71–80 of 114 posts
IF (a big IF) Google was actually biased, you could go to their competitor. But if there's no other real competitor then IMO the solution isn't to regulate Google, but to fix root cause problems which led to there only being one company controlling all search (AKA breaking up monopolies)
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…
The fact that a search engine has such a singular importance in deciding what the public sees. The very reason you would desire regulation is the very reason that you don't want the government regulating it. If google fails its userbase they can switch to a different search engine in 30 seconds by opening a new tab. How fast can you change governments?
If their userbase can actually tell that they are _being_ failed. I don't know that this is deliberate and not just a result of SEO and ranking algorithms, but if what we see is being influenced, how would we know, and how would we generate enough energy to actually have a significant number of people digitally uproot themselves in order to force Google to respond somehow?
> they can switch to a different search engine in 30 seconds by opening a new tab.
Individual users can switch search engines, but what about switching away from Gmail, Youtube, etc. that are all tied together? It's pretty difficult, especially considering you can't bring your network of viewers/friends/etc with you.
> How fast can you change governments?
Happens every 4-8 years and takes a few months. Fairly well-oiled process, at this point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 SLA…
> 60% of republicans believe that the Earth and the human race were created ex nihilo recently. 20% of trump fans support SLAVERY. Not a Trump conservative by any means, but I'm gonna need a source for that one. Addendum: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/25/donald-tru...
I think this is what he meant. I also think you have to be blind to not understand that Trump is a racist. Also, the article you pulled has a lot of assumptions, such as that not being white means you can't be racist or the fact that you're liberal means you're against any use of torture. Overall, those kind of assumptions are the kind of binary classifications most people complain about when talking about American politics.
I see google as a mirror that reflects what the world says about you. Of course, they moderate results but I don’t think that they do it to such an extend that only negative results will show for a person seen as positive in the world.
Trump is denying his reflection in the mirror (Google search). He doesn’t want to accept that Google’s result is how the world sees him now.
Google does not write the negative content
I suspect the "problem" is just that people enjoy reading these negative articles. Google is trying to point people to what they're likely to click on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you care to further explain your point and how that relates to the article at all? Bonus points if you can do it without saying something racist or already debunked.
I would wager it's not the default list resulting from their algorithms, and was in fact explicitly manipulated to present the list you see now. The original article claims something similar albeit on a different search result. the underlying idea is that google is not just using pagerank and algorithms to show us the current state of the internet. But rather is adding their own bias to push up / down certain results…
One thing I've wondered with stuff like this is why we assume Google is the root cause here. Mind you, I've switched all my products away from Google, so I'm not defending them, BUT;
Reddit users frequently take part in manipulating Google search results for the sakes of memes. To put someones picture up on a specific search, for example. Yet other search results we believe to be hand crafted by Google.
Now, I think it is more likely that Google is manipulating data here. However, I never see it discussed why we don't think someone else could be manipulating it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
by "overrepresentation of black scientists", in my case it means 100%.
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.
Try searching for "American inventors" or "American scientists" on Google and tell me if you notice anything odd.
Oddly, when your search isn't a substring of "African American Inventors" you don't get weird results.
It's almost like the search algo isn't perfect.
- Facebook's short-lived 'trending News' came under fire after employees admitted to routinely suppressing conservative news stories.
- Every newspaper endorsed Trump's opponent so any news source is potentially anti-Trump. Some, like CNN, aren't even trying to be objective (every article reads like an editorial with a little too much snark), while others like the NYT released a post-election letter that just fell short of admitting their bias ("we believe we reported on both candidates fairly").
- Twitter was found to hide many Republican politicians from autosearch results.
None of this makes Trump's accusation true, but it highlights that there is a precedent.
Why isn't the problem that Google has a monopoly on search? IF (a big IF) Google was actually biased, you could go to their competitor. But if there's no other real competitor then IMO the solution isn't to regulate Google, but to fix root cause problems which led to there only being one company controlling all search (AKA breaking up monopolies)