4 ms·

I think this is a good article. People should be aware that the information they are being exposed to is being controlled. Most of the complaints about the art

I think this is a good article. People should be aware that the information they are being exposed to is being controlled. Most of the complaints about the article are purely political.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Most of the complaints about the article are coming from people who know enough to understand that there's no alternative to interfering. There's no magic "correct results" machine at Google HQ; there are only strategies for better results, and sometimes the best known strategy involves manual intervention. So they see an article that's saying something obviously true in conspiratorial tones; I don't think it's political to be annoyed by that. The best argument I see in favor of the WSJ article is that many people actually do think Google has a magic machine. If so it's fair to publish stories about how that's not true. Yes, it couldn't work any other way if you think about it, but the point of a newspaper article is to get people informed enough to think about it.
- friedman23 7y ago
  >Most of the complaints about the article are coming from people who know enough to understand that there's no alternative to interfering Except Google claims they don't interfere, which is why this is news.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    As far as I know, Google has never made any general claims that they don't interfere. Of course they interfere. They just claim that there are specific reasons they won't use to justify interference and specific interference methods they won't employ. (The WSJ article does contain some claims that Google's interfering in ways they previously denied, and that part is unquestionably news if true, but it really doesn't seem like the main point they're trying to get across.)
    - friedman23 7y ago
      You are really trying to twist this in google's favor. The fact is they claim they don't editorialize and they do.
      - x0x0 7y ago
        Any choice of results to produce is an editorialization, barring the existence of an oracle to tell us the one true answer. Thus your complaint about editorializing reduces to nothing but google chose the results they produce. About which, well, duh; that has been true since the very first search result they served.

I think this is a good article. People should be aware that the information they are being exposed to is being controlled. Most of the complaints about the article are purely political.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Most of the complaints about the article are coming from people who know enough to understand that there's no alternative to interfering. There's no magic "correct results" machine at Google HQ; there are only strategies for better results, and sometimes the best known strategy involves manual intervention. So they see an article that's saying something obviously true in conspiratorial tones; I don't think it's political to be annoyed by that. The best argument I see in favor of the WSJ article is that many people actually do think Google has a magic machine. If so it's fair to publish stories about how that's not true. Yes, it couldn't work any other way if you think about it, but the point of a newspaper article is to get people informed enough to think about it.

friedman23 7y ago
>Most of the complaints about the article are coming from people who know enough to understand that there's no alternative to interfering Except Google claims they don't interfere, which is why this is news.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  As far as I know, Google has never made any general claims that they don't interfere. Of course they interfere. They just claim that there are specific reasons they won't use to justify interference and specific interference methods they won't employ. (The WSJ article does contain some claims that Google's interfering in ways they previously denied, and that part is unquestionably news if true, but it really doesn't seem like the main point they're trying to get across.)
  - friedman23 7y ago
    You are really trying to twist this in google's favor. The fact is they claim they don't editorialize and they do.
    - x0x0 7y ago
      Any choice of results to produce is an editorialization, barring the existence of an oracle to tell us the one true answer. Thus your complaint about editorializing reduces to nothing but google chose the results they produce. About which, well, duh; that has been true since the very first search result they served.