Tag: google

Google apologizes after listing ancient language spoken by 40 million people as ‘ugliest in India’

Google has issued an apology after its search engine decreed the official language of Karnataka state as India’s “ugliest”, prompting fury from regional officials.

The tech giant came under fire after it was discovered that typing “ugliest language in India” into its search engine returned “Kannada,” a language spoken by more than 40 million people, predominantly in the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka. 

The harsh designation soon caught the eye of officials in Bangalore, the state capital, who wasted little time in denouncing Google for slighting their official language.

“Kannada language has a history of its own, having come into existence as many as 2,500 years ago! It has been the pride of Kannadigas all through these two-and-a-half millennia,” fumed Arvind Limbavali, Karnataka’s minister for forest. 

He demanded an apology from Google “ASAP” for insulting the state and its language, and also threatened legal action against the Silicon Valley giant.

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Google-sponsored report recommends subverting online “conspiracy” groups from within

Google-owned YouTube already purges large amounts of content for containing what it deems to be “harmful conspiracy theories” and boosts what it says are “authoritative” mainstream media outlets to push what it deems to be the “right information.”

Now, a report that was sponsored by Google’s Jigsaw unit (a unit that “explores threats to open societies, and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions”) has recommended a new approach – infiltrating and subverting online conspiracy groups from within by targeting “moderate members” of these groups in the hope that they “exert influence on the broader community.”

The report was published by the research organization RAND which “develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure.”

RAND receives funding from Google and several US government departments including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

This specific report, “Detecting Conspiracy Theories on Social Media: Improving Machine Learning to Detect and Understand Online Conspiracy Theories,” was sponsored by Google’s Jigsaw unit and was conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy (ISDP) Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD) which conducts research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the US Intelligence Community, US State Department, allied foreign governments, and foundations.

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Google Docs gets social justice update, autocorrecting to gender neutral and politically correct language

Google announced on Tuesday, during its I/O developer conference, that editing capabilities of Google Docs have been expanded to police text and monitor a writer’s level of inclusivity.

Thus an update to the app means that Google Docs will start suggesting changing words like “mailman” to “mail carrier” and “chairman” to “chairperson,” it has been revealed.

Users will also be prompted to avoid using passive voice or what Google determines to be offensive language. It’s unclear from reports if the new feature will be opt-in or out, or hard-coded in the app, that is, impossible to avoid using.

This user-facing change comes after Google’s style guide for developers already seeking to “tidy up” language according to the sensitivities the giant is pandering to. For example, developers are instructed to replace “crazy” with “baffling,” “dummy variable” with “placeholder variable,” and “final sanity-check” with “final check for completeness and clarity.”

As early as 2018, Google got rid of gender pronouns from predictive text on Gmail for fear of offending somebody on that front, as well as of racial slurs, expletives, and mentions of business rivals.

CEO Sundar Pichai is said to have made implementing social justice tenets a priority for the whole of Google.

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Google’s “private” coronavirus tracking app wasn’t so private after all

Back in April 2020, Big Tech firms Apple and Google released their frameworks for contact tracing in an effort to help governments track the coronavirus. When the frameworks were released, both the firms vehemently promised that user data, including their location information and data of whom all they’ve come in contact with, would remain private.

But the recent findings by a privacy analysis firm revealed otherwise.

Both Google and Apple stated that the data users share through their frameworks would be anonymized and shared with public health agencies only. Here’s what Google CEO Sundar Pichai said about the tool last year. “Our goal is to empower with another tool to help combat the virus while protecting user privacy.”

Banking on the promises made by the Big Tech firms, several million users ended up downloading apps built on the frameworks developed by Apple and Google.

The UK’s National Health Service app, Canada’s Digital Service COVID Alert app, and Virginia’s Department of Health’s COVIDWISE app were all built on the frameworks provided by Apple and Google.

While the NHS app has more than 15 million users, Canada’s COVID Alert app had over six million downloads in January alone.

Based on what the researchers at AppCensus, a privacy analysis firm, state, there was a privacy flaw in the Android version of contact tracing tools. What’s more, the researchers at AppCensus even ended up informing Google about it, but to no avail.

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Google Censors Document Tracking COVID Vaccine Stories

Google has censored a public Google document collecting stories in mainstream news media and posts on social media about adverse reaction to COVID-19 vaccines. The document was over 100 pages long when it was censored by Google. It has since been re-hosted at this website.

Former ITV and BBC journalist Anna Brees noticed that the document had been censored by Google in a post on Twitter.

“First time I’ve seen a cloud drive blocking a document,” said Brees. “It was a very long document re vaccination headlines from around the world. This was a document sent to me via email. I was able to view it three days ago but now it says this.”

Brees shared a screenshot showing a message from Google informing users that the document was “in violation of our terms of service.”

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Find Out If Google Is Tracking You With New FloC System

Google is ramping up its monopoly on tracking users with a new system called FloC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts”.  It is currently in test mode with some Chrome users, and you can quickly find out if you are being “FloCed” by going to EFF’s AmIFloced.org site.

Google is running a Chrome “origin trial” to test out an experimental new tracking feature called Federated Learning of Cohorts (aka “FLoC”). According to Google, the trial currently affects 0.5% of users in selected regions, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States. This page will try to detect whether you’ve been made a guinea pig in Google’s ad-tech experiment.

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Google Shadow Bans Searches For “Riots Today” Following Violent Unrest in Minnesota

Amidst yet another night of violent unrest in Minnesota, Google is effectively shadow banning searches for “riots today” despite other search engines providing links to stories about the riots when the same search term is used.

Black Lives Matter agitators rioted and looted for a second night in Minnesota despite the deployment of the National Guard.

The unrest is in response to the police shooting of Daunte Wright, who resisted arrest after cops stopped him for a traffic violation.

The killing is being described as an example of “systemic racism” despite the fact that Wright was shot by a dumb female officer who mistook a gun for a taser.

Apparently, Google is keen to not have the disorder that followed be described as “riots,” despite the fact that is precisely what happened.

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