Confirmation Bias and the Google/Verizon announcement
When Blair Levin left the FCC, he gave a very thoughtful speech entitled “Overcoming Confirmation Bias” (which is “the tendency for people to interpret information in a way that confirms their existing beliefs”). Unfortunately, the full text is no longer on the FCC website, but the text is available at Wiredtowns. His key point was that everybody – both the FCC and its critics – have a tendency to see what they want, or expect, to see. For instance, when the National Broadband Plan was released….
The initial reaction was generally predictable along ideological or industry lines.
One example was the Wall St. Journal editorial condemning the Plan on the grounds that business hated it. At the same time, the blog Techdirt condemned it on the grounds that businesses were praising it.
I am reminded of that often. For example, consider these two reactions to Verizon and Google announcing that they had agreed upon a reasonable policy framework for net neutrality. (This is not a criticism of either commentator – just an observation of how divergent analysis of the announcement has been)
#1: Professor Nicholas Economides of NYU said Verizon got almost almost everything and Google got very little…
“The Verizon-Google proposal is a mix of 90 percent of Verizon’s anti-net neutrality positions and only 10 percent Google’s pro-net neutrality positions,” said Nicholas Economides, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
#2: Jan Dawson, Chief telecom analyst at Ovum, said Verizon made “real concessions” and Google “made few compromises”…
Ovum’s chief telecoms analyst Jan Dawson said that “Google and Verizon have done what the Federal Communications Commission has so far failed to do: forge a meaningful compromise on net neutrality between the two sides. Verizon has made real concessions here, notably forgoing paid prioritisation on the public Internet. Google, on the other hand, has made few compromises, getting most of what it always said it wanted.”
bias in tech is very null-concept. has no value whatsoever.
take MS-Bashing for example is so engraved in idiotic minds that people don’t see their bias…
I’ve been thinking the same thing all week. Funny to have my own words cited as an example though!
Ack! I was sorta hoping you wouldn’t see that, as I didn’t want you (or Economides) to think I was picking on you in particular. I also didn’t mean to imply that you (or Economides) were unreasonably biased in any way. It’s just a larger point I’ve been wanting to make ever since the National Broadband Plan came out and I watched people argue that you could tell it was good because the carriers hated it/bad because the carriers loved it.
Net neutrality has always been a tabula rasa for a lot of people to project their fears and dreams (or, in many cases, lack of them) about technology, though, so I guess it’s entirely possible you and Economides are both right! :)
Wasn’t offended or annoyed in any way – it was sobering to see myself quoted in this context since – like all of us – I had seen myself as somehow above the fray!
I have been thinking about this more today, and I think it’s like those maps you see where everything is distorted to make the size of various territories proportional to something other than surface area. I think our reactions to stories like this one demonstrate as much as anything else the relative importance of various elements to individual people. For example, I see the basic tenets of net neutrality as being largely implemented in the proposal, with a couple of exceptions (loopholes) for wireless and managed services. But to many others, wireless is the be all and end all and therefore by excluding it from the rules this proposal is a complete whitewash. No wonder reaching a satisfactory conclusion is difficult!
That sounds about right. I tend to agree with ITIF’s Rob Atkinson, who said that a blanket non-discrimination rule is the lazy way out and it would prevent valuable innovations both in the networks and at the edges. Harm can always be addressed if/when it happens, but a blanket ban on new services imposes major dead-weight loss and unintended consequences.
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