3 ms·
As a bit of a weird hobby, I like to read up on right wing conspiracy theories. That means I do a fair number of searches for specific terms and people mention
by bloaf 5y ago
As a bit of a weird hobby, I like to read up on right wing conspiracy theories. That means I do a fair number of searches for specific terms and people mentioned in fake-news facebook/forum posts.
Google seems to slowly oscillate between thinking that I am a right wing loon, and thinking I am Joe Public who must not be shown misinformation. That is, sometimes google is perfectly willing to vomit forth results from the propaganda mills, even when I'm not specifically looking for it, and other times I can't get conspiratorial-minded results even when I am making an effort to find them.
This most frequently manifests itself when I am looking for sources for claims that I know exist. Like if I remember reading an earlier conspiracy that has just been invalidated, or someone posts some a video of someone reading a blog post. If google has decided I am an innocent bystander not to be shown conspiracies it can be nearly impossible to track down the original blog or posts about the conspiracy.
Recency bias is another huge problem with google results. Older content gets heavily de-prioritized, even when it is clearly what you want. Google is willing to give up on terms in your search before it is willing to show you old stuff. For example, if you tried to research early Ukrainian political corruption during Trump's impeachment, your results would be nearly entirely Trump-related content even if you tried to use google's date-filters and exclude terms like -Trump.
- Lascaille 5y agoThis sounds like filter-bubbling. From what I can tell, Google doesn't have user specific filter bubble but user-category filter bubbles, and it's constantly updating the category of users it thinks you're in.
- writeslowly 5y agoI noticed this recently when trying to find primary sources for flat earth claims. They don’t exist on Google, for me at least. You can still find them on duck duck go if you search for something like “flat earth ice wall” but Google just returns generic debunk articles.
- bobsmooth 5y agoLimiting search results by date is essential if you're trying to find something with a popular name of something else that just came out.
- octoberfranklin 5y agoAnd it's infuriating if that's not what you're trying to do. Which is why reasonable search engines should have a "sort by {relevance,date,etc}" dropdown.