5 ms·

Google Interferes with Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results

23 points by johncena33 5y ago

jsnell 5y ago
(2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558386
easton 5y ago
https://archive.is/gSrzL https://archive.is/gSrzL
uniqueuid 5y ago
Ignoring the political and normative debate, I'd like to stress how complex the ultimate goal is: user satisfaction. It's often surprisingly complicated to even find out what people want, even to themselves. And the game is partly rigged against search engines, because people typically don't remember the numerous successful searches, rather focusing on negative experiences. I do think search engines have a (or numerous) problem, but the solutions are all non-trivial. [edit] my favorite summary of the problems of fairness in search is the paper "The politics of search" by Laura Granka: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36914.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
happytoexplain 5y ago
Regardless of the body, the use of the word "interferes" is ridiculous. Just because the implementation consists of multiple layers doesn't mean any of those layers are automatically nefarious or not useful, or that somewhere between two of the layers are the "real" results.
HonestOp001 5y ago
During the Bush years, it was a meme to search for biggest idiot or something like that and it would return President Bush. It was a relic of an SEO project done by a group of people. After Obama was elected, a few people noted that the search still worked and a few days later, it no longer returned President Obama or anything like what it did before. This was all the example one needs to know that your search engine results are heavily manipulated.
- yucky 5y ago
  You can try it today by doing a Google image search for "American inventors", or go a step further and try "white American family" and deciding for yourself if there is an agenda in the results or if they accurately reflect the search term... This has been a thing for at least a decade and so we can't pretend it's accidental. Why it's still a thing is a matter of opinion I suppose.
deleted 5y ago
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23 points by johncena33 5y ago

(2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21558386

easton 5y ago

https://archive.is/gSrzL https://archive.is/gSrzL

uniqueuid 5y ago

Ignoring the political and normative debate, I'd like to stress how complex the ultimate goal is: user satisfaction. It's often surprisingly complicated to even find out what people want, even to themselves. And the game is partly rigged against search engines, because people typically don't remember the numerous successful searches, rather focusing on negative experiences. I do think search engines have a (or numerous) problem, but the solutions are all non-trivial. [edit] my favorite summary of the problems of fairness in search is the paper "The politics of search" by Laura Granka: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36914.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...

happytoexplain 5y ago

Regardless of the body, the use of the word "interferes" is ridiculous. Just because the implementation consists of multiple layers doesn't mean any of those layers are automatically nefarious or not useful, or that somewhere between two of the layers are the "real" results.

HonestOp001 5y ago

During the Bush years, it was a meme to search for biggest idiot or something like that and it would return President Bush. It was a relic of an SEO project done by a group of people. After Obama was elected, a few people noted that the search still worked and a few days later, it no longer returned President Obama or anything like what it did before. This was all the example one needs to know that your search engine results are heavily manipulated.

yucky 5y ago
You can try it today by doing a Google image search for "American inventors", or go a step further and try "white American family" and deciding for yourself if there is an agenda in the results or if they accurately reflect the search term... This has been a thing for at least a decade and so we can't pretend it's accidental. Why it's still a thing is a matter of opinion I suppose.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]