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To be fair, people are primed to be skeptical of this stuff because of all the incidents when definitions in online dictionaries and wikipedia would quietly change overnight to back up what had been said by some presidental candidate or politician.
If you're referring to Amy Coney Barrett and Merriam-Webster's usage note in the entry for 'sexual preference', please note that at least that particular lexicographic outfit considers their vocation to be describing how words are used, rather than prescribing how they ought to be used; thus they were not, like Willy the Word Decider, decreeing the term to be doubleplusungoodspeakful, but noting that many other people had taken offence at its use. (This is the same reason that certain four-letter words for below-the-waist bodily functions are listed as more taboo than four-letter words referring to the loss of eternal salvation: the man on the Clapham Omnibus will take more umbrage at "Fuck $NAME1" than he would at "God damn $NAME1".
That’s a less denying the charges and more admitting to them. I’d also point to the increasing redefinition of “assault rifle” — which does have a technical meaning
((It’s also just nakedly not true: the organization would spin in its grave rather than recognize how Red Tribers use a disputed trans-adjacent word.))
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There were other cases. The most obvious one is perhaps the case where the dictionary swiftly ‘updated’ its definition of recession to include a non-standard but not totally made up one that didn’t embarrass Joe Biden as he campaigned for reelection.
Plus the Wikipedia edit wars around whether or not Kamala Harris was “border czar” when it would embarrass her (though that’s more two-sided) and the redefinitions of “Cultural Marxism” from part of the Wikipedia series on Marxism to “Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory”.
Meriam-Webster’s dictionary definitions veer left and include left-wing extemporising: https://archive.vn/FI0tu
Wikipedia notably excludes most right-wing publications from being neutral sources while keeping lots of left-wing ones.
It’s a common pattern: the activists rush forward, then the respectable “we just report the world” orgs immediately provide cover by recognising activist claims and laundering them into respectability. So Joe Public thinks “I don’t remember that word meaning that”, goes to the dictionary, see it does mean that (as of 10 seconds ago), and goes, “ah, guess I must have been wrong and the Republicans are making a big fuss over nothing”.
Do all of these individual actions have plausible explanations? Yes. Would they rush to change the definition of certain words to help Trump in the same way, or consider right-wing usages and mores valid in the way they do left-wing ones? Not a chance in Hell.
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I agree that's the motivating factor. But I think it's important to improve people's mental models of how a big corporation actually works, as compared to the dynamics involved in e.g. Wikipedia mod types.
There's another angle I'm more sympathetic of, where stories like this are shit thrown against the wall to pressure corporations to act more in line with their goals. The Left has done a fantastic job of this ("A Google vision classifier identified black people as monkeys, and that's because Google wants us to throw black people into zoos!"). If so, I can't complain too much: Google should be more sensitive to the Right, so have at it. But it should be recognized as what it is: shit being flung, not an actual useful model of reality.
Certainly. I was under the impression a low/mid level true believer going rogue could change the data, maybe with another couple of people turning a blind eye, which is why I put the likelihood of it being true at say 10%, but I haven't worked somewhere like google and I'd be interested if you think that's wrong.
It's possible, though very unlikely. No one would have the permissions to change the prod geo data unilaterally. However, members of the team that owns that part of the system (so, probably a dozen people) can assume privileges that would give them that power. Part of that process to assume privilege is getting permission from another member of the team; you'd need a collaborator, or (more likely) lie about the reason you need the privilege. Also, critically, that escalation of privileges and the actions you take are all logged and auditable; if shit hits the fan with a PR disaster, there will be a very clear trail leading to you, and that would lead to an immediate firing.
It is vanishingly unlikely that anyone would be so motivated to put their career on the line for an obviously ineffectual action (the number of voters who switched their vote from Pratt to Bass based on a mislabeled satellite view of the Palisades is exactly zero). And the population of potential rogue employees who could do that is genuinely very small: it'd have to be someone very stupid and very passionately interested in Bass's electoral prospects who happens to be on the small team who can even assume those privileges.
Makes sense, thank you for explaining.
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