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I think the author is missing an important point: people who are genuinely curious about Holocaust usually don't type "did the holocaust happen". Instead, they

by yongjik 10y ago

I think the author is missing an important point: people who are genuinely curious about Holocaust usually don't type "did the holocaust happen". Instead, they will more likely type "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", "what is holocaust", or simply "holocaust". Each of these queries brings up a "clean" result page. On the other hand, it is those people who already think/suspect Holocaust isn't real that disproportionately type in "did the holocaust happen", they find the stormfront website, and they click on it because it matches their preconception. Google learns that users typing this particular query likes this result, and acts accordingly. To Google's algorithm, this is exactly like learning that people typing "introduction to algorithms" love to go to the Amazon page selling the venerable CLRS. Nothing inherently nefarious. In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality.

saurik 10y ago
> ...they click on it because it [...]. Google learns that users typing this particular query likes this result, and acts accordingly. This is a horrifying way of deciding users "like" something and if they are actually doing that it would very rapidly lead to the rise of click bait in all search terms.
- landryraccoon 10y ago
  Can you propose an alternative? Maximizing clicks is straightforward; a local minimum is increasing ad revenue and serving things that users will click on serves that purpose.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    Google also measure bounce rates and dwell time. If a user follows a link but navigates back to the search engine results page within a few seconds, that's a strong negative relevance signal.
  - saurik 10y ago
    I would argue "not attempting to solve the problem" would be better than that solution? (Thankfully, I really doubt any major search engine actually does that.) As you even seem to get: maximizing clicks is relatively easy and websites often only care about the landing, so there is not just a bad optimization in a search engine doing this but it leads to a horrific incentivize to build more useless webpages people click on and then leave. It is also worth nothing that in addition to that model falling prey to clickbait topping all the search results, it also penalizes results whose snippet contains the answer (which is the best possible search result from the perspective of a search engine being useful to a searcher). Apple once noted that sorting iOS apps by number and speed of installs was a big problem because it encouraged apps that looked and sounded too good to be true but often were horrible to use, so a while back they switched to a model of "how long do users leave this app installed on their devices" or something like similar (it might have been an "engagement" model, which has the much less bad but still existent well-known flaw of "it encourages people to make their app a little slower and require a few more steps to slightly increase the metrics of how long people use it").
  - __derek__ 10y ago
    Well, one alternative would be to revert to its old model. This is a direct result of Google's decision to emphasize user behavior over information in its algorithms. As I alluded in another comment, this has created a new kind of link farm.
deleted 10y ago
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kylehotchkiss 10y ago
You make a good point, Wikipedia has seemed to be (or at least there wasn't a recent major controversy) immune to much of this 'fake news' / 'mainstream conspiracy theories' movement. Wonder what their secret is. I'm sure it's an editorial war front there.
- joatmon-snoo 10y ago
  It seems to be in large part due to (1) articles that require strong background knowledge tend to only be edited by appropriately knowledgeable authorities (e.g. higher level maths, quantum dynamics) and (2) editing privileges for highly controversial articles tends to be very tightly controlled. There's also an interesting trend wherein Wikipedia editors tend to drift to the political center: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somethings-terribly-wrong-with-the-internet-and-wikipedia-might-be-able-to-fix-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somet...
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    The mystery is why wikipedia hasn't been hijacked by rogue editors yet. What is the defense mechanism? Do the original founders still have ultima control? Have they carefully chosen deputies?
ericlamb89 10y ago
>I think the author is missing an important point: people who are genuinely curious about Holocaust usually don't type "did the holocaust happen" This seems to make a big assumption about what defines "people who are genuinely curious". I think your queries of "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", etc would instead describe someone who genuinely knows how to critically think and search for information, as opposed to someone who is simply "curious". You or I would search for info in that way, but a curious person could be anyone (e.g. a child or a teenager who has just been told by a peer that the holocaust was a hoax). Their first instinct might not be to search for specific sources or statistics, but rather to type "did the holocaust happen".
- yongjik 10y ago
  Well, yes I agree, hence the weasel-word "usually". :) It's all about statistics. That particular query somehow invites a larger number of Holocaust deniers than other similar queries. It's unfortunate that someone who are just curious might end up learning bogus history, and most people would agree that Google could do better here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone's actively gaming the system.
MarcScott 10y ago
My thought exactly. You can type "did the moon..." and inevitable bring up conspiracy sites focusing on how the moon landings were faked. Most of the people that enter this query will find exactly what they're looking for. Google's algorithm is doing it's job very well.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  You assume that people who are questioning already have the answer they want. You mistakenly think everyone knows everything they will ever know
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
The other thing that the author apparently completely fails to realize - since she's written 3 articles on the subject now, looking back through her Guardian history - is that Google search is _personalized_. If you're constantly searching for the same terms - which she quite clearly is - Google's going to spit out results similar to those that it gives to people searching for similar things. Also, something that I think is relevant: searching "yes the holocaust happened" turns up an assortment of news articles talking about "hey, look who finally acknowledged that the holocaust happened!" There's no one out there furiously insisting that the holocaust happened, because most people (I hope) take that for granted - it's the people devoted to spinning wild conspiracy theories that run websites and blogs devoted to pushing their theory. No one's devoted to proving what everyone already agrees with.
- adevine 10y ago
  I don't think I've ever typed in a search query before using the word "holocaust", but my results are largely the the same as the author's - Stormfront is #1, "The Holocaust Hoax" is a little further down at #5. I think the scary thing about this query, though, is that for better or worse people DO search Google for factual answers. Sure, someone searching "Did the holocaust happen?" is likely to already be doubting the Holocaust actually occurred, but given that I think it's a very bad thing that the top answer from Google confirms their false beliefs. It turns from "Some crazy bullshit white supremacist website told me the Holocaust didn't happen" to "Google told me the Holocaust didn't happen."
  - lisivka 10y ago
    If you will fact check claims about Holocaust, you will see that numbers are made up. My mother and grandmother are Jews. My grandmother lived near to Kyiv (Kiev) at times of WWWII. When I asked my mother about Babi Yar (Old Women Rave)[1], where 200 thousands of Jews were executed, she said that it is false: 190 thousands of Jews were evacuated to East, 40 thousands left only in Kyiv and surroundings, including my grandmother. I fact checked that and found that in Babi Yar only 621 Ukrainians, members of OUN, were executed by German army as partisans, including Ukrainian poetess Olena Teliga. Their grave is visible at aerial photos from USA archive made by German pilots: it near to radio mast. However, Russians claims that 200 thousands of anonymous Jews were executed in Babi Yar by Ukrainians, members of OUN, i.e. complete opposite to the fact. I also fact checked other similar claims about Odessa and Lviv and found that they are false too: in Odessa it was done by communists shortly after capture of Ukraine: thousands of victims were sink in Black Sea, in Lviv it just false: 200 dead instead of 200 000, none of them was Jew, they were British soldiers. It makes me to think that Russians are using Holocaust to meet their own goals, which makes it look real victims and real fact less trustworthy. I checked that and found answer in leaked Russian book for FSB newcomers: in Russia, state sponsors fake campaigns to help FSB to develop new agents in various organizations. Book describes technique how to use these fake claims to find a someone who is easy to manipulate. I was shocked by that. So, I know that Holocaust is real thing, because some of my grandmother relatives in Poland were victims of that, but I also know that some numbers are made up or fake. How I should react to all that? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
tedunangst 10y ago
You also get very different answers to "who is santorum" and "what is santorum" which reflects what people are trying to find.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  That shows that Google is good at distinguishing between pronouns.
jondubois 10y ago
Maybe the author's main issue is not with the search result itself but with the auto-complete suggestion. I think that the search result is fine because obviously if someone queried that entire phrase, it means that they are looking for a counter-argument to the mainstream consensus (which I think is fine - People should be allowed to explore alternative theories... Even if there is a chance that the information is false). I think that the main problem is that Google is going one step further and suggesting this query when you start typing "Did the" - And by doing so, Google is giving the topic more exposure (and more credibility) than it deserves.
- __derek__ 10y ago
  > if someone queried that entire phrase, it means that they are looking for a counter-argument to the mainstream consensus Yet they are getting conspiracy theories rather than counter-arguments and critical assessments. This seems like a consequence of relying too much on user feedback in assigning authority to a page. That emphasis lends itself to gaming in a similar way to the link farms that Google attempts to undermine: users engage with pages that confirm their preconceptions rather than with a genuine authority. For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo's more "naïve" results have that StormFront page as the eleventh result[1]. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=did+the+holocaust+happen https://duckduckgo.com/?q=did+the+holocaust+happen
gvd 10y ago
People need to be taught how to use the internet. There are too many noobs that just gobble up whatever they want to hear. It's already a lot safer to say "if your opinion doesn't match with what's on wikipedia, you are probably wrong"
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  I go back and forth between thinking this is something that needs to be taught and something that boils down to basic critical thinking (which means that teaching "how to use the Internet" would be more or less useless). I know that sounds a little dramatic, but it was obvious to me _as a child_ using the Internet that the search term had an effect on the results beyond the searcher's intent. This should be clear to anyone who realizes that the engine is fundamentally matching text. Yes, there are optimizations Google has since made that would probably benefit people to know about to make them understand the manner in which information is being delivered to them, and it's not at all unreasonable for people to be unaware of these already. But part of me is skeptical that this will have any non-trivial effect on how people consume information on the Internet. i.e., it's not an ignorance problem, it's a "fundamental common sense" problem.
twblalock 10y ago
> In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality. This needs to be more widely recognized. Google autocomplete results, fake news on Facebook, etc. are they way they are because a significant number of people lack critical thinking skills or seek affirmation of their current beliefs. People want to read those things -- if they didn't click on them, they would not end up being so visible. This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve. This isn't really a technical problem. It's a consequence of human nature, and I'm pessimistic about the viability of the technological solutions that have been proposed so far. This also reinforces my view that most people don't have good critical thinking skills. I've taught college students who would believe pretty much anything they read online. Nobody ever taught them that they should verify what they read before they believe it. I really wish school curricula would include better education in this area. But some of my Facebook friends who "like" the fake news stories are teachers, so I'm pessimistic about this as well.
- justinph 10y ago
  > This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve. Good. Make it hard to find. Make people have to dig into the vile corners of the internet to find it. Google isn't a public utility that is obligated to serve these hate groups. Stormfront doesn't have to be blocked from having their packets routed. Google just doesn't have to take any part in helping them surface their beliefs.
  - halflings 10y ago
    Whether explicit or implicit, that would still be targeting certain opinion groups... because yes, antisemitism and many types of racism and hate speech are still just opinions until acted upon. If somebody is looking for hate speech, they should find hate speech. I understand that search engines should avoid promoting hate speech when it is not needed, but like the parent comment showed that is currently the case for Google.
emmelaich 10y ago
Very good points. It also includes 'negative searching' which is my term for when I look for things or click on links out of a morbid fascination or sense of pity. Sometims I use 'open in incognito mode' but often I forget. This in particular applies to odd GooglePlus and Facebook links that I do my best to counter (via links to Wikipedia or Snopes or whatever I see most effective)
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bryanrasmussen 10y ago
well, if you're not an especially bright kid in high school history class learning about the holocaust and you happen to type "did the holocaust" then the autocomplete can be a nice little introduction to the world of fascism. Maybe you are actually looking for did the holocaust happen or some such because the skinhead in your class said the holocaust didn't really happen. And then Google shows you the first search result that asserts the holocaust didn't happen, not the first search result that tells you about holocaust denialism. So sure some people are looking for stormfront but maybe some people are also just looking, and unlucky enough to use google for their search.
deleted 10y ago
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by yongjik 10y ago

saurik 10y ago

> ...they click on it because it [...]. Google learns that users typing this particular query likes this result, and acts accordingly. This is a horrifying way of deciding users "like" something and if they are actually doing that it would very rapidly lead to the rise of click bait in all search terms.

landryraccoon 10y ago
Can you propose an alternative? Maximizing clicks is straightforward; a local minimum is increasing ad revenue and serving things that users will click on serves that purpose.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  Google also measure bounce rates and dwell time. If a user follows a link but navigates back to the search engine results page within a few seconds, that's a strong negative relevance signal.
- saurik 10y ago
  I would argue "not attempting to solve the problem" would be better than that solution? (Thankfully, I really doubt any major search engine actually does that.) As you even seem to get: maximizing clicks is relatively easy and websites often only care about the landing, so there is not just a bad optimization in a search engine doing this but it leads to a horrific incentivize to build more useless webpages people click on and then leave. It is also worth nothing that in addition to that model falling prey to clickbait topping all the search results, it also penalizes results whose snippet contains the answer (which is the best possible search result from the perspective of a search engine being useful to a searcher). Apple once noted that sorting iOS apps by number and speed of installs was a big problem because it encouraged apps that looked and sounded too good to be true but often were horrible to use, so a while back they switched to a model of "how long do users leave this app installed on their devices" or something like similar (it might have been an "engagement" model, which has the much less bad but still existent well-known flaw of "it encourages people to make their app a little slower and require a few more steps to slightly increase the metrics of how long people use it").
- __derek__ 10y ago
  Well, one alternative would be to revert to its old model. This is a direct result of Google's decision to emphasize user behavior over information in its algorithms. As I alluded in another comment, this has created a new kind of link farm.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kylehotchkiss 10y ago

You make a good point, Wikipedia has seemed to be (or at least there wasn't a recent major controversy) immune to much of this 'fake news' / 'mainstream conspiracy theories' movement. Wonder what their secret is. I'm sure it's an editorial war front there.

joatmon-snoo 10y ago
It seems to be in large part due to (1) articles that require strong background knowledge tend to only be edited by appropriately knowledgeable authorities (e.g. higher level maths, quantum dynamics) and (2) editing privileges for highly controversial articles tends to be very tightly controlled. There's also an interesting trend wherein Wikipedia editors tend to drift to the political center: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somethings-terribly-wrong-with-the-internet-and-wikipedia-might-be-able-to-fix-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somet...
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  The mystery is why wikipedia hasn't been hijacked by rogue editors yet. What is the defense mechanism? Do the original founders still have ultima control? Have they carefully chosen deputies?

ericlamb89 10y ago

>I think the author is missing an important point: people who are genuinely curious about Holocaust usually don't type "did the holocaust happen" This seems to make a big assumption about what defines "people who are genuinely curious". I think your queries of "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", etc would instead describe someone who genuinely knows how to critically think and search for information, as opposed to someone who is simply "curious". You or I would search for info in that way, but a curious person could be anyone (e.g. a child or a teenager who has just been told by a peer that the holocaust was a hoax). Their first instinct might not be to search for specific sources or statistics, but rather to type "did the holocaust happen".

yongjik 10y ago
Well, yes I agree, hence the weasel-word "usually". :) It's all about statistics. That particular query somehow invites a larger number of Holocaust deniers than other similar queries. It's unfortunate that someone who are just curious might end up learning bogus history, and most people would agree that Google could do better here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone's actively gaming the system.

MarcScott 10y ago

My thought exactly. You can type "did the moon..." and inevitable bring up conspiracy sites focusing on how the moon landings were faked. Most of the people that enter this query will find exactly what they're looking for. Google's algorithm is doing it's job very well.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
You assume that people who are questioning already have the answer they want. You mistakenly think everyone knows everything they will ever know

joatmon-snoo 10y ago

The other thing that the author apparently completely fails to realize - since she's written 3 articles on the subject now, looking back through her Guardian history - is that Google search is _personalized_. If you're constantly searching for the same terms - which she quite clearly is - Google's going to spit out results similar to those that it gives to people searching for similar things. Also, something that I think is relevant: searching "yes the holocaust happened" turns up an assortment of news articles talking about "hey, look who finally acknowledged that the holocaust happened!" There's no one out there furiously insisting that the holocaust happened, because most people (I hope) take that for granted - it's the people devoted to spinning wild conspiracy theories that run websites and blogs devoted to pushing their theory. No one's devoted to proving what everyone already agrees with.

adevine 10y ago
I don't think I've ever typed in a search query before using the word "holocaust", but my results are largely the the same as the author's - Stormfront is #1, "The Holocaust Hoax" is a little further down at #5. I think the scary thing about this query, though, is that for better or worse people DO search Google for factual answers. Sure, someone searching "Did the holocaust happen?" is likely to already be doubting the Holocaust actually occurred, but given that I think it's a very bad thing that the top answer from Google confirms their false beliefs. It turns from "Some crazy bullshit white supremacist website told me the Holocaust didn't happen" to "Google told me the Holocaust didn't happen."
- lisivka 10y ago
  If you will fact check claims about Holocaust, you will see that numbers are made up. My mother and grandmother are Jews. My grandmother lived near to Kyiv (Kiev) at times of WWWII. When I asked my mother about Babi Yar (Old Women Rave)[1], where 200 thousands of Jews were executed, she said that it is false: 190 thousands of Jews were evacuated to East, 40 thousands left only in Kyiv and surroundings, including my grandmother. I fact checked that and found that in Babi Yar only 621 Ukrainians, members of OUN, were executed by German army as partisans, including Ukrainian poetess Olena Teliga. Their grave is visible at aerial photos from USA archive made by German pilots: it near to radio mast. However, Russians claims that 200 thousands of anonymous Jews were executed in Babi Yar by Ukrainians, members of OUN, i.e. complete opposite to the fact. I also fact checked other similar claims about Odessa and Lviv and found that they are false too: in Odessa it was done by communists shortly after capture of Ukraine: thousands of victims were sink in Black Sea, in Lviv it just false: 200 dead instead of 200 000, none of them was Jew, they were British soldiers. It makes me to think that Russians are using Holocaust to meet their own goals, which makes it look real victims and real fact less trustworthy. I checked that and found answer in leaked Russian book for FSB newcomers: in Russia, state sponsors fake campaigns to help FSB to develop new agents in various organizations. Book describes technique how to use these fake claims to find a someone who is easy to manipulate. I was shocked by that. So, I know that Holocaust is real thing, because some of my grandmother relatives in Poland were victims of that, but I also know that some numbers are made up or fake. How I should react to all that? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar

tedunangst 10y ago

You also get very different answers to "who is santorum" and "what is santorum" which reflects what people are trying to find.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
That shows that Google is good at distinguishing between pronouns.

jondubois 10y ago

Maybe the author's main issue is not with the search result itself but with the auto-complete suggestion. I think that the search result is fine because obviously if someone queried that entire phrase, it means that they are looking for a counter-argument to the mainstream consensus (which I think is fine - People should be allowed to explore alternative theories... Even if there is a chance that the information is false). I think that the main problem is that Google is going one step further and suggesting this query when you start typing "Did the" - And by doing so, Google is giving the topic more exposure (and more credibility) than it deserves.

__derek__ 10y ago
> if someone queried that entire phrase, it means that they are looking for a counter-argument to the mainstream consensus Yet they are getting conspiracy theories rather than counter-arguments and critical assessments. This seems like a consequence of relying too much on user feedback in assigning authority to a page. That emphasis lends itself to gaming in a similar way to the link farms that Google attempts to undermine: users engage with pages that confirm their preconceptions rather than with a genuine authority. For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo's more "naïve" results have that StormFront page as the eleventh result[1]. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=did+the+holocaust+happen https://duckduckgo.com/?q=did+the+holocaust+happen

gvd 10y ago

People need to be taught how to use the internet. There are too many noobs that just gobble up whatever they want to hear. It's already a lot safer to say "if your opinion doesn't match with what's on wikipedia, you are probably wrong"

wutbrodo 10y ago
I go back and forth between thinking this is something that needs to be taught and something that boils down to basic critical thinking (which means that teaching "how to use the Internet" would be more or less useless). I know that sounds a little dramatic, but it was obvious to me _as a child_ using the Internet that the search term had an effect on the results beyond the searcher's intent. This should be clear to anyone who realizes that the engine is fundamentally matching text. Yes, there are optimizations Google has since made that would probably benefit people to know about to make them understand the manner in which information is being delivered to them, and it's not at all unreasonable for people to be unaware of these already. But part of me is skeptical that this will have any non-trivial effect on how people consume information on the Internet. i.e., it's not an ignorance problem, it's a "fundamental common sense" problem.

twblalock 10y ago

> In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality. This needs to be more widely recognized. Google autocomplete results, fake news on Facebook, etc. are they way they are because a significant number of people lack critical thinking skills or seek affirmation of their current beliefs. People want to read those things -- if they didn't click on them, they would not end up being so visible. This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve. This isn't really a technical problem. It's a consequence of human nature, and I'm pessimistic about the viability of the technological solutions that have been proposed so far. This also reinforces my view that most people don't have good critical thinking skills. I've taught college students who would believe pretty much anything they read online. Nobody ever taught them that they should verify what they read before they believe it. I really wish school curricula would include better education in this area. But some of my Facebook friends who "like" the fake news stories are teachers, so I'm pessimistic about this as well.

justinph 10y ago
> This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve. Good. Make it hard to find. Make people have to dig into the vile corners of the internet to find it. Google isn't a public utility that is obligated to serve these hate groups. Stormfront doesn't have to be blocked from having their packets routed. Google just doesn't have to take any part in helping them surface their beliefs.
- halflings 10y ago
  Whether explicit or implicit, that would still be targeting certain opinion groups... because yes, antisemitism and many types of racism and hate speech are still just opinions until acted upon. If somebody is looking for hate speech, they should find hate speech. I understand that search engines should avoid promoting hate speech when it is not needed, but like the parent comment showed that is currently the case for Google.

emmelaich 10y ago

Very good points. It also includes 'negative searching' which is my term for when I look for things or click on links out of a morbid fascination or sense of pity. Sometims I use 'open in incognito mode' but often I forget. This in particular applies to odd GooglePlus and Facebook links that I do my best to counter (via links to Wikipedia or Snopes or whatever I see most effective)

deleted 10y ago

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bryanrasmussen 10y ago

well, if you're not an especially bright kid in high school history class learning about the holocaust and you happen to type "did the holocaust" then the autocomplete can be a nice little introduction to the world of fascism. Maybe you are actually looking for did the holocaust happen or some such because the skinhead in your class said the holocaust didn't really happen. And then Google shows you the first search result that asserts the holocaust didn't happen, not the first search result that tells you about holocaust denialism. So sure some people are looking for stormfront but maybe some people are also just looking, and unlucky enough to use google for their search.

deleted 10y ago

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