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by shittyadmin 2807 days ago
Yeah, honestly I don't think Breitbart and similar can really play this as negative for Google when it acknowledges many actions have been taken even against right wingers unfairly and encourages "Don't take sides" as a top point.

The biggest thing to complain about would probably be the title... they couldn't have picked a worse title.

2 comments

The negative for Google isn't what the briefing suggests, it is that it documents bias, it notes the impossible tension between the US and European values, and says that Google has been leaning away from US values. I think that's what Breitbart would be primarily reacting to.
There's a larger question that Breitbart is raising: should we tolerate Google - or any company - as a monopolist with censorship power over information distribution. In this case, they're an extraordinarily powerful, expansive monopolist at that. Who decides the degree to which they censor, who gets censored, what information gets censored, etc. Google isn't just a company policing its own platform. Imagine Microsoft aggressively censoring what people could browse, upload to the Internet or write on its operating system in ~2001 (or any time during peak Windows monopoly): it'd be an obvious monopoly abuse, harm to consumers, and as an extension of that monopoly position a form of censorship. Google, through the leverage of its multiple monopolies (search, YouTube, Android), is pushing toward that sort of behavior.
I was going to say that they're not really doing it on Android, but then I remembered that both Apple and Google banned the free speech absolutist social network Gab's official app.

At least on Android you can still install it without Google's consent if you so choose. Overall though what you're saying still has more validity to it than I'd like to admit.