On Thursday (September 27), the country watched with bated breath as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. Since Ford came forward earlier this month, two more women have accused him of sexual misconduct; he has denied all of the allegations.

Ford said during Thursday’s hearing that she is “100 percent” certain Kavanaugh was the man who assaulted her. “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified,” she told the committee.

As the hours-long hearing unfolded, celebrities communicated their feelings of frustration, as well as their awe of Ford, on social media. Rami Malek thanked Ford for her “tremendous strength and bravery,” while Mandy Moore called her a “hero,” adding, “I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and I stand in awe of her bravery and fortitude on behalf of all who have been in her shoes.” Ashley Tisdale observed, “Thank you Christine Ford. … It’s so easy to walk away but you stood up.”

Lena Dunham acknowledged how difficult it was for many people — especially those who are victims of sexual assault — to watch the hearing. “The news today is painful for so many and for so many reasons. Please remember to stop and care for yourself, even if it’s three of the deepest breaths. You are loved. Take care,” she tweeted.

Actress Busy Phillips, meanwhile, vowed to stand behind Ford as she revealed on Instagram that she was raped as a teenager. “It’s taken me 25 years to say those words,” she wrote. “I wrote about it in my book. I finally told my parents and sister about it 4 months ago. Today is the day we are silent no more. All of us. I’m scared to post this. I can’t imagine what Dr. Ford is feeling right now.”

See more reactions below.

It’s increasingly clear that Facebook is viewing YouTube as a major competitor.

In a blog post today, Facebook once again demonstrated its focus on video, with an announcement concerning the rollout of more video ad options. It’s a response to advertiser demand for even more control over where video advertisements are shown, the company said. These new options borrow heavily from some of YouTube’s very own video advertising models.

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The first new video ad option coming from Facebook is called In-Stream Reserve, which will “allow advertisers to reach people watching video from a selection of the most engaging, highest quality publishers and creators.” Basically, Facebook is allowing advanced ad space buyouts from only its best performing video makers. The audiences for these video ads are U.S.-based and are verified by Nielsen. 

In-Stream Reserve Categories is a sub-option to further customize In-Stream Reserve video ad campaigns, allowing “advertisers to choose content packages in specific categories, including sports, fashion/beauty and entertainment, bought in the same way as In-Stream Reserve.” If you’re advertising a line of makeup and only want to advertise on makeup tutorials and other beauty-related content, for instance, In-Stream Reserve Categories will allow you to do so.

If Facebook’s In-Stream Reserve video options sound familiar, it’s because YouTube has a similar program called Google Preferred. Google Preferred offers advertisers the option to advertise on the top 5% of content on YouTube. It also breaks down its most popular YouTube channels into a dozen categories you can run ads on.

The second video ad option Facebook is rolling out is called ThruPlay. According to Facebook, ThruPlay “allows advertisers to optimize and pay only for ads that are watched to completion, or for at least 15 seconds.” ThruPlay is also available through Facebook’s video placement network, which includes “Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network, which includes in-stream, stories and feed.” 

The ThruPlay video ad model sounds very much like YouTube’s skippable ad format, TrueView. In its post, Facebook mentions that the video placement for ThruPlay video ads are in-feed, and thus, skippable when scrolling past, which can become very cost effective for advertisers.

One more interesting nugget of information in the announcement is Facebook’s test run of exclusive advertisers for specific, original shows on Facebook Watch. This testing is being run on Watch shows like Ball in the Family, Returning the Favor, and Red Table Talk.

Just this past August, Facebook launched Facebook Watch on a global scale. The social media giant has really been pushing its video content offerings, encouraging pages to launch Watch shows, and even enticing YouTube creators to create content for their video platform. 

This latest announcement is just another step in Facebook’s campaign to take on YouTube as the place the internet goes to watch video content.

Google Search is 20 years old today. Judging by the Google Doodle and recent feature upgrades, Google would like the day to be a celebration of how the company’s algorithms have evolved over the years, cementing its position as the dominant player in the space.

But, more than ever, tech doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Google Search is turning 20 in a time where the public is questioning both our relationship with technology and the fundamental principles and motivations of the companies building it. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have borne most of the criticism, but Google has been a target as well.

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Criticisms of Google Search usually go like this: someone sees what they deem as unfair results in either search or tools like autocomplete, with the suggestion being that Google is skewing the “pure” results to show bad things about one side of a group or issue and good things about the other.

Lately such speculative criticism has come mostly from conservatives, but liberals have hammered Google over it as well. In particular, in the lead-up to the 2016 election, supporters of Bernie Sanders suggested a conspiracy to filter results unfavorable to Hillary Clinton to help her win her primary race over Sanders.

On a recent appearance on Fox Business, I spoke to some panelists who pointed out the incident Google had unfairly produced a result that linked the California GOP with Nazism. The panel suggest that Google, as a tech company based in the heart of Silicon Valley (an area that overwhelmingly favored for Hillary Clinton in the last election), had a bias against conservatives and that may have influenced the result.

While I suggested there is often a technical reason for odd or incorrect results — and that I highly doubt there was a room in Mountain View where Google executives could stick their heads in when they wanted to change search results to favor a certain point of view — most appeared unconvinced.

In a way, the criticism is validation for Google — these complaints about Search would be happening if nobody used it. But Google’s enviably high perch atop the search market means it has responsibilities, too, and now more than ever the feature it needs to care most about is integrity.

Luckily, it knows that, or at least seems to. I recently sat down with Google Vice President Nick Fox, the product and design lead for Search, to talk about the state of Google’s core service, and I asked him about how Google ensures the fairness of Search.

How Google Search evolves

It all starts with Google’s guidelines for search, Fox explained. The guidelines are a 164-page document that represents Google’s “value judgments” as to how search should work, mostly having to do with providing the best user experience in matching the search terms to web pages.

“It’s our expression of how we think the Search product should work,” said Fox. “The reason it’s public is because we want to be very transparent about how we think Search should work and what we think ideal Search is.”

Whenever Google makes a change to its search algorithm, the new results are judged by how they adhere to the guidelines. But it’s not technically Google that’s doing the judging — the company hires outside contractors called raters to evaluate changes, and they’re not just a bunch of engineers in Northern California. 

“The raters that we hire are across the US, across the world,” said Fox. “We try to make sure the raters represent as much as we can a cross-section of society. It’s important to us that search works for everyone, and no individual’s point of view can influence what that looks like.”

If, say, a Google employee or executive wanted to change how Search worked to favor or eliminate certain results, Fox says the request would have to go through the same public request system that everyone in the world must use, and then the change would have to survive the rater process.

“There is a process by which anyone in the world can report bad results. Whether it’s internal or external, everyone has to report bad results to the exact same mechanism.”

However, not every change to search results involves changing the algorithm. Google Search sometimes “edits” links out of results because of various laws. For example, if a search would have surfaced copyrighted content that’s been posted illegally, a search results page might note that some links weren’t shown because there were claims against them regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Depending on the region or the specific law or policy being enforced, a note explaining the change may or may not appear.

The bigger takeaway, however — and the one that fuels search-editing conspiracy theories — is that those situations show there is a tool for eliminating bad or undesirable links that doesn’t involve an algorithm change. Fox admitted there was a “separate process” for that, but he did say Google had “incredibly strong safeguards” against any individual altering search results, including documenting of every change (although not all of that documentation is public).

He also said, as a matter of philosophy, Google prefers algorithmic changes over editing results.

“As much as we can, we endeavor to change things in an algorithmic way. If we do see a bad result, it’s likely the case that there’s something more systemic going on that needs to be fixed. There’s probably a whole class of results that needs to be addressed.”

The FUD continues

Fox’s responses were helpful, although there’s no way for Google to allay every fear of search manipulation without fully revealing its algorithms and providing full, public documentation of all changes to search, algorithmic or otherwise. Of course, it would never do that, for many reasons — partly because it would give a huge advantage to Google’s competitors, but it would also be a gold rush for link farms, spammers, or anyone looking to game the system.

And Google’s record on Search isn’t exactly spotless. Years ago, in a bid to boost engagement on its Facebook competitor, Google+, Google began to favor official Google+ pages of companies in search results over Facebook pages.

Google+, of course, is all but gone, but now Google must contend with new challenges: tech-savvy bad actors looking to spread fake news and propaganda and an increasingly polarized public that’s constantly looking for evidence of bias from either side.

Given that reality, and the fact that Google’s process will never be 100 percent transparent, the conspiracy theories will continue, something CEO Sundar Pichai will have to contend with when he testifies on Capitol Hill later this fall. And Google presses on, launching a suite of new search tools and integrating AI more deeply in Search — it won’t just be linking terms or synonyms to topics, but also their fundamental concepts, so when you Google “why does my TV look weird” the engine knows you want troubleshooting tips or a manual.

It’s great stuff, and may even take Search to heretofore unheard-of levels of usefulness, getting us to spend even more time using Google’s products. But what Google may or may not realize is that whenever it asks for more engagement, it’s also asking for more trust. For a public burned by so many tech scandals, there’s not a lot left to give.

Someone might want to check on Senator Lindsey Graham.

He lashed out at Democrats during Brett Kavanaugh’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. In an eye-popping and lengthy tirade, Graham called Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court candidate “the most unethical sham since [he’s] been in politics.”

Graham, who is not the first angry man to take the mic today, told Kavanaugh directly that he had “nothing to apologize for.” He also accused Senate Democrats of using Ford as a pawn in an attempt to destroy Kavanaugh, then push through their own candidate after the midterm elections. 

(He did not, however, mention the myriad reasons why sexual assault victims might hesitate to come forward, nor the fact that Ford requested confidentiality when she first revealed her experience to Senator Dianne Feinstein.)

Of course, Graham yelled for 100 percent of his statement. Big day for men yelling.