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I had a conversation with family member yesterday who also took this story and ran with it. I tried to explain to them that the google algorithm is a giant, mul

I had a conversation with family member yesterday who also took this story and ran with it. I tried to explain to them that the google algorithm is a giant, multi billion parameter organism that is changing in real-time as it continues to spider new content and update it's weights as new content is posted on the internet. The training takes place across multiple countries, timezones, and data centers. I think it is safe to say it would be impossible for a team of evil liberals scientist working at google to surreptitiously bias the algorithm to only yeild liberal results, and penalize conservative content at the same time. The person said I was wrong (they have no experience in CS/Stats/ML, etc). I am not sure where we go from here, it seems like a nice example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

alphabettsy 8y ago
It’s really difficult to convince someone they’re wrong, especially when it’s coming from their trusted source and something they’d like to believe anyway. I can’t tell you how many times these last two years I’ve pointed out that what someone said or posted regarding politics was incorrect or completely untrue and their response was “well it seems true” or “I could see them doing that though”. Even presented with contradictory evidence from a source they trust, they still want to believe it.
repolfx 8y ago
What makes you think your family member is wrong? I used to work for Google, worked there for years. I am very familiar with how it works internally. For standard web search the algorithms are indeed very complex and the core PageRank concept is pretty democratic. It wouldn't be easy to bias it politically without it being widely known to employees. But Trump isn't talking about generic web search results. He's talking about news. News is treated specially by Google. News-relevant queries trigger the Google News oneboxes (well, universal search mixins). Google News does not use PageRank to rank news sources. News sources are whitelisted and I believe it's not documented anywhere how it decides how to rank stories. A simple test to decide whether News is biased or not is to look at its front page and see how often stories from Breitbart show up. Like it or not, Breitbart is (or appears to be) a popular and prolific news site: https://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/newswhip-may-june-breitbart-640x480.jpg https://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/newswhip-may-june-... I have never, not once, seen News rank any story from Breitbart anywhere. I just search [trump] on News. Here are the story sources it selected, in order: The Guardian, CNN, CNN, WashPo, CNN, CNN, The Guardian, CNN, CNN, Business Insider, CNN, Fox News, NBCNews, Fox News, New York Times, the Independent, CNN, WashPo, CNN, New York Times. Do you think that it's at least understandable, why a family member who observes such result lists might conclude that Google staff have an agenda? And do you agree that explaining this conclusion as stupidity (the Dunning-Kruger effect) is unnecessary given that neither you nor anyone else outside of a small team at Google actually knows what their news ranking algorithm is?
- misiti3780 8y ago
  I am saying my understanding of page rank is that it is basically impossible to bias - i do not work at google, but i have a background in math.
- misiti3780 8y ago
  maybe its not page rank, but as far as i can tell it is public information: https://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf https://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf. also, my family member was not talking about the news site, they were talking about google searches themselves being biased, as well as google search autocomplete being baised in favor a clinton (see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvfNExG8kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvfNExG8kw)
  - repolfx 8y ago
    That paper is talking about user recommendations, not ranking. Your family member was without a doubt talking about Google News even if they weren't aware of it because results from News are mixed in to generic search results. If you search [trump] on web search then the top part of the page is dedicated entirely to results that come from News, not generic web search. The idea that Google News is unbiased is unsustainable, simply because humans whitelist news sources. It's not like web search where basically any web page can appear at any location automatically. There is no algorithm for deciding if a website is "news" or not. It's a human judgement. Google employees have literally cried in company meetings when Trump was elected, only someone very naive would believe these people are going to be neutral about what sources they allow and how they decide which sources are more authoritative than others. Do you believe it's a coincidence that Breitbart never ranks, despite having an Alexa rank essentially the same as the Washington Post, given how Google employees are reported to have acted lately? Your knowledge of maths is I'm afraid not very relevant to this topic because mathematics is simply a tool. Your family member is evaluating humans and their likely actions, not algorithms, and that is the correct thing to do because it's ultimately humans that control the algorithms. Google employees are perfectly capable of biasing its results and then lying about it to the public, without even being aware that they're doing it.

alphabettsy 8y ago

It’s really difficult to convince someone they’re wrong, especially when it’s coming from their trusted source and something they’d like to believe anyway. I can’t tell you how many times these last two years I’ve pointed out that what someone said or posted regarding politics was incorrect or completely untrue and their response was “well it seems true” or “I could see them doing that though”. Even presented with contradictory evidence from a source they trust, they still want to believe it.

repolfx 8y ago

What makes you think your family member is wrong? I used to work for Google, worked there for years. I am very familiar with how it works internally. For standard web search the algorithms are indeed very complex and the core PageRank concept is pretty democratic. It wouldn't be easy to bias it politically without it being widely known to employees. But Trump isn't talking about generic web search results. He's talking about news. News is treated specially by Google. News-relevant queries trigger the Google News oneboxes (well, universal search mixins). Google News does not use PageRank to rank news sources. News sources are whitelisted and I believe it's not documented anywhere how it decides how to rank stories. A simple test to decide whether News is biased or not is to look at its front page and see how often stories from Breitbart show up. Like it or not, Breitbart is (or appears to be) a popular and prolific news site: https://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/newswhip-may-june-breitbart-640x480.jpg https://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/06/newswhip-may-june-... I have never, not once, seen News rank any story from Breitbart anywhere. I just search [trump] on News. Here are the story sources it selected, in order: The Guardian, CNN, CNN, WashPo, CNN, CNN, The Guardian, CNN, CNN, Business Insider, CNN, Fox News, NBCNews, Fox News, New York Times, the Independent, CNN, WashPo, CNN, New York Times. Do you think that it's at least understandable, why a family member who observes such result lists might conclude that Google staff have an agenda? And do you agree that explaining this conclusion as stupidity (the Dunning-Kruger effect) is unnecessary given that neither you nor anyone else outside of a small team at Google actually knows what their news ranking algorithm is?

misiti3780 8y ago
I am saying my understanding of page rank is that it is basically impossible to bias - i do not work at google, but i have a background in math.
misiti3780 8y ago
maybe its not page rank, but as far as i can tell it is public information: https://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf https://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf. also, my family member was not talking about the news site, they were talking about google searches themselves being biased, as well as google search autocomplete being baised in favor a clinton (see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvfNExG8kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvfNExG8kw)
- repolfx 8y ago
  That paper is talking about user recommendations, not ranking. Your family member was without a doubt talking about Google News even if they weren't aware of it because results from News are mixed in to generic search results. If you search [trump] on web search then the top part of the page is dedicated entirely to results that come from News, not generic web search. The idea that Google News is unbiased is unsustainable, simply because humans whitelist news sources. It's not like web search where basically any web page can appear at any location automatically. There is no algorithm for deciding if a website is "news" or not. It's a human judgement. Google employees have literally cried in company meetings when Trump was elected, only someone very naive would believe these people are going to be neutral about what sources they allow and how they decide which sources are more authoritative than others. Do you believe it's a coincidence that Breitbart never ranks, despite having an Alexa rank essentially the same as the Washington Post, given how Google employees are reported to have acted lately? Your knowledge of maths is I'm afraid not very relevant to this topic because mathematics is simply a tool. Your family member is evaluating humans and their likely actions, not algorithms, and that is the correct thing to do because it's ultimately humans that control the algorithms. Google employees are perfectly capable of biasing its results and then lying about it to the public, without even being aware that they're doing it.