27 ms·

Daily Mail owner sues Google over search results

174 points by fredoralive 6y ago

_wldu 6y ago
I guess I'm in the minority, but I actually like the Daily Mail. They have stories with videos and photos that I cannot get anywhere else on the Internet. In my experience, they have better American news than many local America news outlets (much more detail and photos/videos). While some of their stories are sensational, they also have a lot of great articles with solid journalism.
- georgiecasey 6y ago
  I like it as well, whenever there's some breaking story of some scandal and I want to see 'pics', DailyMail always seem to have the pics first. Like a kid, I look at the images more than I read the articles.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    It’s worth noting that standard news practice of selective choice of images is going to give you a skewed a perspective.
dannyw 6y ago
Google has been caught doing a lot of seriously anticompetitive things, like colluding with Facebook to establish a duopoly, in exchange for things like scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded to Google Drive. Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads. It wouldn't surprise me if this claim is true: here's to the discovery process to figure it out.
- junippor 6y ago
  > scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded to Google Drive I've always assumed this was the case, but has this been proven?
  - permo-w 6y ago
    Aren’t they heavily encrypted?
    - mathisonturing 6y ago
      AFAIK, it hasn't been yet https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319136/whatsapp-cloud-backups-icloud-google-drive-password-encryption-security https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319136/whatsapp-cloud-ba...
- vergessenmir 6y ago
  I believe you're referring to the lawsuit from last year filed by the Texas attorney general. It's a complaint where nothing has been proved in relation to the scanning of WhatsApp backups. Unless there's something new on this case that I haven't seen?
  - hkt 6y ago
    I know nothing about the case, but surely "nothing has been proved" just means there hasn't been an outcome yet? Attorney generals tend not to file cases unless they believe something to be true, at the very least on the balance of probabilities.
    - gran_colombia 6y ago
      This is not true in Texas and other red states. The Attorney General of Texas files political cases that have no basis in law or fact. He filed the election lawsuit which was soundly rejected by SCOTUS, for instance.
      - claytongulick 6y ago
        To be fair, the merits of that case were never decided. The case was rejected on procedural grounds for lack of standing - a decision that has been hotly debated by many legal experts. Did you ever actually read the filing? [1] I recommend it, very approachable. If nothing else, the math and statistics cited should be of interest. [1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
        Goronmon 6y ago
        I've perused that filing in the past. Most of the language is about how votes "could" be fraudulent, with little to no actual proof that votes were cast or counted fraudulently. I do remember it using that "1 in quadrillion" statistic that appeared pretty questionable even on the surface.
- mathisonturing 6y ago
  > Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads A quick search came up empty. Could you share a source?
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Did you happen use google to search for misdeeds by google?
    - CompuHacker 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that Google would censor Google Search search results relating to Google's censorship of Google Search search results? If so, could you provide a source? A quick search I imagined doing (I even imagined that I used a VPN) turned up 10,000,000 results, 49 of which were news articles from the last 15 years detailing what, but not how, Google Search search results were censored. When I imagined clicking "Next" to see the rest of these results, I imagined that I was presented with a No CAPTCHA, asking me to identify which colored block of visual noise most closely resembled hell itself. Edit: Oh, and then I did the search for real, and got 4.95m results of similar composition.
    - GuB-42 6y ago
      I don't think Google search censors anti-Google results. Not only it is likely to backfire but it is also hard work, there are millions of articles about the misdeeds by Google. For effective censorship, one would need to first determine that the article indeed is anti-Google and then censor it in a way that doesn't damage the results (and ad revenue) too much. Google could probably pull it off but for what? Google hate drives views, and ironically, these are commonly monetized by Google itself. Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads" is inconclusive. However, if you quote "non-AMP", you get the expected results. Google seems to have a peculiar way of handling dashes and the "non" in "non-AMP" seems to get lost.
      - inetknght 6y ago
        > For effective censorship, one would need to first determine that the article indeed is anti-Google You might call that "sentiment analysis". Google has published papers on it. They've refined it so much that they even turned it into a well-documented feature of their Natural Language API [0]. > Google could probably pull it off but for what? Google hate drives views, and ironically, these are commonly monetized by Google itself. If you could assign a monetary value to showing someone an advertisement (or several), would you? Google has. If you could assign a monetary value to someone's knowledge about government/justice actions against yourself, would you? If you could categorize sentiment into something that can generate revenue... or perhaps something that could hurt revenue... would you? There's money in censorship. > Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads" is inconclusive Let me make it much less inconclusive . The two searches [1] [2] both reveal the lawsuit by the Texas AG which has explicit allegations [3]. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/docs/sentiment-tutorial https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/docs/sentiment-tut... [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit [2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+laws... [3]: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
- lanevorockz 6y ago
  Silicon Valley is an industry that always relied in anti-competitive tactics and they pay billions in legal teams / lobbying each year. Do you think they would spend it if they were on the right side of the law ?
  - morei 6y ago
    Yes, they would spend it even if they were on the right side of the law. This is an interesting example of a prisoners dilemma. If N companies are competing without lobbying, their lobbying costs are zero. But if one company 'defects' and start lobbying to tilt the regulatory landscape, then every other company must also start lobbying to prevent it. The end result is that every company lobbies against each other for no net benefit[1], despite large amounts of money spent on lobbying. Good for lobbyists, bad for the companies. So a company spending money on lobbying doesn't really tell us anything. They may be a bad actor, a good actor, or anything in between. There are valid reason for every position in the spectrum to spent money on lobbying. [1]. Obv the real world is far more complex than this. The lobbying may provide industry wide benefits, or may prevent the entry of new competitors, or there may be semi-random fluctuations in the regularly landscape, etc, etc, etc.
  - aeturnum 6y ago
    I agree that silicon valley companies are anti-competitive, but I think you are dead wrong about lobbying. Lobbying can be a lot of things, but one of the most common is basically marketing & PR for lawmakers. If you're going to be in the news, you pay some clever marketers to make hyper-focused versions of what happened for every single individual law maker. The company wants their view to be easily understood by the 535 voting humans who are seated in congress right now. It's the second oldest trick in the book (after bribery which also ofc happens to a degree). Lobbying can also include skullduggery and dirty tricks and also other mundane things, but it is not (and never will be) a clear sign that a company is doing something wrong.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  I agree. Regardless of the quality of the Daily Mail, the following claim of theirs from the article is damning: > It alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace. Whether that's true or not is another thing...guess we'll have to wait and see.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    So how does the Guardian rank so well for the terms the DM was complaining about? I don't see the Guardian buying many PPC adds.
- Xorlev 6y ago
  Source?
waterglassFull 6y ago
The irony of the daily mail talking about manipulation
- varispeed 6y ago
  Manipulation 101: If you manipulate, make sure to project that you oppose manipulation.
- viraptor 6y ago
  The only way we win is if they both dump many millions into lawyers handling the case, then both get a ruling that restricts what they're doing. Just like like the Oz / FB / Google issue, I'd love all sides to lose.
- mojzu 6y ago
  Whilst demanding what could be compared to a participation trophy (unearned search rankings)
varispeed 6y ago
Not particularly liking the DM as they have their fair share of shady dealings, but I support anyone going after Google and other big companies abusing their position.
- axiosgunnar 6y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    As long as the enemy has an actual valid claim.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    The core doctrine of US foreign policy.
  - permo-w 6y ago
    Not when it’s the Daily Mail. I don’t like Google either, but the mail is an absolutely drain on society, and in my opinion has done much, much worse than Google ever has Yeah google suppresses competition, and shamelessly sells your data, but they aren’t deliberately and carefully peddling hate and dog-whistle racism. Their business model isn’t literally to corrupt people’s minds, addict them to controversy and clastic words and profit from that. They don’t directly benefit from a less-educated society Google was around in the 1930s, I find it hard to believe they would have come out in full support of the Nazis
    - simonh 6y ago
      “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”. Not a headline that aged well, even in the relatively short term.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        ""At this next vital election Britain's survival as a Great Power will depend on the existence of a well-organised Party of the Right, ready to take over responsibility for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Mussolini and Hitler have displayed.... That is why I say Hurrah for the Blackshirts! ... Hundreds of thousands of young British men and women would like to see their own country develop that spirit of patriotic pride and service which has transformed Germany and Italy. They cannot do better than seek out the nearest branch of the Blackshirts and make themselves acquainted with their aims and plans." 1st Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (15th January, 1934) https://spartacus-educational.com/Jmail.htm https://spartacus-educational.com/Jmail.htm
maxehmookau 6y ago
The Daily Mail can definitely simmer down. If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of traffic decides to squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous money pit. Cry me a river.
- comboy 6y ago
  I have no idea if The Daily Mail claims have any merit, but you do not want to live in a country where thief cannot report burglary.
  - maxehmookau 6y ago
    This is exactly the completely deregulated free-market economy that op-eds in the daily mail have been asking for for decades. They don't like it when it comes back to bite them.
    - comboy 6y ago
      s/burglary/theft then
    - optimalsolver 6y ago
      "No capitalist ever saw a market and wished it free."
      - treeman79 6y ago
        Of course people don’t want to compete. Too bad. Capitalism is about increasing efficiency / resources through brutal competition. Just don’t let them make laws giving one group special treatment. Like banning the competition.
        Jeff_Brown 6y ago
        Who don't want to compete with who? This is between a news publisher and a search engine; they're not exactly in the same business.
ABeeSea 6y ago
Has DM tried hacking their voicemails? Seems to be a Rupert Murdoch go to.
- ben_w 6y ago
  For anyone who is unfamiliar with the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
- permo-w 6y ago
  DM is one of the few rags not owned by Murdoch
LatteLazy 6y ago
Ah, yes, the paper that supported Hitler and lies about immigrants. The same one that supports Fox in holding a duopoly on British newspapers. Excuse me while I find a different hill with more believability and less racists...
- viraptor 6y ago
  Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause cancer https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-cancer/ https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c...
  - pydry 6y ago
    Many of those actually do cause cancer :/ I'm surprised Corbyn wasn't on the list.
  - lelanthran 6y ago
    > Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause cancer https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c... That list is more than a little misleading; it's outright lying in some cases: The list says that DM said being left-handed causes cancer. The link to the DM article is simply reporting the peer-reviewed and published medical research that found a higher risk of breast cancer in a study of 12000 women. Honestly, that list is more fake-news than "the russians did it!"
    - viraptor 6y ago
      It's a list poking fun at their repeated reporting of things related to cancer - you don't have to take "causes" literally. It's very tongue in the cheek. Also, as mentioned on top: "However, it is worth noting that some of the entries are backed up by scientific fact. It’s just a shame that the vast majority are fear-stoking exaggerations and lies."
  - ErikVandeWater 6y ago
    Not nearly as long as California's list. And, to be fair, many of those things do cause cancer.
rovek 6y ago
> That is despite the Daily Mail writing multiple stories a day about his comments around that time and employing him as a columnist. Sounds like they take a manual approach to manipulating their search ranking; spam is worthy of downranking.
- TheHypnotist 6y ago
  Doesn't part of PageRank involve sites linking back to the dail mail? Isn't it possible they just aren't referenced as much as others?
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    There are hundreds (if not thousands) of other signals that the Google search engines considers over and above back-links. This includes which links users click on the results.
JPDSm8NTaAYBHd 6y ago
Google Search no longer exists to deliver relevant results outside the ads at the top. They curate it heavily to match with their preferred ideology.
- martimarkov 6y ago
  So when I search for code issues or bugs I get the preferred ideology on fixes? That’s good to know I guess my code has been Google ideologic for years.
  - skoopie 6y ago
    I guess we can only expect searches for technical issues to be unbiased. Thanks for the tip!
yurielt 6y ago
Google clearly was affecting the actual results seemingly in accordance with their agenda seems fair even though having to choose between this two companies seems borderline systolic the DM is in the right here
peteretep 6y ago
> [DM] alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace > Google [says] "The Daily Mail's claims are completely inaccurate. The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher's website ranks in Google search." Not a fan of either party, but I hope we get to find out who's accurate.
amelius 6y ago
The conflict of interest between Google's Search and Advertisement divisions is too problematic and these divisions need to be split into separate companies.
- flir 6y ago
  Does that not lead to a system where Google Ads Inc buys placement on Google Search Inc? In which case, you're still left with your core problem - Google Search Inc can, potentially, manipulate search rankings to sell ad space.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Well, an investigator can follow the money ...
- username90 6y ago
  Ad ranking and search ranking are surprisingly similar problems: show what the user is likely to click. Main difference is what dataset you draw from. So you'd likely find that there is quite a lot of overlap between their search and ad divisions and little would change by splitting out the non search ads from the search ads.
  - amelius 6y ago
    They may be similar from a technical standpoint, but as a user I think the two (ad and search) are quite different and I have almost diametrically opposed feelings about them.
tarkin2 6y ago
If I had a mental s/Daily Mail/Reputable Newspaper/g I'd be able to give this article a little more time. The Daily Mail do seems, from my anecdotia, to be gaming the system. I suspect few would care if Google gave manipulative scientology articles a relatively poor search rank. The Daily Mail is absolutely no where near that bad. But they are certainly close to the definition of dog-whistle manipulation. Where's the line? This, of course, assumes their poor search rank isn't because Google has detected they're doing something shady, which due to the Daily Mail's history is not unlikely.
ayushchat 6y ago
Ok, I might get roasted for this, but will still take a shot at it. At what point do we say that Google has a moral responsibility to provide unbiased information? I'm not sure we can. It is a free market after all, and Google is a private corporation. Even if the Daily Mail's allegations are true, Google is still doing what is in it's best interest, and not illegal (afaik its not illegal to modify the algorithm of one's core product, happy to be corrected)
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  We can say they don't have a responsibility once we begin holding accountable those who do have a responsibility and yet still use Google to help fulfill that responsibility. For example, I think we can agree that a teacher should have a moral responsibility to teach students in an unbiased manner. If that is the case and their teaching involves the use of google, then is the teacher not at risk for introducing bias and should be held responsible? Otherwise why even put the standard on the teacher if it can be done away with by outsourcing some of the work?
  - ayushchat 6y ago
    I understand your point. But think of it as a random stranger on the street instead of a "teacher". Just that we all like that stranger's looks. He looks intelligent and well read. Almost like a teacher at a school. Should we trust him to give us unbiased information?
- ck425 6y ago
  The market is only as free as society decides. Regardless of current legality if society decides something is immortal eventually it'll be regulated.
- sub7 6y ago
  Advertising models will be extinct soon enough. If only the get rich quick assholes moved elsewhere, actual protocol development could do it this decade.
- 542354234235 6y ago
jariel 6y ago
'The Daily Mail' has a case. Go and visit their site right now [1] and tell me where the inflammatory or irresponsible headline is. Now try 'The Daily Beast' [2], it's I think a little bit worse, and you have this flame-nugget: "White Violence Links Black Lives From Emmett Till to Floyd" which is an interesting thesis, but kind of racist. The DM really isn't that bad, and much like the issue of 'Fidel Castro' it's a litmus test to see if people are emotionally clouded ideologues or not. DM is a regular tabloid, that's it. [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/
- permo-w 6y ago
  How about go and visit the Daily Mail’s mobile page and a few articles, and tell me again that they have a case. The mail should be spending more on web development and less on lawyers. Of course they can’t turn web development into self-sustaining sensationalism though, can they?
  - jariel 6y ago
    The same thing applies to the Daily Beast and any number of other outfits. That you would pick on this one highlights the bias in the system. If there were a 'disconcerting rag' it would be Brietbart, not the Daily Mail.
    - permo-w 6y ago
      the daily mail website is literally unusable on mobile. other sites are bad, but I’ve not seen a single other one where you literally can’t scroll down the page that I would pick on this one doesn’t highlight the bias in the system, it highlights that the article I’m commenting on is about the daily mail I don’t see how breitbart is relevant
      - jariel 6y ago
        The issue has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with 'quality' information ranking and Google's supposed bias with regards to who they deem 'credible' and not. Breitbart is a much more aggressive tabloid, and individuals within Google wanted to ban it outright, arguably because of their 'poor quality' but mostly because their political bias. My point is that if there is a 'right wing tabloid with questionable legitimacy' that might make people uncomfortable, it's Breitbart. Not The DM. People are lamenting the DM here because they use 'click bait' headlines and 'misrepresent' information, people are using shamefully hyperbolic language on this thread. But in reality The DM is just a regular tabloid, and it's not that bad - technical quality issues notwithstanding.
tim333 6y ago
I'm not up on law. I wonder what actual law they've allegedly broken. Are there any legal precedents implying you have to rank the Daily Mail high in your organic results? I mean I understand the words "anti-competitive" but not sure how that translated to me needing more Piers Morgan in my search results or how the judge is supposed to even rule on that.
- lanevorockz 6y ago
  Fair competition, google sells their rankings position of keywords to their clients in form of adsense. It now stands to reason that if Google manipulates the ranking, it's also giving or returning money. Hiding behind " THE ALGORITHM " is a scam that won't last very long.
  - tim333 6y ago
    Though say for argument's sake that Google were to rank results higher for those who spend more on ads but put a disclaimer to say so. What law would that break?
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      In the US, it would be the Sherman Antitrust Act. Basically, if Google is abusing their market position, they’re breaking the law. Whether they are or not, I can’t say.
arp242 6y ago
> For example, it claims that British users searching for broadcaster Piers Morgan's comments on the Duchess of Sussex following an interview with Oprah Winfrey were more likely to see articles about Morgan produced by smaller, regional outlets. A quick test does bear out this claim[1], I see no Daily Mail articles with that search even though they are indexed[2]. However DuckDuckGo has similar results[3], so... A much more likely explanation is that 1) The Daily Mail is just a shitty "newspaper" hardly even worthy of the title and not generally considered to produce high-quality content, and/or 2) that the other articles were much more widely shared, linked, etc. and much of society at large ignored the nonsense from The Daily Mail. There's a reason The Daily Mail is generally not accepted as a reliable source on Wikipedia. Aside: I am flabbergasted that Piers Morgan managed to survive this long at all, considering he's been one of the most disliked people on TV for a long time (and for good reason IMO). [1]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex&hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su... [2]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex+site%3Adailymail.co.uk&hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su... [3]: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sus...
- jquery 6y ago
  I was about to say, this article makes perfect sense to me. The Daily Mail is one of my last choices of news, and I generally don’t use it as a source at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google’s algos have figured out the same thing many of us have…
  - walshemj 6y ago
    And remember that search results are personalized unless you browse incognito.
  - hkt 6y ago
    Wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_220#Daily_Mail_RfC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... tl;dr best quote (imo) "The Mail should be on the citation blacklist. There's no area of news where it is actually reliable. It can be relied on to accurately report celebrity gossip, but in that case the gossip itself is frequently false and the Mail doesn't check it. Their coverage of medical, science and political topics is a byword for deliberate inaccuracy."
cung 6y ago
I feel like I am going crazy that this fact is not discussed at all. I recall google from a decade ago being able to answer all my questions, where as now all I get is mediocre, politically-safe, canned answers with a ridiculous amount of ads. It is enough to look at recipe websites to see that Daily Mail’s claim is clearly true. Recipe sites providing a user hostile ad-filled experience gain the top place, where as simple recipes without stories and tons of ads are nowhere to be found. Why would Google do anything else? Website owners are paying Google to be ranked higher by essentially buying ads from Google. The difference between the ppc of a competitor and Google is the price the website owners pay. In return, Google will rank the website higher.
- nicbou 6y ago
  What strikes me the most is that simple queries ("how much sun does [plant] need") only return 5 page keyword soups that barely answer your question. Google works reasonably well for more specific technical questions, but really struggles with the basic ones.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    What plants are you having trouble finding that number for? I just tried corn, strawberries, rhubarb, and beans and got the answer in the first or second link.
    - nicbou 6y ago
      I just remembered this because of the latest plant I bought, but I forgot which one it was. It's just an example. I felt similar frustrations with other simple questions, for example related to cooking.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=how+much+sun+does+a+rubber+trere+plant+need https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=how... The top promoted answer leads to what looks like a reasonable site. I think the greatest problem here is individual user bubbles. My take is that this would all go away as a problem if Google did away with behavioural tracking - thus the same query would lead to same answers globally. The question is, how much would that degrade search quality? The most obvious is location - 'show me chinese takeaways' is a different query depending on where you are and your past ordering profile. But its a solvable problem
steve918 6y ago
Daily Mail can fuck themselves. They published an article a complaint I filed with the Oklahoma coroners office in 2012 because it was taking 12+ months to get results when my 5yo son died. They also spun it as parents in "outrage" to get clicks and refuse to take the article down even now that there is no way it is producing revenue for them.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  Yeah that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. What Google is doing has larger implications than your personal vendetta against Daily Mail.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - steve918 6y ago
    The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  - sunshinekitty 6y ago
    Relevant in that the Daily Mail is regularly regarded as bad journalism, as other comments also point out.
    - CountDrewku 6y ago
      According to who? I don't want my search results based on what you or anyone else thinks. I think CNN is horrible journalism, propaganda, they've been caught lying consistently, and their headlines are full of sensationalist bullshit but I can guarantee you Google won't touch their search results. I'll make my own decision on whether it's bad. I do not want it filtered out before I even get to make that decision. This desire to stop people from seeing stuff you dislike is really weird and reeks of authoritarianism. The option for you is to not click on anything from DM. Except you then go on and force your beliefs on everyone else by making it so they don't get the option to choose and that just means you want to control what they think and believe. I find that attitude abhorrent. The irony is that people doing these are supposedly so anti right wing and yet they do exactly what the Republicans were doing with censorship in the 90s.
CountDrewku 6y ago
Stop using Google, it's a bad company with bad practices and it's search engine is becoming increasingly worse at providing good results. There are other options that are just as good now. Our worthless government needs to do their job and break them up.
sloshnmosh 6y ago
I think the Mail is going to have a real tough time proving Google is doing anything nefarious because the algorithm used by Google is closed source.
wnevets 6y ago
The daily mail is trash. I'm glad google is filtering out such low quality blog spam.
yrgulation 6y ago
If anything google should downgrade the daily mail even more. Not for its content (which i personally dislike, but censorship is a risky business), but rather for its spammy practices and clickbait titles.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  Then you might as well include every major media organization there is since they all thrive on sensationalism. Google should not be in the business of deciding what's appropriate for us to see. I didn't vote them in as the arbiter of truth.
  - gran_colombia 6y ago
    Google is not in that business. The Daily Mail does not allege that Google is preventing it from being accessed. Censorship is not part of this conversation.
    - CountDrewku 6y ago
      Google has 70% market share in searches. Any change to downgrade or not show a specific site is in fact censorship when you have a monopoly like that. The outcome is the same. Stop making excuses for these companies because they're going to do this to things you don't want them to at some point.
  - mojzu 6y ago
    No, but by using Google you did decide they were most likely to have a good answer to your query (or that they were most convenient), and if they're not allowed to rank results because of 'fairness' that would kind of break the entire value proposition of a search engine
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    The core service that Google provides its users is filtering out useless stuff.
walshemj 6y ago
So its the Daily Mail best known in the industry for their ability to rank barely legal pop starlets in revealing outfits I suspect what happened is the daily mail was considered a low quality news site which the majority of the UK population would agree its a fair assesment. And Piers Morgan is pretty much one of the most hated hacks in the UK.
freeflight 6y ago
Sounds a bit similar to what the WSWS has been dealing with [0]. [0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
- edbob 6y ago
  This is absolutely disgusting. Google has appointed themselves the unaccountable police of the Internet, secretly blocking websites for unspecified "compliance issues". > It is highly significant that—after more than three years of stonewalling and refusing to answer any questions or respond to a single demand—CEO Pichai has admitted that the technology firm controlling nearly 90 percent of worldwide search traffic has been suppressing WSWS content all along. Political censorship is equally harmful whether done by the government or by a megacorp. When the megacorp becomes more powerful than government, it's time to either break them up or make them a public utility.
jb775 6y ago
Hopefully this makes it to a discovery phase where google is forced to reveal the baked in censorship params.
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belatw 6y ago
I can imagine their CTO, Oleg Vishnepolsky’s deposition: We hired a FELON to do our SEO Nobody would give him a CHANCE after he lost his HOUSE. The other companies FIRED him because they thought it was his FAULT because their google PR was LOW.
calkuta 6y ago
We're not ranking high enough on Google, better get the government involved!

174 points by fredoralive 6y ago

I guess I'm in the minority, but I actually like the Daily Mail. They have stories with videos and photos that I cannot get anywhere else on the Internet. In my experience, they have better American news than many local America news outlets (much more detail and photos/videos). While some of their stories are sensational, they also have a lot of great articles with solid journalism.

georgiecasey 6y ago
I like it as well, whenever there's some breaking story of some scandal and I want to see 'pics', DailyMail always seem to have the pics first. Like a kid, I look at the images more than I read the articles.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  It’s worth noting that standard news practice of selective choice of images is going to give you a skewed a perspective.

dannyw 6y ago

Google has been caught doing a lot of seriously anticompetitive things, like colluding with Facebook to establish a duopoly, in exchange for things like scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded to Google Drive. Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads. It wouldn't surprise me if this claim is true: here's to the discovery process to figure it out.

junippor 6y ago
> scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded to Google Drive I've always assumed this was the case, but has this been proven?
- permo-w 6y ago
  Aren’t they heavily encrypted?
  - mathisonturing 6y ago
    AFAIK, it hasn't been yet https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319136/whatsapp-cloud-backups-icloud-google-drive-password-encryption-security https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319136/whatsapp-cloud-ba...
vergessenmir 6y ago
I believe you're referring to the lawsuit from last year filed by the Texas attorney general. It's a complaint where nothing has been proved in relation to the scanning of WhatsApp backups. Unless there's something new on this case that I haven't seen?
- hkt 6y ago
  I know nothing about the case, but surely "nothing has been proved" just means there hasn't been an outcome yet? Attorney generals tend not to file cases unless they believe something to be true, at the very least on the balance of probabilities.
  - gran_colombia 6y ago
    This is not true in Texas and other red states. The Attorney General of Texas files political cases that have no basis in law or fact. He filed the election lawsuit which was soundly rejected by SCOTUS, for instance.
    - claytongulick 6y ago
      To be fair, the merits of that case were never decided. The case was rejected on procedural grounds for lack of standing - a decision that has been hotly debated by many legal experts. Did you ever actually read the filing? [1] I recommend it, very approachable. If nothing else, the math and statistics cited should be of interest. [1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
      - Goronmon 6y ago
        I've perused that filing in the past. Most of the language is about how votes "could" be fraudulent, with little to no actual proof that votes were cast or counted fraudulently. I do remember it using that "1 in quadrillion" statistic that appeared pretty questionable even on the surface.
mathisonturing 6y ago
> Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads A quick search came up empty. Could you share a source?
- treeman79 6y ago
  Did you happen use google to search for misdeeds by google?
  - CompuHacker 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that Google would censor Google Search search results relating to Google's censorship of Google Search search results? If so, could you provide a source? A quick search I imagined doing (I even imagined that I used a VPN) turned up 10,000,000 results, 49 of which were news articles from the last 15 years detailing what, but not how, Google Search search results were censored. When I imagined clicking "Next" to see the rest of these results, I imagined that I was presented with a No CAPTCHA, asking me to identify which colored block of visual noise most closely resembled hell itself. Edit: Oh, and then I did the search for real, and got 4.95m results of similar composition.
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    I don't think Google search censors anti-Google results. Not only it is likely to backfire but it is also hard work, there are millions of articles about the misdeeds by Google. For effective censorship, one would need to first determine that the article indeed is anti-Google and then censor it in a way that doesn't damage the results (and ad revenue) too much. Google could probably pull it off but for what? Google hate drives views, and ironically, these are commonly monetized by Google itself. Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads" is inconclusive. However, if you quote "non-AMP", you get the expected results. Google seems to have a peculiar way of handling dashes and the "non" in "non-AMP" seems to get lost.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > For effective censorship, one would need to first determine that the article indeed is anti-Google You might call that "sentiment analysis". Google has published papers on it. They've refined it so much that they even turned it into a well-documented feature of their Natural Language API [0]. > Google could probably pull it off but for what? Google hate drives views, and ironically, these are commonly monetized by Google itself. If you could assign a monetary value to showing someone an advertisement (or several), would you? Google has. If you could assign a monetary value to someone's knowledge about government/justice actions against yourself, would you? If you could categorize sentiment into something that can generate revenue... or perhaps something that could hurt revenue... would you? There's money in censorship. > Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads" is inconclusive Let me make it much less inconclusive . The two searches [1] [2] both reveal the lawsuit by the Texas AG which has explicit allegations [3]. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/docs/sentiment-tutorial https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/docs/sentiment-tut... [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit [2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+laws... [3]: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/20201216%20COMPLAINT_REDACTED.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
lanevorockz 6y ago
Silicon Valley is an industry that always relied in anti-competitive tactics and they pay billions in legal teams / lobbying each year. Do you think they would spend it if they were on the right side of the law ?
- morei 6y ago
  Yes, they would spend it even if they were on the right side of the law. This is an interesting example of a prisoners dilemma. If N companies are competing without lobbying, their lobbying costs are zero. But if one company 'defects' and start lobbying to tilt the regulatory landscape, then every other company must also start lobbying to prevent it. The end result is that every company lobbies against each other for no net benefit[1], despite large amounts of money spent on lobbying. Good for lobbyists, bad for the companies. So a company spending money on lobbying doesn't really tell us anything. They may be a bad actor, a good actor, or anything in between. There are valid reason for every position in the spectrum to spent money on lobbying. [1]. Obv the real world is far more complex than this. The lobbying may provide industry wide benefits, or may prevent the entry of new competitors, or there may be semi-random fluctuations in the regularly landscape, etc, etc, etc.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  I agree that silicon valley companies are anti-competitive, but I think you are dead wrong about lobbying. Lobbying can be a lot of things, but one of the most common is basically marketing & PR for lawmakers. If you're going to be in the news, you pay some clever marketers to make hyper-focused versions of what happened for every single individual law maker. The company wants their view to be easily understood by the 535 voting humans who are seated in congress right now. It's the second oldest trick in the book (after bribery which also ofc happens to a degree). Lobbying can also include skullduggery and dirty tricks and also other mundane things, but it is not (and never will be) a clear sign that a company is doing something wrong.
CogitoCogito 6y ago
I agree. Regardless of the quality of the Daily Mail, the following claim of theirs from the article is damning: > It alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace. Whether that's true or not is another thing...guess we'll have to wait and see.
- walshemj 6y ago
  So how does the Guardian rank so well for the terms the DM was complaining about? I don't see the Guardian buying many PPC adds.
Xorlev 6y ago
Source?

waterglassFull 6y ago

The irony of the daily mail talking about manipulation

varispeed 6y ago
Manipulation 101: If you manipulate, make sure to project that you oppose manipulation.
viraptor 6y ago
The only way we win is if they both dump many millions into lawyers handling the case, then both get a ruling that restricts what they're doing. Just like like the Oz / FB / Google issue, I'd love all sides to lose.
mojzu 6y ago
Whilst demanding what could be compared to a participation trophy (unearned search rankings)

varispeed 6y ago

Not particularly liking the DM as they have their fair share of shady dealings, but I support anyone going after Google and other big companies abusing their position.

axiosgunnar 6y ago
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  As long as the enemy has an actual valid claim.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  The core doctrine of US foreign policy.
- permo-w 6y ago
  Not when it’s the Daily Mail. I don’t like Google either, but the mail is an absolutely drain on society, and in my opinion has done much, much worse than Google ever has Yeah google suppresses competition, and shamelessly sells your data, but they aren’t deliberately and carefully peddling hate and dog-whistle racism. Their business model isn’t literally to corrupt people’s minds, addict them to controversy and clastic words and profit from that. They don’t directly benefit from a less-educated society Google was around in the 1930s, I find it hard to believe they would have come out in full support of the Nazis
  - simonh 6y ago
    “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”. Not a headline that aged well, even in the relatively short term.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      ""At this next vital election Britain's survival as a Great Power will depend on the existence of a well-organised Party of the Right, ready to take over responsibility for national affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Mussolini and Hitler have displayed.... That is why I say Hurrah for the Blackshirts! ... Hundreds of thousands of young British men and women would like to see their own country develop that spirit of patriotic pride and service which has transformed Germany and Italy. They cannot do better than seek out the nearest branch of the Blackshirts and make themselves acquainted with their aims and plans." 1st Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (15th January, 1934) https://spartacus-educational.com/Jmail.htm https://spartacus-educational.com/Jmail.htm

maxehmookau 6y ago

The Daily Mail can definitely simmer down. If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of traffic decides to squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous money pit. Cry me a river.

comboy 6y ago
I have no idea if The Daily Mail claims have any merit, but you do not want to live in a country where thief cannot report burglary.
- maxehmookau 6y ago
  This is exactly the completely deregulated free-market economy that op-eds in the daily mail have been asking for for decades. They don't like it when it comes back to bite them.
  - comboy 6y ago
    s/burglary/theft then
  - optimalsolver 6y ago
    "No capitalist ever saw a market and wished it free."
    - treeman79 6y ago
      Of course people don’t want to compete. Too bad. Capitalism is about increasing efficiency / resources through brutal competition. Just don’t let them make laws giving one group special treatment. Like banning the competition.
      - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
        Who don't want to compete with who? This is between a news publisher and a search engine; they're not exactly in the same business.

ABeeSea 6y ago

Has DM tried hacking their voicemails? Seems to be a Rupert Murdoch go to.

ben_w 6y ago
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
permo-w 6y ago
DM is one of the few rags not owned by Murdoch

LatteLazy 6y ago

Ah, yes, the paper that supported Hitler and lies about immigrants. The same one that supports Fox in holding a duopoly on British newspapers. Excuse me while I find a different hill with more believability and less racists...

viraptor 6y ago
Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause cancer https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-cancer/ https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c...
- pydry 6y ago
  Many of those actually do cause cancer :/ I'm surprised Corbyn wasn't on the list.
- lelanthran 6y ago
  > Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause cancer https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c... That list is more than a little misleading; it's outright lying in some cases: The list says that DM said being left-handed causes cancer. The link to the DM article is simply reporting the peer-reviewed and published medical research that found a higher risk of breast cancer in a study of 12000 women. Honestly, that list is more fake-news than "the russians did it!"
  - viraptor 6y ago
    It's a list poking fun at their repeated reporting of things related to cancer - you don't have to take "causes" literally. It's very tongue in the cheek. Also, as mentioned on top: "However, it is worth noting that some of the entries are backed up by scientific fact. It’s just a shame that the vast majority are fear-stoking exaggerations and lies."
- ErikVandeWater 6y ago
  Not nearly as long as California's list. And, to be fair, many of those things do cause cancer.

rovek 6y ago

> That is despite the Daily Mail writing multiple stories a day about his comments around that time and employing him as a columnist. Sounds like they take a manual approach to manipulating their search ranking; spam is worthy of downranking.

TheHypnotist 6y ago
Doesn't part of PageRank involve sites linking back to the dail mail? Isn't it possible they just aren't referenced as much as others?
- sangnoir 6y ago
  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of other signals that the Google search engines considers over and above back-links. This includes which links users click on the results.

JPDSm8NTaAYBHd 6y ago

Google Search no longer exists to deliver relevant results outside the ads at the top. They curate it heavily to match with their preferred ideology.

martimarkov 6y ago
So when I search for code issues or bugs I get the preferred ideology on fixes? That’s good to know I guess my code has been Google ideologic for years.
- skoopie 6y ago
  I guess we can only expect searches for technical issues to be unbiased. Thanks for the tip!

yurielt 6y ago

Google clearly was affecting the actual results seemingly in accordance with their agenda seems fair even though having to choose between this two companies seems borderline systolic the DM is in the right here

peteretep 6y ago

> [DM] alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace > Google [says] "The Daily Mail's claims are completely inaccurate. The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher's website ranks in Google search." Not a fan of either party, but I hope we get to find out who's accurate.

amelius 6y ago

The conflict of interest between Google's Search and Advertisement divisions is too problematic and these divisions need to be split into separate companies.

flir 6y ago
Does that not lead to a system where Google Ads Inc buys placement on Google Search Inc? In which case, you're still left with your core problem - Google Search Inc can, potentially, manipulate search rankings to sell ad space.
- amelius 6y ago
  Well, an investigator can follow the money ...
username90 6y ago
Ad ranking and search ranking are surprisingly similar problems: show what the user is likely to click. Main difference is what dataset you draw from. So you'd likely find that there is quite a lot of overlap between their search and ad divisions and little would change by splitting out the non search ads from the search ads.
- amelius 6y ago
  They may be similar from a technical standpoint, but as a user I think the two (ad and search) are quite different and I have almost diametrically opposed feelings about them.

tarkin2 6y ago

If I had a mental s/Daily Mail/Reputable Newspaper/g I'd be able to give this article a little more time. The Daily Mail do seems, from my anecdotia, to be gaming the system. I suspect few would care if Google gave manipulative scientology articles a relatively poor search rank. The Daily Mail is absolutely no where near that bad. But they are certainly close to the definition of dog-whistle manipulation. Where's the line? This, of course, assumes their poor search rank isn't because Google has detected they're doing something shady, which due to the Daily Mail's history is not unlikely.

ayushchat 6y ago

Ok, I might get roasted for this, but will still take a shot at it. At what point do we say that Google has a moral responsibility to provide unbiased information? I'm not sure we can. It is a free market after all, and Google is a private corporation. Even if the Daily Mail's allegations are true, Google is still doing what is in it's best interest, and not illegal (afaik its not illegal to modify the algorithm of one's core product, happy to be corrected)

SkyBelow 6y ago
We can say they don't have a responsibility once we begin holding accountable those who do have a responsibility and yet still use Google to help fulfill that responsibility. For example, I think we can agree that a teacher should have a moral responsibility to teach students in an unbiased manner. If that is the case and their teaching involves the use of google, then is the teacher not at risk for introducing bias and should be held responsible? Otherwise why even put the standard on the teacher if it can be done away with by outsourcing some of the work?
- ayushchat 6y ago
  I understand your point. But think of it as a random stranger on the street instead of a "teacher". Just that we all like that stranger's looks. He looks intelligent and well read. Almost like a teacher at a school. Should we trust him to give us unbiased information?
ck425 6y ago
The market is only as free as society decides. Regardless of current legality if society decides something is immortal eventually it'll be regulated.
sub7 6y ago
Advertising models will be extinct soon enough. If only the get rich quick assholes moved elsewhere, actual protocol development could do it this decade.
542354234235 6y ago

jariel 6y ago

'The Daily Mail' has a case. Go and visit their site right now [1] and tell me where the inflammatory or irresponsible headline is. Now try 'The Daily Beast' [2], it's I think a little bit worse, and you have this flame-nugget: "White Violence Links Black Lives From Emmett Till to Floyd" which is an interesting thesis, but kind of racist. The DM really isn't that bad, and much like the issue of 'Fidel Castro' it's a litmus test to see if people are emotionally clouded ideologues or not. DM is a regular tabloid, that's it. [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/

permo-w 6y ago
How about go and visit the Daily Mail’s mobile page and a few articles, and tell me again that they have a case. The mail should be spending more on web development and less on lawyers. Of course they can’t turn web development into self-sustaining sensationalism though, can they?
- jariel 6y ago
  The same thing applies to the Daily Beast and any number of other outfits. That you would pick on this one highlights the bias in the system. If there were a 'disconcerting rag' it would be Brietbart, not the Daily Mail.
  - permo-w 6y ago
    the daily mail website is literally unusable on mobile. other sites are bad, but I’ve not seen a single other one where you literally can’t scroll down the page that I would pick on this one doesn’t highlight the bias in the system, it highlights that the article I’m commenting on is about the daily mail I don’t see how breitbart is relevant
    - jariel 6y ago
      The issue has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with 'quality' information ranking and Google's supposed bias with regards to who they deem 'credible' and not. Breitbart is a much more aggressive tabloid, and individuals within Google wanted to ban it outright, arguably because of their 'poor quality' but mostly because their political bias. My point is that if there is a 'right wing tabloid with questionable legitimacy' that might make people uncomfortable, it's Breitbart. Not The DM. People are lamenting the DM here because they use 'click bait' headlines and 'misrepresent' information, people are using shamefully hyperbolic language on this thread. But in reality The DM is just a regular tabloid, and it's not that bad - technical quality issues notwithstanding.

tim333 6y ago

I'm not up on law. I wonder what actual law they've allegedly broken. Are there any legal precedents implying you have to rank the Daily Mail high in your organic results? I mean I understand the words "anti-competitive" but not sure how that translated to me needing more Piers Morgan in my search results or how the judge is supposed to even rule on that.

lanevorockz 6y ago
Fair competition, google sells their rankings position of keywords to their clients in form of adsense. It now stands to reason that if Google manipulates the ranking, it's also giving or returning money. Hiding behind " THE ALGORITHM " is a scam that won't last very long.
- tim333 6y ago
  Though say for argument's sake that Google were to rank results higher for those who spend more on ads but put a disclaimer to say so. What law would that break?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    In the US, it would be the Sherman Antitrust Act. Basically, if Google is abusing their market position, they’re breaking the law. Whether they are or not, I can’t say.

arp242 6y ago

> For example, it claims that British users searching for broadcaster Piers Morgan's comments on the Duchess of Sussex following an interview with Oprah Winfrey were more likely to see articles about Morgan produced by smaller, regional outlets. A quick test does bear out this claim[1], I see no Daily Mail articles with that search even though they are indexed[2]. However DuckDuckGo has similar results[3], so... A much more likely explanation is that 1) The Daily Mail is just a shitty "newspaper" hardly even worthy of the title and not generally considered to produce high-quality content, and/or 2) that the other articles were much more widely shared, linked, etc. and much of society at large ignored the nonsense from The Daily Mail. There's a reason The Daily Mail is generally not accepted as a reliable source on Wikipedia. Aside: I am flabbergasted that Piers Morgan managed to survive this long at all, considering he's been one of the most disliked people on TV for a long time (and for good reason IMO). [1]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex&hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su... [2]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex+site%3Adailymail.co.uk&hl=en https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su... [3]: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sussex&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sus...

jquery 6y ago
I was about to say, this article makes perfect sense to me. The Daily Mail is one of my last choices of news, and I generally don’t use it as a source at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google’s algos have figured out the same thing many of us have…
- walshemj 6y ago
  And remember that search results are personalized unless you browse incognito.
- hkt 6y ago
  Wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_220#Daily_Mail_RfC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... tl;dr best quote (imo) "The Mail should be on the citation blacklist. There's no area of news where it is actually reliable. It can be relied on to accurately report celebrity gossip, but in that case the gossip itself is frequently false and the Mail doesn't check it. Their coverage of medical, science and political topics is a byword for deliberate inaccuracy."

cung 6y ago

I feel like I am going crazy that this fact is not discussed at all. I recall google from a decade ago being able to answer all my questions, where as now all I get is mediocre, politically-safe, canned answers with a ridiculous amount of ads. It is enough to look at recipe websites to see that Daily Mail’s claim is clearly true. Recipe sites providing a user hostile ad-filled experience gain the top place, where as simple recipes without stories and tons of ads are nowhere to be found. Why would Google do anything else? Website owners are paying Google to be ranked higher by essentially buying ads from Google. The difference between the ppc of a competitor and Google is the price the website owners pay. In return, Google will rank the website higher.

nicbou 6y ago
What strikes me the most is that simple queries ("how much sun does [plant] need") only return 5 page keyword soups that barely answer your question. Google works reasonably well for more specific technical questions, but really struggles with the basic ones.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  What plants are you having trouble finding that number for? I just tried corn, strawberries, rhubarb, and beans and got the answer in the first or second link.
  - nicbou 6y ago
    I just remembered this because of the latest plant I bought, but I forgot which one it was. It's just an example. I felt similar frustrations with other simple questions, for example related to cooking.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=how+much+sun+does+a+rubber+trere+plant+need https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=how... The top promoted answer leads to what looks like a reasonable site. I think the greatest problem here is individual user bubbles. My take is that this would all go away as a problem if Google did away with behavioural tracking - thus the same query would lead to same answers globally. The question is, how much would that degrade search quality? The most obvious is location - 'show me chinese takeaways' is a different query depending on where you are and your past ordering profile. But its a solvable problem

steve918 6y ago

Daily Mail can fuck themselves. They published an article a complaint I filed with the Oklahoma coroners office in 2012 because it was taking 12+ months to get results when my 5yo son died. They also spun it as parents in "outrage" to get clicks and refuse to take the article down even now that there is no way it is producing revenue for them.

CountDrewku 6y ago
Yeah that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. What Google is doing has larger implications than your personal vendetta against Daily Mail.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- steve918 6y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
- sunshinekitty 6y ago
  Relevant in that the Daily Mail is regularly regarded as bad journalism, as other comments also point out.
  - CountDrewku 6y ago
    According to who? I don't want my search results based on what you or anyone else thinks. I think CNN is horrible journalism, propaganda, they've been caught lying consistently, and their headlines are full of sensationalist bullshit but I can guarantee you Google won't touch their search results. I'll make my own decision on whether it's bad. I do not want it filtered out before I even get to make that decision. This desire to stop people from seeing stuff you dislike is really weird and reeks of authoritarianism. The option for you is to not click on anything from DM. Except you then go on and force your beliefs on everyone else by making it so they don't get the option to choose and that just means you want to control what they think and believe. I find that attitude abhorrent. The irony is that people doing these are supposedly so anti right wing and yet they do exactly what the Republicans were doing with censorship in the 90s.

CountDrewku 6y ago

Stop using Google, it's a bad company with bad practices and it's search engine is becoming increasingly worse at providing good results. There are other options that are just as good now. Our worthless government needs to do their job and break them up.

sloshnmosh 6y ago

I think the Mail is going to have a real tough time proving Google is doing anything nefarious because the algorithm used by Google is closed source.

wnevets 6y ago

The daily mail is trash. I'm glad google is filtering out such low quality blog spam.

yrgulation 6y ago

If anything google should downgrade the daily mail even more. Not for its content (which i personally dislike, but censorship is a risky business), but rather for its spammy practices and clickbait titles.

CountDrewku 6y ago
Then you might as well include every major media organization there is since they all thrive on sensationalism. Google should not be in the business of deciding what's appropriate for us to see. I didn't vote them in as the arbiter of truth.
- gran_colombia 6y ago
  Google is not in that business. The Daily Mail does not allege that Google is preventing it from being accessed. Censorship is not part of this conversation.
  - CountDrewku 6y ago
    Google has 70% market share in searches. Any change to downgrade or not show a specific site is in fact censorship when you have a monopoly like that. The outcome is the same. Stop making excuses for these companies because they're going to do this to things you don't want them to at some point.
- mojzu 6y ago
  No, but by using Google you did decide they were most likely to have a good answer to your query (or that they were most convenient), and if they're not allowed to rank results because of 'fairness' that would kind of break the entire value proposition of a search engine
- bagacrap 6y ago
  The core service that Google provides its users is filtering out useless stuff.

walshemj 6y ago

So its the Daily Mail best known in the industry for their ability to rank barely legal pop starlets in revealing outfits I suspect what happened is the daily mail was considered a low quality news site which the majority of the UK population would agree its a fair assesment. And Piers Morgan is pretty much one of the most hated hacks in the UK.

freeflight 6y ago

Sounds a bit similar to what the WSWS has been dealing with [0]. [0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

edbob 6y ago
This is absolutely disgusting. Google has appointed themselves the unaccountable police of the Internet, secretly blocking websites for unspecified "compliance issues". > It is highly significant that—after more than three years of stonewalling and refusing to answer any questions or respond to a single demand—CEO Pichai has admitted that the technology firm controlling nearly 90 percent of worldwide search traffic has been suppressing WSWS content all along. Political censorship is equally harmful whether done by the government or by a megacorp. When the megacorp becomes more powerful than government, it's time to either break them up or make them a public utility.

jb775 6y ago

Hopefully this makes it to a discovery phase where google is forced to reveal the baked in censorship params.

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belatw 6y ago

I can imagine their CTO, Oleg Vishnepolsky’s deposition: We hired a FELON to do our SEO Nobody would give him a CHANCE after he lost his HOUSE. The other companies FIRED him because they thought it was his FAULT because their google PR was LOW.

calkuta 6y ago

We're not ranking high enough on Google, better get the government involved!