10 ms·

I'm struggling to see a significant difference. What are you seeing?

calibas 8y ago
The first 3 results are the same, then Google tends to be glowing endorsements for Kamala with absolutely nothing critical. Google: "2020 candidate Kamala Harris says her top priority is raising incomes" "Kamala Harris: young, black, female – and the Democrats' best bet" "2020 candidate Kamala Harris wants to give working class families $500 a month" DuckDuckGo: "Kamala Harris says she smoked marijuana in college while listening to music that didn't exist yet" "Extramarital affair with Kamala Harris?" "Willie Brown on Kamala Harris: 'We dated,' I 'influenced her ..." There's clear favoritism there.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  The Washington Examiner pot story is #4 on Google's "top stories" section in my search results. You see pro-Harris bias; I see you looking for more tabloid-y results.
  - calibas 8y ago
    The "tabloid-y results" are also the truth of how her career started, strangely missing from Google. I think the biggest bias here is people wanting to believe Google's search results can still be trusted.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      #4 on the top stories hardly seems like "missing", and I can't say I fault the news algorithm for weighting a senator and presidential candidate's current policy proposals over a blurry memory of what song she listened to while smoking pot in college, or a relationship from twenty years ago.
      - calibas 8y ago
        This is exactly what I'm talking about. The "tabloid-y results" that are also the truth of how her career started are not her smoking pot in college. You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        > You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it. I'm well aware of both stories you highlighted. Both are far less important than the current policy proposals of a presidential contender, so I argue Google is correct not to highlight them as the top couple of stories about Harris if you search for her.
        calibas 8y ago
        Sleeping with a married superior to get a better job really brings someone's character into question, but maybe the bar for corruption in US politics is set so high people don't care anymore. With Google you get her policy proposals, with DDG you get that too and the actual dirt on the politician. I like to have all the information.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        Per https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/28/18200885/willie-brown-kamala-harris-2020 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/28/18200885/w..., Brown was separated "for more than a decade" from his wife at the time. I have a hard time seeing that as a major character flaw. The assertion that she slept with him "to get a better job" is just that - an assertion. > As Siders notes, suggesting that Brown had any influence over Harris’s professional ascent obscures the fact that he broadly exerted the same influence over numerous politicians in the region, given his wide-ranging position of power. > “It is difficult to find any successful politician in San Francisco who does not have history with Brown,” writes Siders. “Before being elected mayor of San Francisco the same year Harris ran for district attorney, Newsom owed his start in San Francisco politics to an appointment by Brown to the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission, and later, to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.” You're really only reinforcing my point - that Google's correctly selecting the more meaningful news stories here. This information is all available on Google (hell, that's how I found it). It's just not the "top story", per Google's algorithmic judgement call.
- seiferteric 8y ago
  For me the very first news story on google was about her smoking pot and listening to Tupac (as if I care) via fox news.. so it's not so clear to me.
- alehul 8y ago
  Your comment made me check out DuckDuckGo for the first time in a long while. To support your point, there's also a huge difference in the auto-fill suggestions, and I'd guess DuckDuckGo is more accurate to what users actually search. How is it possible that this woman had an affair with the mayor of San Francisco, and the top auto-fill suggestions on Google are "parents," "sister," "mother," and "breakfast club," rather than "affair," "willie brown," and so forth (on DuckDuckGo)?
  - bduerst 8y ago
    This perception of bias stems from a technical illiteracy of search autocomplete. Even your example is a removed autocomplete result because of sexual content [1]. Google recently re-explained how their autocomplete policy works [2] because partisan hacks were cherry-picking queries to accuse Google of bias [3], not unlike GP is doing here. [1] https://www.blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocomplete-works-search/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocompl... [2] https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-autocomplete/ https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-autocomple... [3] https://medium.com/@rhea/hillary-clintons-search-results-manipulated-by-sourcefed-not-google-3dd9a5c68ca1 https://medium.com/@rhea/hillary-clintons-search-results-man...
    - calibas 8y ago
      How is the decision actually made, does a person decide? I don't really see any real technical details there, I'm just supposed to trust Google.
      - bduerst 8y ago
        Did you actually look? If you would read the citations you would see that details on how it is done by predictive algorithms.
        calibas 8y ago
        What happens when a human being reports a prediction? Is that done purely by an algorithm? I still see nothing with real technical details in the three articles you linked to.
- bduerst 8y ago
  DuckDuckGo is Bing search results. What you're doing is seeing artifacts of different search engine technology and chalking it up to favoritism because you want to perceive a bias.
  - calibas 8y ago
    DuckDuckGo is not Bing, though they have some worrying connections to Bing/Yahoo. Interesting note, Bing's results are much more similar to Google's, with no mention of what happened between Harris and Willie Brown. There's a whole industry built around manipulating search results, what you see is not simply an "artifacts of different search engine technology". There's a very biased, politicized, human element to all of this. The moment you create an "objective" search algorithm, people are going to reverse-engineer it and exploit it. Then results can be rigged simply by selective enforcement of the rules.
    - bduerst 8y ago
      DuckDuckGo is a search aggregation of Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. Yahoo has been Bing search for over a decade, so unless you're searching in Russian, it's Bing search results. I'm not sure if you even know who you're talking about, since you originally claimed the search engines were biased, but now you're accusing the SEO 'manipulators' of being the bad actors. Again, I think you're perceiving bias where you want it to exist, not where the evidence shows it existing.
      - calibas 8y ago
        Both Alphabet and marketers are biased, I have no idea why it would have to be one or the other. A search engine fails to produce results about the biggest scandal of a politician's career, and I'm supposed to believe it's simply being objective and I'm the one being biased.
        bduerst 8y ago
        So you at least understand now how DDG is Bing? Wikipedia lists her relationship as a footnote in her personal life, hardly the mountain you're making it out to be. Are you going to accuse Wikipedia of being biased too? You're free to set your own burden of proof and believe whatever you want to, but that doesn't necessarily make it fact.

The first 3 results are the same, then Google tends to be glowing endorsements for Kamala with absolutely nothing critical. Google: "2020 candidate Kamala Harris says her top priority is raising incomes" "Kamala Harris: young, black, female – and the Democrats' best bet" "2020 candidate Kamala Harris wants to give working class families $500 a month" DuckDuckGo: "Kamala Harris says she smoked marijuana in college while listening to music that didn't exist yet" "Extramarital affair with Kamala Harris?" "Willie Brown on Kamala Harris: 'We dated,' I 'influenced her ..." There's clear favoritism there.

ceejayoz 8y ago
The Washington Examiner pot story is #4 on Google's "top stories" section in my search results. You see pro-Harris bias; I see you looking for more tabloid-y results.
- calibas 8y ago
  The "tabloid-y results" are also the truth of how her career started, strangely missing from Google. I think the biggest bias here is people wanting to believe Google's search results can still be trusted.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    #4 on the top stories hardly seems like "missing", and I can't say I fault the news algorithm for weighting a senator and presidential candidate's current policy proposals over a blurry memory of what song she listened to while smoking pot in college, or a relationship from twenty years ago.
    - calibas 8y ago
      This is exactly what I'm talking about. The "tabloid-y results" that are also the truth of how her career started are not her smoking pot in college. You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        > You don't even know what I'm referring to because Google's results don't mention it. I'm well aware of both stories you highlighted. Both are far less important than the current policy proposals of a presidential contender, so I argue Google is correct not to highlight them as the top couple of stories about Harris if you search for her.
        calibas 8y ago
        Sleeping with a married superior to get a better job really brings someone's character into question, but maybe the bar for corruption in US politics is set so high people don't care anymore. With Google you get her policy proposals, with DDG you get that too and the actual dirt on the politician. I like to have all the information.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        Per https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/28/18200885/willie-brown-kamala-harris-2020 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/28/18200885/w..., Brown was separated "for more than a decade" from his wife at the time. I have a hard time seeing that as a major character flaw. The assertion that she slept with him "to get a better job" is just that - an assertion. > As Siders notes, suggesting that Brown had any influence over Harris’s professional ascent obscures the fact that he broadly exerted the same influence over numerous politicians in the region, given his wide-ranging position of power. > “It is difficult to find any successful politician in San Francisco who does not have history with Brown,” writes Siders. “Before being elected mayor of San Francisco the same year Harris ran for district attorney, Newsom owed his start in San Francisco politics to an appointment by Brown to the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission, and later, to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.” You're really only reinforcing my point - that Google's correctly selecting the more meaningful news stories here. This information is all available on Google (hell, that's how I found it). It's just not the "top story", per Google's algorithmic judgement call.
seiferteric 8y ago
For me the very first news story on google was about her smoking pot and listening to Tupac (as if I care) via fox news.. so it's not so clear to me.
alehul 8y ago
Your comment made me check out DuckDuckGo for the first time in a long while. To support your point, there's also a huge difference in the auto-fill suggestions, and I'd guess DuckDuckGo is more accurate to what users actually search. How is it possible that this woman had an affair with the mayor of San Francisco, and the top auto-fill suggestions on Google are "parents," "sister," "mother," and "breakfast club," rather than "affair," "willie brown," and so forth (on DuckDuckGo)?
- bduerst 8y ago
  This perception of bias stems from a technical illiteracy of search autocomplete. Even your example is a removed autocomplete result because of sexual content [1]. Google recently re-explained how their autocomplete policy works [2] because partisan hacks were cherry-picking queries to accuse Google of bias [3], not unlike GP is doing here. [1] https://www.blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocomplete-works-search/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocompl... [2] https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-autocomplete/ https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-autocomple... [3] https://medium.com/@rhea/hillary-clintons-search-results-manipulated-by-sourcefed-not-google-3dd9a5c68ca1 https://medium.com/@rhea/hillary-clintons-search-results-man...
  - calibas 8y ago
    How is the decision actually made, does a person decide? I don't really see any real technical details there, I'm just supposed to trust Google.
    - bduerst 8y ago
      Did you actually look? If you would read the citations you would see that details on how it is done by predictive algorithms.
      - calibas 8y ago
        What happens when a human being reports a prediction? Is that done purely by an algorithm? I still see nothing with real technical details in the three articles you linked to.
bduerst 8y ago
DuckDuckGo is Bing search results. What you're doing is seeing artifacts of different search engine technology and chalking it up to favoritism because you want to perceive a bias.
- calibas 8y ago
  DuckDuckGo is not Bing, though they have some worrying connections to Bing/Yahoo. Interesting note, Bing's results are much more similar to Google's, with no mention of what happened between Harris and Willie Brown. There's a whole industry built around manipulating search results, what you see is not simply an "artifacts of different search engine technology". There's a very biased, politicized, human element to all of this. The moment you create an "objective" search algorithm, people are going to reverse-engineer it and exploit it. Then results can be rigged simply by selective enforcement of the rules.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    DuckDuckGo is a search aggregation of Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. Yahoo has been Bing search for over a decade, so unless you're searching in Russian, it's Bing search results. I'm not sure if you even know who you're talking about, since you originally claimed the search engines were biased, but now you're accusing the SEO 'manipulators' of being the bad actors. Again, I think you're perceiving bias where you want it to exist, not where the evidence shows it existing.
    - calibas 8y ago
      Both Alphabet and marketers are biased, I have no idea why it would have to be one or the other. A search engine fails to produce results about the biggest scandal of a politician's career, and I'm supposed to believe it's simply being objective and I'm the one being biased.
      - bduerst 8y ago
        So you at least understand now how DDG is Bing? Wikipedia lists her relationship as a footnote in her personal life, hardly the mountain you're making it out to be. Are you going to accuse Wikipedia of being biased too? You're free to set your own burden of proof and believe whatever you want to, but that doesn't necessarily make it fact.