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If you search for anything political on Google, you'll notice that the results are clearly slanted in one direction, towards the opinion of a handful of pre-app

by kebman 5y ago

If you search for anything political on Google, you'll notice that the results are clearly slanted in one direction, towards the opinion of a handful of pre-approved news outlets. This leads me to seek alternatives whenever I need neutral sources, for instance Yahoo search.

photochemsyn 5y ago
I wonder if they're getting cash kickbacks from established corporate media outlets for pushing their material to the top of the search results. That would actually be less creepy than if its being done as some kind of information manipulation program. It's high time Google and other search engines were forced to expose the inner workings of their ranking algorithms to the public, particularly now that they have near-monopoly power in the sector. People should also be able to adjust the dials on the algorithm themselves.
- otherotherchris 5y ago
  In Australia, Google is being blackmailed into boosting Fairfax, Newscorp and Seven West Media content higher up in their index. It's reached a point where most queries are useless if they contain a word or even a synonym for that word that has been recently used in a major media site owned by those three. I use Google through a VPN to avoid it. That breaks maps integration.
  - DaedPsyker 5y ago
    I'm curious, why go through the hassle of a VPN rather than another search engine? Are the other results so poor or do the others do the same as Google?
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Sounds like you want non-factual answers.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Non-factual answers are especially interesting, because otherwise reasonable and intelligent people believe in them. Everyone would be better off studying those things and see how they've drawn those conclusions we don't subscribe to, so that we can figure out what we are wrong about. It's absolutely catastrophic if you are not allowed to draw your own conclusions about things. This is your inalienable prerogative as an adult in a free country. Even at the risk of some people being wrong sometimes, you simply cannot have authorities distributing doctrine and call yourself a democracy.
lvs 5y ago
Oh give it a rest.
- MangoCoffee 5y ago
  OP is not wrong
  - lvs 5y ago
    Tedious.
dustintrex 5y ago
As a corollary, search on Google News (as in, browsing to news.google.com and searching there, or !gn via DuckDuckGo) is really bad. The index seems to update really slowly, so breaking events are usually missing entirely, and the grouping of articles into single events is also quite broken.
6510 5y ago
That strikes me as a wonderful idea for a new search engine: Just politics. Authors and sites could create a mini profile to refine the results.
- ziml77 5y ago
  You want a search engine that biases everything towards what you already think? That's an idea that is beyond terrible.
narrator 5y ago
Try "what countries are using ivermectin" in google.com and then try Yandex.com. For me, the third site on Google (the kitchen sisters) appears broken and the rest are all some variation of "why ivermectin is bad" articles. Yandex actually answers the question.
remus 5y ago
I find these responses fascinating as the "clearly slanted" results tend to change direction depending on the political affiliation of the person making the claim! Having said that, I'd love to be proved wrong if you have any evidence to show a particular bias one way or the other?
- bad_username 5y ago
  Search "mass formation psychosis" on Google and DuckDuckGo. This is a trending phrase popularized by a doctor that has been canceled and banned from the mainstream due to his criticism of the world's COVID response. DDG shows the author's substack as #1 result and is neutral otherwise. The other doesn't even have it on the first SERP, and is overwhelmingly critical. If you argue that covid response is not politics, I will disagrer strongly.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  Search politically controversial topics incognito with a VPN on using google vs yandex vs duckduckgo? Ivermectin, January 6th arrests, BLM protest deaths, VAED, mRNA studies before 2020, Robert Malone, Geert Vanden Bossche. I mean there's an endless list of things you can experiment with.
- kebman 5y ago
  My experience is that it's slanted whichever side of the easel you're one. The evidence is really clear when you measure results between various search providers, and especially when searching up contentious or controversial topics. So it doesn't really change direction so much as it confirms one particular set of beliefs depending on which search engine you're on. I think this is clearly in Google's disfavour, because people have started to notice and they're actively searching for alternatives to Google in order to avoid it.
GuB-42 5y ago
I think it is related to the fight against "fake news", "hate speech", etc... People don't tolerate a truly neutral search engine, because it will reflect human nature and human nature is not always pretty. I remember the time when Google returned antisemitic websites when searching for "jew", they refused to do anything about it because "jew" is used mostly by antisemites and therefore, an antisemitic website is what people searching for that term most likely want, the search engine did its job. I don't think it will fly today. So search engines now have to get the "truth", preferably the politically correct one, and since you can't rely on the crowd for that, you have to introduce bias, and "pre-approved news outlets" are the most obvious choice.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by kebman 5y ago

photochemsyn 5y ago

I wonder if they're getting cash kickbacks from established corporate media outlets for pushing their material to the top of the search results. That would actually be less creepy than if its being done as some kind of information manipulation program. It's high time Google and other search engines were forced to expose the inner workings of their ranking algorithms to the public, particularly now that they have near-monopoly power in the sector. People should also be able to adjust the dials on the algorithm themselves.

otherotherchris 5y ago
In Australia, Google is being blackmailed into boosting Fairfax, Newscorp and Seven West Media content higher up in their index. It's reached a point where most queries are useless if they contain a word or even a synonym for that word that has been recently used in a major media site owned by those three. I use Google through a VPN to avoid it. That breaks maps integration.
- DaedPsyker 5y ago
  I'm curious, why go through the hassle of a VPN rather than another search engine? Are the other results so poor or do the others do the same as Google?

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Sounds like you want non-factual answers.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Non-factual answers are especially interesting, because otherwise reasonable and intelligent people believe in them. Everyone would be better off studying those things and see how they've drawn those conclusions we don't subscribe to, so that we can figure out what we are wrong about. It's absolutely catastrophic if you are not allowed to draw your own conclusions about things. This is your inalienable prerogative as an adult in a free country. Even at the risk of some people being wrong sometimes, you simply cannot have authorities distributing doctrine and call yourself a democracy.

lvs 5y ago

Oh give it a rest.

MangoCoffee 5y ago
OP is not wrong
- lvs 5y ago
  Tedious.

dustintrex 5y ago

As a corollary, search on Google News (as in, browsing to news.google.com and searching there, or !gn via DuckDuckGo) is really bad. The index seems to update really slowly, so breaking events are usually missing entirely, and the grouping of articles into single events is also quite broken.

6510 5y ago

That strikes me as a wonderful idea for a new search engine: Just politics. Authors and sites could create a mini profile to refine the results.

ziml77 5y ago
You want a search engine that biases everything towards what you already think? That's an idea that is beyond terrible.

narrator 5y ago

Try "what countries are using ivermectin" in google.com and then try Yandex.com. For me, the third site on Google (the kitchen sisters) appears broken and the rest are all some variation of "why ivermectin is bad" articles. Yandex actually answers the question.

remus 5y ago

I find these responses fascinating as the "clearly slanted" results tend to change direction depending on the political affiliation of the person making the claim! Having said that, I'd love to be proved wrong if you have any evidence to show a particular bias one way or the other?

bad_username 5y ago
Search "mass formation psychosis" on Google and DuckDuckGo. This is a trending phrase popularized by a doctor that has been canceled and banned from the mainstream due to his criticism of the world's COVID response. DDG shows the author's substack as #1 result and is neutral otherwise. The other doesn't even have it on the first SERP, and is overwhelmingly critical. If you argue that covid response is not politics, I will disagrer strongly.
defaultprimate 5y ago
Search politically controversial topics incognito with a VPN on using google vs yandex vs duckduckgo? Ivermectin, January 6th arrests, BLM protest deaths, VAED, mRNA studies before 2020, Robert Malone, Geert Vanden Bossche. I mean there's an endless list of things you can experiment with.
kebman 5y ago
My experience is that it's slanted whichever side of the easel you're one. The evidence is really clear when you measure results between various search providers, and especially when searching up contentious or controversial topics. So it doesn't really change direction so much as it confirms one particular set of beliefs depending on which search engine you're on. I think this is clearly in Google's disfavour, because people have started to notice and they're actively searching for alternatives to Google in order to avoid it.

GuB-42 5y ago

I think it is related to the fight against "fake news", "hate speech", etc... People don't tolerate a truly neutral search engine, because it will reflect human nature and human nature is not always pretty. I remember the time when Google returned antisemitic websites when searching for "jew", they refused to do anything about it because "jew" is used mostly by antisemites and therefore, an antisemitic website is what people searching for that term most likely want, the search engine did its job. I don't think it will fly today. So search engines now have to get the "truth", preferably the politically correct one, and since you can't rely on the crowd for that, you have to introduce bias, and "pre-approved news outlets" are the most obvious choice.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]