Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios

  • @[email protected]
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    1424 hours ago

    What “new EU law” is being discussed? I read several articles like this but I failed to figure that out.

    It helps me that this article expressed “The EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, introduced in 2022, includes several voluntary commitments” is relevant, but I don’t consider a law that is 2-3 years old to be “new”. Moreover, I’m not even sure what a “voluntary commitment” is in the context of a law.

  • NaibofTabr
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    1 day ago

    I do have to wonder, how could Google (or any search engine) be expected to perform fact checking on search results? It seems technically impossible.

    • @[email protected]
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      614 hours ago

      It also seems ethically and culturally disastrous. I do not want Google to be the arbiter of truth on the internet. Does the EU law require that the fact-checks be accurate and unbiased?

      • @[email protected]
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        13 hours ago

        Google already is the arbiter of truth. EU just wants google to put in some damn effort to the results it curates. Facts by defintion are accurate and unbiased. Why do you feel the need to tack that on?

        • @[email protected]
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          212 hours ago

          I was asking because who fact-checks the fact checkers? Everyone and every company has biases, so do the biases of google get overseen by anyone. Can google insert biases or even opinion in fact-checking if it aligns with the agenda of the EU.

          • @[email protected]
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            412 hours ago

            I suggest to solve this problem by banning the representation of results as facts and separate “SPONSORED RESULTS” with “results of the search” in a clear way. Cause you make a good point about how hard it is to be objective about a lot of things that alter world politics.

      • NaibofTabr
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        514 hours ago

        Hmm, I guess from one point of view Google already is the de facto “arbiter of truth on the internet” as the most popular search engine, hence the need for regulation.

        Does the EU law require that the fact-checks be accurate and unbiased?

        Are they really fact checks otherwise?

        But then you definitely have a who-watches-the-watchers problem.

    • @[email protected]
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      401 day ago

      Google doesn’t just provide links, it scrubs content out of sites (with scripts before, now with LLMs) and presents it as Google’s own content.

      If they do that, they should be responsible if the content break laws.

      • NaibofTabr
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        1 day ago

        Oh, yes I agree they should be responsible for anything they generate themselves, but if it’s just a regurgitation of content that their web crawler pulled from a website which then appeared in search results then it’s the original website that should be responsible.

        It seems like a heavy-handed enforcement of this policy could just break web search functionality entirely.

        Downvoters have no idea how web indexes work.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 day ago

          So if Google pulls out the wrong part of your website and gives dangerous information, you’d be responsible?

          • NaibofTabr
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            21 day ago

            Well, why is that ‘dangerous information’ available to be pulled out of my website in the first place?

            • @[email protected]
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              516 hours ago

              My guy, leaving out context can change whether information is dangerous or not.

              Say I have a website that explains how to get clothes clean, and I recommend bleach. I also have a subsection “Danger: things you should never do with bleach!” listing dangerous things, e.g. “drinking bleach”. Now Google pulls out only that list without the heading.

              In your world, I’m responsible for Google showing information in the wrong context, which is nuts. I can’t be expected to write everything so it’s unambiguous, no matter how small a snippet you extract.

            • @[email protected]
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              623 hours ago

              “You don’t want to drink bleach on a sunny day” could be understood as “It’s okay to drink bleach on a cloudy day”

              • NaibofTabr
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                219 hours ago

                Um… “could be”…? Literally anything anybody writes could be misinterpreted, so I don’t really see the point of this line of argument, nor any value in legislating around it.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 hours ago

      There will be no fines. There won’t be any compliance to EU laws. Why do you think all the tech ceo went to kiss the ring of Trump this last month. No American based tech company will comply with EU laws because trumps government will protect them so they will spread his propaganda in exchange. America has sold its soul to the devil and with open eyes.

      Trump will allow them to repatriate their cash tax free bumping American banks liquid cash on hand while also draining European banks of trillions of dollars.

      Yall ain’t winning this one.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 hours ago

        US is 300 mil people. Tiktok was banned in US and tiktok instantly started twisting and squirming to gain back favor from just 300 mil customers.

        Europe is 450 million people. US proved entire massive, monopoly services can be banned. Massive Monopoly services prove that the loss even lesser user base hurts. All they need to do to comply is slap AI shit on it or remove the currently slapped on ai shit.

        I have no idea how you came to the conclusion you did, other than pulling some power fantasy out of your ass.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 hours ago

          That’s because the US tiktok market did 10 billion last year in revenue while the rest of the global revenue was roughly 8.5 billion. That’s why they give a shit about our market more than their other markets. There’s no power fantasy in the US it’s power reality. They would drop the Europeans in a hot second if they were forced to choose. Not to mention our market is a free for all and the EU is heavily regulated and increasingly introducing new regulation that makes business hard for them.

          Not really sure why we are talking about tiktok in an article about Google. Also you ignored the main point of my post which is how does the EU plan to collect fines. If Google, meta, et all withdraw cash from it’s European tax haven bank accounts.

          • @[email protected]
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            29 hours ago

            how they plan on collecting fines is pretty simple: the same way they have done for the past 20-ish years.

            google already pays fines in the hundreds of millions annually in the EU due to compliance issues.

            they can’t NOT pay, because then they would be opening themselves up to punity actions.

            if they continue to pay, they continue to operate, if they stop paying, because they mistakenly believe trump can save them, they will be treated like any other criminal organization and have their operations shut down, their assets seized, and the ones responsible facing criminal charges.

            the thing about the bank accounts gets…complicated, but can be boiled down to “whatever is there, will get seized by the bank”. and “withdrawing the cash” isn’t really a thing they can do just like that. monetary assets in the EU for mega-corps is mostly in the form of bank agreements (i.e. debt), which is basically just contracts. so the corpos would lose out on the banking institutions on top everything else.