Loretta González, a new permanent invitee to Twitter, quickly erupted in outrage last month after an article by Google’s public policy head arguing that misinformation or impersonation should not be considered a “real threat” to society.
Among the questionable ways González and her supporters saw Google taking her side, Kanter defended the company against claims that its algorithms, which use AI to crawl the web for search results, have created a new form of human-human interaction. In a widely shared post to Twitter, Kanter wrote:
Because if we don’t improve the quality of news and information we face a new form of fake news: impersonation by a fake name posted by a fake account. Social platforms are not human corporations that can make decisions on how to algorithmically rank news and information. Our mission and mission-oriented cultures and products are designed to show users content and information that is valuable to them. We should not abdicate our missions and values on issues such as this for a few well-meaning complaints.
As may be expected, some people didn’t see it that way. González demanded a retraction, and then moved on to another controversial Twitter topic: Donald Trump.