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Google Is Listing “Nazism” as the Ideology of the California Republican Party

20 points by mudil 8y ago

repolfx 8y ago
It came from Wikipedia. Here's the edit that undid it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=California_Republican_Party&diff=843698358&oldid=842714790 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=California_Republ... Someone also added "Authoritarianism" which was also reverted. It's tough being Google, but this sort of thing was inevitable as they started lifting more and more answers provided by random people into authoritative sections of search results. Copy/pasting a section called "ideology" into their own results page was especially naive. If they'd just listed the wikipedia page at the top like they used to, they wouldn't be in this mess. And it is a mess. This one doesn't reflect any particular issue with Google employees, apparently, but I just searched California Republican Party and hey look at that - the top result is a news story from Politico with the headline "California Republicans hit rock bottom". Right, that is absolutely the most relevant and useful result someone searching this phrase might be looking for - in what universe? Also, they're pretty much manually editing SERPs for political reasons at this point. They suppressed the "ideology" line for the Wikipedia box on the query Vice reported, but they're still importing them in general and the democrats SERP still has "ideology" present in the box. In fact the SERP for "California Democratic Party" is significantly better for the Democrats in general. Then tweets about them are inlined as the second result - the republicans don't get at all. Then there's three news results with images, all from friendly publications like CNN and the WashPo (although the news stories are all about the Dems not having good luck in the race apparently?).
- pfarrell 8y ago
  I got the same "California Republicans hit rock bottom" result. Political views aside, Google are publishing libelous content and they should own up to it. In fact, the instant they "manually" altered knowledge boxes, no matter the intention or content of the edit, they put too much of their thumb on the scale and (imho) lost any "safe harbor" protection they may have enjoyed.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    AFAIK Google News does not editorialize story selection. It's all done algorithmically, largely based on what people click on. I would bet that most of the people searching for [california republican party] today are drawn there because of this story about Nazism being listed as its ideology. They see a click-bait headline about how the CA Republican Party has hit rock-bottom, and they click on it. That pushes it higher in Google's algorithms, so it's shown to more people, and so on. Supporting this is that the #3 headline is currently a Fox News story about how Google is under fire for listing Nazism as the ideology on this query, which wasn't there when I checked a couple hours ago. People click on click-bait, particularly click-bait relevant to the reason they made the search in the first place, and that makes the click-bait rise higher in the rankings.
    - pfarrell 8y ago
      Agree with your line of reasoning on how this may have occurred, but I think there's a difference in perception on between the infobox and current headlines. I think the infobox's information should be more objective. If Google's algorithms aren't capable of being configured to prevent distributing misinformation, intentional or not, I think the entire dynamically generated practice should be abandoned.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      We actually don't know what Google News' algorithm is based on. I don't think they've ever said it's simply counting clicks. Heck I worked there for years and I have no idea how News ranks things. Ranking one was one of the few parts of the Google codebase not accessible to all engineers. It'd be a much more trustworthy product if they did explain how they rank news stories. Newspapers aren't general websites, there are far fewer of them, the risk of gaming the algorithms is much lower.
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        I actually do know - in broad strokes, not the specifics - how it ranks things. I was ex-Google-Search, several years ago, and worked with News engineers on a couple projects. Plus it's sorta the poster child for their internal machine-learning course.
pfarrell 8y ago
AFAICT, Google has addressed it as "ideology" does not appear in info boxes. Anyone else seeing it?
tyingq 8y ago
Try "what is a nickle worth?" on Google. I get an answer that is mostly about pennies.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  It depends on if you're European or American. Europeans pronounce it the right way "Nick-louse Veert", but Americans mangle it into "Nickel's Worth." This is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. ...Oh, wait -- never mind. I thought you said "Niklaus Wirth". https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth

20 points by mudil 8y ago

It came from Wikipedia. Here's the edit that undid it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=California_Republican_Party&diff=843698358&oldid=842714790 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=California_Republ... Someone also added "Authoritarianism" which was also reverted. It's tough being Google, but this sort of thing was inevitable as they started lifting more and more answers provided by random people into authoritative sections of search results. Copy/pasting a section called "ideology" into their own results page was especially naive. If they'd just listed the wikipedia page at the top like they used to, they wouldn't be in this mess. And it is a mess. This one doesn't reflect any particular issue with Google employees, apparently, but I just searched California Republican Party and hey look at that - the top result is a news story from Politico with the headline "California Republicans hit rock bottom". Right, that is absolutely the most relevant and useful result someone searching this phrase might be looking for - in what universe? Also, they're pretty much manually editing SERPs for political reasons at this point. They suppressed the "ideology" line for the Wikipedia box on the query Vice reported, but they're still importing them in general and the democrats SERP still has "ideology" present in the box. In fact the SERP for "California Democratic Party" is significantly better for the Democrats in general. Then tweets about them are inlined as the second result - the republicans don't get at all. Then there's three news results with images, all from friendly publications like CNN and the WashPo (although the news stories are all about the Dems not having good luck in the race apparently?).

pfarrell 8y ago
I got the same "California Republicans hit rock bottom" result. Political views aside, Google are publishing libelous content and they should own up to it. In fact, the instant they "manually" altered knowledge boxes, no matter the intention or content of the edit, they put too much of their thumb on the scale and (imho) lost any "safe harbor" protection they may have enjoyed.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  AFAIK Google News does not editorialize story selection. It's all done algorithmically, largely based on what people click on. I would bet that most of the people searching for [california republican party] today are drawn there because of this story about Nazism being listed as its ideology. They see a click-bait headline about how the CA Republican Party has hit rock-bottom, and they click on it. That pushes it higher in Google's algorithms, so it's shown to more people, and so on. Supporting this is that the #3 headline is currently a Fox News story about how Google is under fire for listing Nazism as the ideology on this query, which wasn't there when I checked a couple hours ago. People click on click-bait, particularly click-bait relevant to the reason they made the search in the first place, and that makes the click-bait rise higher in the rankings.
  - pfarrell 8y ago
    Agree with your line of reasoning on how this may have occurred, but I think there's a difference in perception on between the infobox and current headlines. I think the infobox's information should be more objective. If Google's algorithms aren't capable of being configured to prevent distributing misinformation, intentional or not, I think the entire dynamically generated practice should be abandoned.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    We actually don't know what Google News' algorithm is based on. I don't think they've ever said it's simply counting clicks. Heck I worked there for years and I have no idea how News ranks things. Ranking one was one of the few parts of the Google codebase not accessible to all engineers. It'd be a much more trustworthy product if they did explain how they rank news stories. Newspapers aren't general websites, there are far fewer of them, the risk of gaming the algorithms is much lower.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      I actually do know - in broad strokes, not the specifics - how it ranks things. I was ex-Google-Search, several years ago, and worked with News engineers on a couple projects. Plus it's sorta the poster child for their internal machine-learning course.

pfarrell 8y ago

AFAICT, Google has addressed it as "ideology" does not appear in info boxes. Anyone else seeing it?

tyingq 8y ago

Try "what is a nickle worth?" on Google. I get an answer that is mostly about pennies.

DonHopkins 8y ago
It depends on if you're European or American. Europeans pronounce it the right way "Nick-louse Veert", but Americans mangle it into "Nickel's Worth." This is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. ...Oh, wait -- never mind. I thought you said "Niklaus Wirth". https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth