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> He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton. Despite it being off topic, can we define why th

> He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton. Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? Is their data proving those claims wrong? Because with all the Google political controversies over the past few years, and given the political donation history of Google employees, it’s highly plausible that search results are manipulated to favor certain politics over others. If the “questionable claims” have been disproven or are inaccurate, then it would seem that you’d provide some proof. Essentially, it you are to claim the search engine was not biased towards Clinton, certainly there would be some proof of that? It’s more reasonable to suspect Google manipulating search engines than not, given the political environment at Google. The real “questionable claim” is that Google is neutral in any way — which is kind of the entire premise of the article. If Google were completely neutral, then why would their monopoly on search need to be broken?

nova22033 7y ago
>Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? the claims are questionable because his methodology is questionable. If he claims google is biased, he should have a good peer reviewable study that proves this..not google is biased because google didn't auto prompt me with "created AIDS" when I typed in hillary Clinton.... And he's the one making the claim that google is biased...The burden of proof is on HIM. This is a forum for people in the tech world, right? Shouldn't we question N=1 "studies"?
djsumdog 7y ago
What about Project Veritas? People claim the statements by Google employed were taken out of context, but I've gone back, listened to them, looked at the videos, and it's hard to think in what context anything they said is acceptable. Even if the specific engineers and managers in the video clips don't have the level of authority to make the changes they're talking about, it's still chilling that their attitude could be common in Google and they see political ends of their great power as being some kind of great responsibility; instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.
- nova22033 7y ago
  * instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.* Going to go out on a limb and say I don't respect "Hitler was a bad man" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" equally. Individual employees are allowed to have opinions...even opinions I don't agree with.
- Sebguer 7y ago
  Project Veritas has historically operated by guiding people into saying something ridiculous, either by themselves acting ridiculous (and convincing the person they're talking to that they're crazy) or just driving the conversation to ridiculous areas. Maybe this Google 'expose' is the first time they're not guilty of that, but anyone who still finds them credible after their last several blatant mischaracterizations is far more forgiving than I would be.
  - EdSharkey 7y ago
    The jester's job is to criticise the tyrant in his own court. Just enjoy the show.
  - izacus 7y ago
    Jen Gennai had this to say in her article https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-monday-to-go-e92771c7aa82 https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo... : " ... Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation. The video then goes on to stitch together a series of debunked conspiracy theories about our search results, and our other products. ... "
bduerst 7y ago
The "Manipulating instant search results in favor of Hillary Clinton" claim has been independently debunked and anyone still standing behind it are only signalling their technical illiteracy and/or political agenda for playing a victim card. [1][2][3] That's not really off-topic - The fact that the author still supports the claim calls into question their ability to make further claims about the subject. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-clinton/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-... [2] https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-google-debunked https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl... [3] https://mashable.com/2016/06/10/clinton-google-search/ https://mashable.com/2016/06/10/clinton-google-search/
- malvosenior 7y ago
  None of those blog posts debunk the idea that Google manipulates search results to favor particular political parties. Mashable has a statement from Google (the other two don't), saying that they don't but why would they say if they were? None of these debunk the claims made by Google employees in the Project Veritas videos.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    Except you're wrong in that you can't logically prove something doesn't exist. You can't prove that pink unicorns don't exist, just as much as you can't prove that political bias in the search results don't exist. All you can do is disprove the claims of their existence. Someone tries to claim there's a pink unicorn in the garage, and you can check the garage and say that the it is pink unicorn free. Someone tries to claim political bias exist for hillary clinton in instant search results, and these articles disprove that claim as using cherry picked evidence. Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence - preferrably without cherry picking evidence to fit an agenda yourself. Otherwise it's just hand waving and click bait.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      > Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence you can see for yourself as a user. In addition to that I know many people who work at Google and the vast majority of them have extreme political bias.
Ivoirians 7y ago
Disclaimer: Googler. I'm going to retread a comment I made when I first learned about Epstein a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084 In short, and ignoring my ad hominem attack on his motivations, I encourage you to read/skim his two "studies" [1][2] and see how absurd they are. You might dismiss my claims and summaries as biased, but I think I was pretty open-minded towards his conclusions until I read them. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with-ds=yes https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with... [2] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Metho...

nova22033 7y ago

>Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? the claims are questionable because his methodology is questionable. If he claims google is biased, he should have a good peer reviewable study that proves this..not google is biased because google didn't auto prompt me with "created AIDS" when I typed in hillary Clinton.... And he's the one making the claim that google is biased...The burden of proof is on HIM. This is a forum for people in the tech world, right? Shouldn't we question N=1 "studies"?

djsumdog 7y ago

What about Project Veritas? People claim the statements by Google employed were taken out of context, but I've gone back, listened to them, looked at the videos, and it's hard to think in what context anything they said is acceptable. Even if the specific engineers and managers in the video clips don't have the level of authority to make the changes they're talking about, it's still chilling that their attitude could be common in Google and they see political ends of their great power as being some kind of great responsibility; instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.

nova22033 7y ago
* instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.* Going to go out on a limb and say I don't respect "Hitler was a bad man" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" equally. Individual employees are allowed to have opinions...even opinions I don't agree with.
Sebguer 7y ago
Project Veritas has historically operated by guiding people into saying something ridiculous, either by themselves acting ridiculous (and convincing the person they're talking to that they're crazy) or just driving the conversation to ridiculous areas. Maybe this Google 'expose' is the first time they're not guilty of that, but anyone who still finds them credible after their last several blatant mischaracterizations is far more forgiving than I would be.
- EdSharkey 7y ago
  The jester's job is to criticise the tyrant in his own court. Just enjoy the show.
- izacus 7y ago
  Jen Gennai had this to say in her article https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-monday-to-go-e92771c7aa82 https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo... : " ... Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation. The video then goes on to stitch together a series of debunked conspiracy theories about our search results, and our other products. ... "

bduerst 7y ago

The "Manipulating instant search results in favor of Hillary Clinton" claim has been independently debunked and anyone still standing behind it are only signalling their technical illiteracy and/or political agenda for playing a victim card. [1][2][3] That's not really off-topic - The fact that the author still supports the claim calls into question their ability to make further claims about the subject. [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-clinton/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-... [2] https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-google-debunked https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl... [3] https://mashable.com/2016/06/10/clinton-google-search/ https://mashable.com/2016/06/10/clinton-google-search/

malvosenior 7y ago
None of those blog posts debunk the idea that Google manipulates search results to favor particular political parties. Mashable has a statement from Google (the other two don't), saying that they don't but why would they say if they were? None of these debunk the claims made by Google employees in the Project Veritas videos.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Except you're wrong in that you can't logically prove something doesn't exist. You can't prove that pink unicorns don't exist, just as much as you can't prove that political bias in the search results don't exist. All you can do is disprove the claims of their existence. Someone tries to claim there's a pink unicorn in the garage, and you can check the garage and say that the it is pink unicorn free. Someone tries to claim political bias exist for hillary clinton in instant search results, and these articles disprove that claim as using cherry picked evidence. Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence - preferrably without cherry picking evidence to fit an agenda yourself. Otherwise it's just hand waving and click bait.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    > Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence you can see for yourself as a user. In addition to that I know many people who work at Google and the vast majority of them have extreme political bias.

Ivoirians 7y ago

Disclaimer: Googler. I'm going to retread a comment I made when I first learned about Epstein a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084 In short, and ignoring my ad hominem attack on his motivations, I encourage you to read/skim his two "studies" [1][2] and see how absurd they are. You might dismiss my claims and summaries as biased, but I think I was pretty open-minded towards his conclusions until I read them. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with-ds=yes https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with... [2] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Metho...