41–50 of 151 posts
When Google, Facebook, and others announced that they were banning "fake news", many on the left cheered. But it was probably naive to assume Google would limit itself to censoring political opinions with which one disagrees.
I don't quite understand the snark in your response - were you, unlike the purported cheering liberals, fond of the purveyors of fake news?
Meh, I have a hard time caring about this because I want Google to block propaganda and misinformation. From my experience, socialist websites and forums tend to ignore, rewrite, or white wash the history of communism in Russia/USSR, Venezuela, and even North Korea. So much so that the No True Scotsman fallacy should just be the No True Socialist fallacy. Go check out /r/socialism if you want your head to spin. Accor…
It's almost like "truth" isn't an absolute thing, but an ongoing discussion... which has become fractured!
When a source repeatedly tells you not to believe your own eyes, but offers no valid counter-argument--you should be suspicious. I'm fine with Google/Facebook or whoever filtering out known dishonest and inaccurate websites, whether they are intentionally malicious or just ignorant.
This has been fairly thoroughly debunked: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/0Y...
Gee, wouldn't it be great if we could just look up the open-source code for the most popular search engine on the "open" Internet? Given the amount of power and money they now have, effectively having "won the game," it seems ethical to me to open-source their entire search algorithm.
Gee, wouldn't it be great if we could just look up the open-source code for the most popular search engine on the "open" Internet? Given the amount of power and money they now have, effectively having "won the game," it seems ethical to me to open-source their entire search algorithm.
Regulation is done on utilities like cell providers, cable/internet providers and consumers are usually aware of multiple choices. If I ask a non-tech user to name a search engine other than Google, they likely can't. So users do their search and interact with the results they are presented.
Edit: Removed my personal experience. Added thoughts on regulation.
>The WSWS has been blacklisted in searches dealing with history, and in particular historical topics related to the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. These include the terms “Russian revolution,” “Bolshevik revolution” and “October revolution,” all of which returned results in the top 50 in April That's probably ... correct.
Why is that correct? Looking at their website they're currently running a lecture series/look back at the Russian revolution: http://www.wsws.org/en/special/1917/chronology.html None of it seems to be conspiracy theory or low-quality material.
I'd classify that as conspiracy theory.
EDIT: I've noticed all the replies and I'd like to acknowledge them. Unfortunately I feel very stupid for not screenshotting what I saw when I searched one hour ago. I now see 62,900 results, and I can load up to page 6. I can't prove that I was not able to load page 2 before, but it's true. My original comment remains unedited below. -- For a concrete demonstration of pathological de-ranking, do a query for "site:we…
Google adjusts its search results all the time for business reasons but also for political or legal reasons. The PC description is "tuning the search algorithm". That may encompass any number of effects to the search results or Google interfaces. While I hate the idea of regulation, Google Search is such a basic utility in the US that it really should be regulated by the government. Regulation is done on utilities li…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe it was ever about "fake news", rather it's about establishing "acceptable opinion". As the article said: > In a set of guidelines issued to Google evaluators in March, elaborated in April by Google VP of Engineering Ben Gomes, the company instructed its search evaluators to flag pages returning “conspiracy theories” or “upsetting” content unless “the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alte…
In this context, I read "alternative viewpoint" as a polite way of saying "complete bullshit".