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Google is manipulating search results in favor of Hillary Clinton

siliconangle.com

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Re: Google is manipulating search results in favor of Hillary Clinton

#21

Post by gk1 »

airza wrote: post #7

Is there someone that google WILL autocomplete "criminal" for? I tried a lot of people, including those who have been convicted of crimes, and it seems to refuse to do so. (E.G Mike Tyson, John Gotti, as well as politicians like Nixon, George W Bush, and even hitler.)

Many people responding to this "story" are exhibiting classic confirmation bias. They're putting in searches that would confirm their existing belief that Hillary is "crooked" or that the system is rigged instead of ruling out other possibilities.

If you can show this happens for Hillary and not for 10 other people, that would be much more convincing than showing 10 times that it happens for Hillary.

NY Times has a fun interactive puzzle that demonstrates this bias: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick...

Re: Google is manipulating search results in favor of Hillary Clinton

#22

Post by airza »

gk1 wrote: post #21
airza wrote: post #7

Is there someone that google WILL autocomplete "criminal" for? I tried a lot of people, including those who have been convicted of crimes, and it seems to refuse to do so. (E.G Mike Tyson, John Gotti, as well as politicians like Nixon, George W Bush, and even hitler.)

Many people responding to this "story" are exhibiting classic confirmation bias. They're putting in searches that would confirm their existing belief that Hillary is "crooked" or that the system is rigged instead of ruling out other possibilities. If you can show this happens for Hillary and not for 10 other people, that would be much more convincing than showing 10 times that it happens for Hillary. NY Times has a f…

yes, that was more or less the idea of my comment :P

Re: Google is manipulating search results in favor of Hillary Clinton

#24

Post by ccvannorman »

burkaman wrote: post #9
ccvannorman wrote: post #2

Just tested this and the article is on point, at least about "Hillary Clinton cri" search autocompletes. I took some screenshots for proof: http://imgur.com/R2uqYlL If we can't trust Google, who can we trust? Bing? I don't want to live in that world.

Try any other name. Google will not autocomplete "____ cri" to criminal, regardless of the name. The closest I could get was "Adam Lanza criminal minds".

hmm.. I guess the waters are a bit more murky than I originally thought -- it looks like plain whitewashing on the face of it.

Still don't like the idea that Google is no longer showing me the most relevant results, but instead the most appropriate results. Clearly, "criminal" was the desired term. Why is Google trying to push me away from it? (in this case and I assume many others)

Re: Google is manipulating search results in favor of Hillary Clinton

#25

Post by transpy »

burkaman wrote: post #11
airza wrote: post #7

Is there someone that google WILL autocomplete "criminal" for? I tried a lot of people, including those who have been convicted of crimes, and it seems to refuse to do so. (E.G Mike Tyson, John Gotti, as well as politicians like Nixon, George W Bush, and even hitler.)

Yeah, this is a garbage article, "criminal" and "indictment" don't autocomplete for anyone. Probably so Google doesn't get sued for accusing an innocent person of being a criminal with autocomplete.

But.. I type "Hilarry ind" (to see if I get "Hillary Indiana" like the example) and I get immediatly "Hillary indictment". It seems that search results are very hard to reproduce and compare, given that they are very tailored, is this the case?
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