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I read this as "I can't find stuff because Google blocks misinformation". Every time I search for politics, news, or covid related stuff I find it straight awa

I read this as "I can't find stuff because Google blocks misinformation". Every time I search for politics, news, or covid related stuff I find it straight away. News it right at the top with multiple articles available. Politics and COVID I find the offical source straight away.

sokoloff 5y ago
I’m generally happy with Google’s results as well, but I also acknowledge that both of our experiences could be a symptom of us wanting to see the things Google that has not labeled as misinformation and it would be harder to detect subtle missing perspectives that might be being downranked if the results shown are generally pleasing to us.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Moving from an era of media oligopoly into the internet age was very hopeful IMO, and now it's bottlenecked by even fewer companies.
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  > I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Well, OP was the one that defined the info they were looking for as misinformation as far as I can tell. And then I stated I could find offical sources for politcs and COVID. These are not Google's opinions but simply a fact. WHO, RKI, CDC, etc are all offical sources of information for COVID, etc. This is not them define what is true or false but merely providing me with the offical information so I can educate myself.
  - yonaguska 5y ago
    Nope, I'm not looking for misinformation. I said that Google's attempts at combatting misinformation often hinders my searches. Oftentimes, I'll be looking for a pre-print or something from a scientific journal that is tangentially related to Covid, but Google will basically spam the official CDC, WHO, and news articles urging people to get vaccinated. For any political news, sometimes I'll be looking to verify a story I remember reading from a few days or weeks past, or I'm looking to do my own fact check of a claim...and I'll find that several mainstream news sources will have republished the same story(not the one I'm looking for), unrelated to whatever claim I'm checking- similar only in sharing a keyword or person of interest- and Google rewards this behavior by pushing the trusted organizations to the top of my searches. It's like forum sliding, except it's search. Then using ddg or brave, the story that I'm looking for will often be the first result. It's a very insidious antipattern, because it's hard to even know if your perception is being actively screwed with.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Trying to look specifically for research papers on regular Google search is always a bad idea, covid or not, which is why https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com is a thing.
    - crocodiletears 5y ago
      This is what drove me off the platform. Searching Bing (primary), Yandex (rarely turns up gold), and DDG (generally useless for the news) each seems to mitigate these issues. But you really shouldn't have to check three different search engines to not feel like you're being denied information. And yes, Yandex is a Russian operation, something to keep in mind.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
In case you haven't noticed, HN has a strong extremely conservative contingent. The person you replied to is one of them. The giveaway is them ranting about "groupthink" and "censorship" from autocomplete. Scroll down to see people citing Joe Fucking Rogan and spewing misinformation about vaccines.

sokoloff 5y ago

I’m generally happy with Google’s results as well, but I also acknowledge that both of our experiences could be a symptom of us wanting to see the things Google that has not labeled as misinformation and it would be harder to detect subtle missing perspectives that might be being downranked if the results shown are generally pleasing to us.

LMYahooTFY 5y ago

I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Moving from an era of media oligopoly into the internet age was very hopeful IMO, and now it's bottlenecked by even fewer companies.

that_guy_iain 5y ago
> I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Well, OP was the one that defined the info they were looking for as misinformation as far as I can tell. And then I stated I could find offical sources for politcs and COVID. These are not Google's opinions but simply a fact. WHO, RKI, CDC, etc are all offical sources of information for COVID, etc. This is not them define what is true or false but merely providing me with the offical information so I can educate myself.
- yonaguska 5y ago
  Nope, I'm not looking for misinformation. I said that Google's attempts at combatting misinformation often hinders my searches. Oftentimes, I'll be looking for a pre-print or something from a scientific journal that is tangentially related to Covid, but Google will basically spam the official CDC, WHO, and news articles urging people to get vaccinated. For any political news, sometimes I'll be looking to verify a story I remember reading from a few days or weeks past, or I'm looking to do my own fact check of a claim...and I'll find that several mainstream news sources will have republished the same story(not the one I'm looking for), unrelated to whatever claim I'm checking- similar only in sharing a keyword or person of interest- and Google rewards this behavior by pushing the trusted organizations to the top of my searches. It's like forum sliding, except it's search. Then using ddg or brave, the story that I'm looking for will often be the first result. It's a very insidious antipattern, because it's hard to even know if your perception is being actively screwed with.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Trying to look specifically for research papers on regular Google search is always a bad idea, covid or not, which is why https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com is a thing.
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    This is what drove me off the platform. Searching Bing (primary), Yandex (rarely turns up gold), and DDG (generally useless for the news) each seems to mitigate these issues. But you really shouldn't have to check three different search engines to not feel like you're being denied information. And yes, Yandex is a Russian operation, something to keep in mind.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

In case you haven't noticed, HN has a strong extremely conservative contingent. The person you replied to is one of them. The giveaway is them ranting about "groupthink" and "censorship" from autocomplete. Scroll down to see people citing Joe Fucking Rogan and spewing misinformation about vaccines.