. The control group exists. They know they’re in the study but they may not know they’re the control group.
1 reply →
First it is not manipulation please read the terms of service and user consent on this issue. Second this is standard practice A/B testing is universal and companies do a holdout experiment all the time it is also called Withholding test.