While an European Commission is investigating whether Google is using its monopoly of search to further its own business and commercial interest, the German Chacellor, Angela Merkel, has now come out and asked the major Internet companies to come forwards and reveal their algorithms.
[Photo Credit]
Her reasoning for the call can be summed up by the statement she made:
“I’m of the opinion, that algorithms must be made more transparent, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen about questions like, ‘What influences my behaviour on the internet and that of others?’ Algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception; they can shrink our expanse of information.”
She made this appeal while addressing a media conference in Munich on October 25th, where she held that internet search engines are 'distorting perception' and that that their lack of transparency endangers debating culture.
This to me seems like a debatable topic on its own as we have heard about "transparency" in the past too, but the ramifications of these actions have been disturbing in some cases. Any openness about complex computer codes seems to be lapped-up by people of dishonest ambitions to game the system creating further chaos, so the question is up for debate.
What do you think? Should all major algorithms on the internet be transparent?
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/27/angela-merkel-internet-search-engines-are-distorting-our-perception
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/13/good-luck-in-making-google-reveal-its-algorithm
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