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Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results

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

#51

Post by patorjk »

michaelmrose wrote: post #44
patorjk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/20…

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

Trump is just living it? Why did you add that part? I pointed out that the results looked odd. When I opened up the comment section, every other comment was saying nothing was odd. Those comments you're referring to didn't exist yet. Now that I've seen them, yes, they do bring up an interesting point.

I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm not a republican. And nothing I said indicated that Google was out to get conservatives. There was no reason to bring up the Google image story or say anything about Trump in your reply.

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

#52

Post by fortomorrow »

michaelmrose wrote: post #49
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. Implementati…

Judt an fyi because you'll never see the reply on the actual thread flagged by HN. 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

#53

Post by michaelmrose »

repolfx wrote: post #27

There's a dupe that got flagged here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17858874 Perhaps this story will also get flagged - it seems there's a lot of people who don't like discussion of political bias in Silicon Valley companies on HN. It's pretty easy to see why Trump thinks this. Just go to Google News and search Trump, then look at which news sources are selected. Or just look at this helpful pie chart: https:/…

Looking at the chart can you please tell me what you would consider a conservative news organization?

I'm guessing Infowars Fox Breitbart. The problem for people on the far right is that their perspective is so profoundly distorted that even moderate news articles are written off as liberal rags.

Imagine if you were a young earth creationist wouldn't you be shocked to search for fossils and find page after page of honest scientific discussion and almost no pages talking about how the devil hid them to test peoples faith?

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

#54

Post by insickness »

niyikiza wrote: post #48
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 th…

The question isn't whether Google is 'better' than government, it's whether Google's proprietary algorithm can be trusted to be unbiased. If Google is found to be biased, that doesn't necessarily mean government should step in but at least the market can account for this bias once they know about it.

The media has been squawking that Trump is wrong (CNN: "Media says Trump search is rigged. It's not."). Wrong or right, in shedding light on this, Trump has forced Google to be more careful not to bias search results if in fact they were.

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

#55

Post by michaelmrose »

dx87 wrote: post #32

Whether or not the bias is intentional, this reminds me of the fairly recent accusations that claimed twitter was deliberatley preventing republican congressman from showing up on the front page. They said it wasn't deliberate, it was all done by an algorithm...that just happened to be written in a way that only flagged members of one political party. Looking at the bigger picture, this may be a case of big tech comp…

It shouldn't be shocking to find that google can only afford to hire intelligent educated people for the 7K people who drive its multi multi billion dollar business.

It also ought not to be shocking to find that these people lean left once you redefine left to mean anyone left of Attila the hun.

60% of republicans believe that the Earth and the human race were created ex nihilo recently. 20% of trump fans support SLAVERY.

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

#56

Post by yongjik »

yostrovs wrote: post #10

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

It has a plausible explanation. People searching for Oppenheimer or Gell-Mann don't type "American scientists", they just type "Oppenheimer" and "Gell-Mann". And a website talking about Oppenheimer doesn't spend much time about his being American---after all, that might be the least interesting fact about Oppenheimer's life.

OTOH, I'll bet there are websites that talk about, say, "George Washington Carver, an American scientist you have never heard about."

That said, the quality of curation seems rather poor.

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

#57

Post by rory »

autokad wrote: post #35
rory wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh I see Einstein and Feynman in the top few results. Again, if you just switch the term to start with "united states" there are literally zero black people in the top results so seems unlikely it's a conspiracy.

I doubt it is, but I also don't fault someone for thinking so. Einstein showed up after 3 scrolls. For me, "there are literally zero black", was not true. predominately not black, but Washington was in the list. I don't mean to be pedantic, but I take 'literally' seriously

I meant zero before scrolling. Einstein and Feynman show up before scrolling at positions six and seven when I search "american scientists" and the other results are black american scientists of one field or another. No black people show up before scrolling when I search "united states scientists". I guess results vary by geography or history or something.

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

#58

Post by michaelmrose »

patorjk wrote: post #51
michaelmrose wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/20…

> Everyone else isn't playing dumb Trump is just living it. Trump is just living it? Why did you add that part? I pointed out that the results looked odd. When I opened up the comment section, every other comment was saying nothing was odd. Those comments you're referring to didn't exist yet. Now that I've seen them, yes, they do bring up an interesting point. I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm not a republican. And noth…

The title of the story is

"Google Attacked by Trump With Claim It Is Burying Conservative News" I was referring to the subject of the entire discussion not you or your politics. I was trying to be clever by replying to your statement AND the topic simultaneously.

Google images misclassifying black people as gorillas, as well as google instant answers providing erroneous and prejudicial information are examples of situations in which we could discover meaning where none exists in data generated by an algorithm.

It seems vastly more likely that the words american inventors appears many times in documents that begin african american inventors than google specifically tweaking that query to increase diversity the same way I don't think google meant to convey that black people were like gorillas or that Obama was king of America

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

#59

Post by closetohome »

brianbreslin wrote: post #43
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...

You found an alt-right blog complaining about a glitch in an algorithm that accidentally promoted afraican americans?

Shocking.

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

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.

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