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The "Manipulating instant search results in favor of Hillary Clinton" claim has been independently debunked and anyone still standing behind it are only signall

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.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      This is precisely the hand-waving I was talking about. An employee rambling in a bar does not constitute evidence of search result manipulation, especially when the person recording it is known for stretching information, inciting people to commit voter fraud, and crossing the U.S. Mexico border dressed as deceased Osama Bin Laden to prove some point. Likewise, the handful of people you know having political views, in an organization of 85,000 people, is not evidence that that organization's search results being biased. If there is so much anecdotal evidence then it should be easy for you to prove, right? Or are you afraid of being disproven?
      - malvosenior 7y ago
        You asked for proof and I gave it to you. I'm sorry you don't like the source, but unless you want to address what Jen Gennai said, I don't think you have much of a point.
        bduerst 7y ago
        Jen Gennai herself points out how Veritas is lying about what she said: 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... James Okeefe is publicly known for selectively editing video to make false representations, and this duck is no different. You specifically claimed that there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. Where is it?
    - 7y ago

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.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    This is precisely the hand-waving I was talking about. An employee rambling in a bar does not constitute evidence of search result manipulation, especially when the person recording it is known for stretching information, inciting people to commit voter fraud, and crossing the U.S. Mexico border dressed as deceased Osama Bin Laden to prove some point. Likewise, the handful of people you know having political views, in an organization of 85,000 people, is not evidence that that organization's search results being biased. If there is so much anecdotal evidence then it should be easy for you to prove, right? Or are you afraid of being disproven?
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      You asked for proof and I gave it to you. I'm sorry you don't like the source, but unless you want to address what Jen Gennai said, I don't think you have much of a point.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        Jen Gennai herself points out how Veritas is lying about what she said: 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... James Okeefe is publicly known for selectively editing video to make false representations, and this duck is no different. You specifically claimed that there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. Where is it?
  - 7y ago