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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Do you think Google's attempts at ideological sculpting are effective, neutral, or counter-productive? Why are they doing this?

Search for any social topic or event that a conservative cares about, and Google will list progressive news sources and fact checkers denying its validity or, if this is impossible, condemning political weaponization of the facts. Google's information sculpting seemed to reached its apex mid-2022, when PM of Hungary Viktor Orban made a speech with inflammatory takes on European history and EU policy, and Google would not give a link to the speech. Trying all sorts of keywords, one could find page after page of thinkpieces with two-word scare quotes about what a horrible Nazi speech Orban had made, but it was impossible to read what he actually said. (Yandex gave an English transcript as the second result.)

Putting aside the morality or fairness of this: Do you think Google's efforts prevent people from being radicalized? Do they increase political capital for the establishment left? The recent Gemini AI debacle shows a hilarious tin ear for the company; no one could fail to see the tight ideological corset around the image generation squeezing the AI's intestines out its throat. And personally — though I am not normal — the information sculpting I get from search results doesn't make me accept the sources as presented; it just makes me angry.

The three broad explanations I see for Google's approach are:

  1. It makes you angry, but ninety percent of searchers don't notice. The sculpting works.
  2. It's very stupid, but a culture of fear inside the company prevents anyone from dialing back. The sculpting is counterproductive.
  3. The purpose of propaganda is not convincing people but demoralizing them, etc. The sculpting works.

Is there a way to tell which of these is true?

It makes you angry, but ninety percent of searchers don't notice. The sculpting works.

Mostly this. It's the same schtick the MSM were doing all the way up to the invention of the Internet. Can't get angry about what you don't know. The annoying thing about it is that for a brief moment the Internet showed us what a truly free media landscape could look like, but this is why they had to clamp down.

I sometimes compare all this to some anecdote, quote, and perhaps even a completely made up story that never happened, where some bloke back in the day said that with the invention of the airplane all wars will end, because who will be able to stop people from travelling around the world, and realizing that humanity is one big happy family with no reason to fight each other outside of elite interests. I'd like to take that poor naive fool into the future and show him that not only is air travel possibly the worst option if you want to go somewhere without being harassed by authorities, but also what wonderful weapons of war do airplanes make! Then I wonder if every single media innovation didn't unfold this way. Cable? Plain old TV? Radio? Freakin' newspapers? Did they all go through the cycle of "woo! look at new thing! look at all the freedom" -> "tubes for pure unadulterated regime propaganda"? If so I only wish for AI optimists to stop and take a note.

Re: your second paragraph:

From the philosophical perspective, technology simply enhances humanity's capabilities, it's still up to us to actively choose to embrace liberty, honest communication, the pursuit of wisdom, and brotherhood among all men. I, for one, will not yet forsake that dream.