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Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#41

Post by repolfx »

moonka wrote: post #12

Maybe we should bring back the FCC fairness doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

I don't think that would help.

The UK has such a regulation still, for TV broadcasters only. It also has the BBC which is committed to such fairness and neutrality in its charter.

In practice it is not enforced. For example the senior management of Channel 4 news have routinely made tweets that indicate they hate the Conservative party. And I mean really hate.

Their head of output retweeted a message that said, "Writing from America & I can assure you that conservatives will absolutely keep needed medicine out of the hands of those who require it, if you let them"

One of their most famous and senior journalists (Jon Snow) went to a music festival, someone who partied with him claimed he shouted "fuck the Tories" and "I'm supposed to be neutral". He claims he can't remember if he said it or not.

The chief editor of C4 News liked a tweet that said simply, "Boris Johnson is a cunt". Johnson is one of the most well known conservative politicians in the UK and was a cabinet minister until he resigned quite recently over a policy dispute.

You can see a pattern - journalists who are supposed to be neutral by law have no problem with broadcasting to the whole world personal insults against conservative politicians on Twitter. They get away with it because the regulator stands by and does nothing.

The FCC fairness doctrine is unlikely to work out much differently. The USA is right to avoid it.

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#42

Post by michaelmrose »

yostrovs wrote: post #10

Try searching for "American inventors" or "American scientists" on Google and tell me if you notice anything odd.

Google isn't an oracle of truth its a best guess at what you want to read given a search term.

Wherein they try to provide actual answers to questions more complicated than 2+2 or what is the weather like they have ended up with interesting results drawn from the nonsense that is the internet.

"Instant answers have attracted criticism for years. In 2014, Google results highlighted a Breitbart story saying Barack Obama was the king of America, and the next year, Google got flak for providing an excerpt from a creationist website saying dinosaurs were tools of indoctrination in response to the question, "What happened to dinosaurs?"

Conspiracy-mongering instant answers drew attention in March after the website Search Engine Land pointed out that Googling "Is Obama planning a coup?" displayed an answer from a website called SECRETS OF THE FED saying Obama was indeed planning a coup with the help of "the communist Chinese."

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/google-instant-ans...

Imputing bias from search results may be a mistake. Especially when in some cases it might even be a correct guess at what the searcher actually wanted to read.

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#43

Post by brianbreslin »

yostrovs wrote: post #10

Try searching for "American inventors" or "American scientists" on Google and tell me if you notice anything odd.

this got me curious and i found this post about this: http://www.unz.com/isteve/great-moments-in-google-american-i...

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#44

Post by michaelmrose »

patorjk wrote: post #38
yostrovs wrote: post #10

Try searching for "American inventors" or "American scientists" on Google and tell me if you notice anything odd.

I'll admit, that does seem a bit odd. Everyone else is playing dumb, but they're being disingenuous. From what I see, on both lists, there's only 1 white male in the first 10 results, and in both cases they're not in the top 5. It certainly looks like a curated list and they've gone out of their way to make sure there's representation for a wide array of people. Is this bad? Should they have done something different?…

Everyone else isn't playing dumb Trump is just living it.

As someone else already insightfully said results for American Scientists results a result set an awful lot like African American Scientists whereas US scientists or United States Scientists returns a results set more like you would expect.

In 2015 google photos was classifying black people as Gorillas that wasn't on purpose either.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882408/google-racist-go...

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#45

Post by michaelmrose »

fortomorrow wrote: post #39
rory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the poster's referring to the overrepresentation of black scientists in that result, implying political motivation. It's pretty clear that it's just an artifact of the collision with the common search term "african american scientists". The result for "united states scientists" more or less proves this to be the case.

Hmm I'm not so certain about that. US inventors returns 5 out of the top 10. They are George Washinton Carver, Elijah McCoy, Madam CJ Walker, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Garrett Morgan How many of those do you suppose are actually in the "Top 10" of US inventors

First off I think you searched for American Inventors not US inventors which seems to collide with African American because engineers are smart but computers are stupid.

Secondly google search results are a best guess based on prior search history and other data about you about what you want to read right now given a term.

You wont anywhere find a universal fact about what google themselves thinks about anything without reading material written BY google and not generated results from its search engine.

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#46

Post by fortomorrow »

afshin wrote: post #40
fortomorrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I'm not so certain about that. US inventors returns 5 out of the top 10. They are George Washinton Carver, Elijah McCoy, Madam CJ Walker, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Garrett Morgan How many of those do you suppose are actually in the "Top 10" of US inventors

The first ten inventors I see when I search for "US inventors" are: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, Nikola Tesla, George Washington Carver, Charles Goodyear, Lewis Howard Latimer, Henry Ford, George Eastman ... which does corroborate OP's "American inventors" hypothesis.

If by OP you mean yosrtovs then yes youre correct, if not your results are different than the Google results i have on two different browsers as yours seems to be missing Elijah McCoy and Madam Walker. Even if only 3 out of the 10 were black as you posture its still a statistical over representation

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#47

Post by fortomorrow »

michaelmrose wrote: post #45
fortomorrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I'm not so certain about that. US inventors returns 5 out of the top 10. They are George Washinton Carver, Elijah McCoy, Madam CJ Walker, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Garrett Morgan How many of those do you suppose are actually in the "Top 10" of US inventors

First off I think you searched for American Inventors not US inventors which seems to collide with African American because engineers are smart but computers are stupid. Secondly google search results are a best guess based on prior search history and other data about you about what you want to read right now given a term. You wont anywhere find a universal fact about what google themselves thinks about anything with…

No the search term was and is US inventors it was not a typo and done in incognito on two separate machines but thanks for the down vote

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#48

Post by niyikiza »

Dwolb wrote: post #18

Yikes this is a complex topic. There’s a couple of things at play: Google does control (unbiased or biased) a significant portion of what internet users see This control has the potential to sway public opinion, direct discourse, and economically make or break businesses (even those that extend beyond media) Personally I believe gigantic internet companies like Google require more regulation because they can’t be tru…

- Google is better than government (you can go for a competitor) and it's better than a decentralized search engine (if anything the swaying of public opinion calls for a closer control of what Google shows people. If Facebook didn't have any censorship policies at all, the incidents of 2016 would have been worse.)

- Google never promised you to give you truth all the time (for most of the things people search for there just is no truth). It's meant to direct you to the most "relevant" contents. Everyone will always think that they are more relevant than search engines believe.

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#49

Post by michaelmrose »

moonka wrote: post #12

Maybe we should bring back the FCC fairness doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Maybe you should start your own search engine. The fairness doctrine makes no coherent sense in context.

How many sides are there in every multidimensional issue. Who decides which sides should be represented and how? Do we force every piece of content in the universe to have an unmoderated comments section filled with racist invectives and conspiracy theories? How "fair" will it be when nobody reads it.

Implementation aside the internet is already as fair as can be expected. It has never been cheaper to set up a site and have your voice heard. This of course merely guarantees that you can be heard not that you will have an audience.

Edit: US inventors never did show such results you are mistaken or misleading

Re: Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

#50

Post by michaelmrose »

repolfx wrote: post #41
moonka wrote: post #12

Maybe we should bring back the FCC fairness doctrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

I don't think that would help. The UK has such a regulation still, for TV broadcasters only. It also has the BBC which is committed to such fairness and neutrality in its charter. In practice it is not enforced. For example the senior management of Channel 4 news have routinely made tweets that indicate they hate the Conservative party. And I mean really hate. Their head of output retweeted a message that said, "Writ…

Even if news programs report the news in an unbiased fashion people are bound to have personal opinions and express them on their own time.

In response to "Writing from America & I can assure you that conservatives will absolutely keep needed medicine out of the hands of those who require it, if you let them"

Wouldn't it be a greater crime to ignore this? It seems as if the only reason you don't want a fairness doctrine is not because its a terrible idea but because it wouldn't be effective enough at distorting reality to the peasants.

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