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I stopped letting Google filter my world when I saw that it had de-indexed conversations between extremely well credentialed scientists when they came to unpopu

I stopped letting Google filter my world when I saw that it had de-indexed conversations between extremely well credentialed scientists when they came to unpopular conclusions regarding Covid policy. This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission. I don't really object to that when the ideology is about transparency, neutrality, objectivity, so this isn't anti-ideology. But I do object when it's about censorship, advocacy and feelings, because my own ideology is pro-Enlightenment. So I've de-Googled, and I will be ready to de-Kagi, de-Zoho, de-LineageOS, etc. if they become similarly captured. I just hope that ends with me still having access to modern tech.

godzillabrennus 3y ago
I stopped using Google for search in 2017 and haven’t missed anything about it.
- hnuser123456 3y ago
  That's around the time that the Google Now feed became blatantly opinionated. It would find articles about things that I'm interested that were also related to political hot topics, and if I clicked the button to tell it I wasn't interested in the hot topic, the only option was to tell it I wasn't interested in the topic I am. Even if there was plenty of content about the topic I am interested in that wasn't being tied into the zeitgeist.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  What do you use to find businesses, opening hours, ect.?
  - jolmg 3y ago
    Lots of businesses have websites that can be found on other search engines. Those websites often include their opening hours.
    - pbmonster 3y ago
      The thing google really excels at is questions like "what bakeries near here are open on Sunday after 12:00h". Sure, I can go to 15 individual websites, select the specific branch I want (if I got another map service to spit out names of bakeries) and hunt for their opening hours in 15 different styles of menus. Google is just really good if it can sell you something. And sometimes, I need something to be sold to me.
      - godzillabrennus 3y ago
        Yelp can do that.
      - ckrailo 3y ago
        Duckduckgo (uses Apple Maps) works just fine. Search for bakeries and observe every listing has a closing time or notes they're already closed. Bing maps works just fine. Search for bakeries and select "late lunch" in the hours dropdown.
  - szatkus 3y ago
    For opening hours, usually Facebook pages. Google is too unreliable for that, especially when it's a holiday.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - m-p-3 3y ago
    Google is hard to beat on that matter, but I volunteer some of my time to keep my area well-mapped in OpenStreetMap, including business hours, etc. StreetComplete is a nice tool to accomplish this while I'm taking a walk.
braiamp 3y ago
> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission That's confirmation bias. I could do the same argument going the other way. That google profits of misinformation by promoting content that is demonstrably false and have caused harm in the real world. BTW, scientist can have opinions too, and such opinions can be wrong. What opinions were expressed? That closing borders doesn't work? Yes, once there are multiple spreading points restricting movement in international scale doesn't work and would be unpopular due the economic harms it brings. That mask doesn't work? Yes, they don't work because to be correctly used you literally have to have them 100% of the time when you are outside of your bubble, something that the public isn't very disciplined about.
- slily 3y ago
  Treating content without bias and having some things you don't like crop up next to the things you do like isn't "promoting" anything one way or the other. The moment you start meddling with boosting or deboosting things, you get into censorship territory. This is what the people fixated on "misinformation" or "disinformation" or "malinformation" or "information I don't like" don't get. Doubly so when they act like their favorite scientists, journalists and pundits are always right. Speaking of confirmation bias... And speaking of masks as well, recall how early on in the corona debacle, The Science said that they don't work... :)
  - braiamp 3y ago
    The mask that were "popular" like cloth mask, etc. that weren't up to the N95 standards didn't work because the virus is aerosol. Not all masks are equal, that's what the science has discovered. Also, not being associated with certain content is the purview of each individual and organization. The EU is a standard of this, that tells companies, like Twitter, that they still have responsibility about their user content, so they must moderate their site.
    - slily 3y ago
      I distinctly remember US health authorities claiming that surgical-grade masks, perhaps specifically N95s, that I am not 100% sure, were not helpful, and this led to social media companies deboosting posts disagreeing with that assessment and applying labels basically calling them fake. I don't recall if they were banning people at that point. But I am surprised that so few people remember the constant flip-flopping and goalpost-shifting. I would think that anyone paying attention would be very wary of "informationisms" as a result. By the way, questioning the usefulness of cloth masks after that period would get you shunned or banned on many networks well past the point where we had ample evidence to prove that they were ineffective, so even ignoring the initial screw-up, there is plenty of easily provable information that was systematically censored by Internet information brokers.
dangus 3y ago
[flagged]
- goodmunky 3y ago
  You sound completely and utterly brainwashed amigo.
  - braiamp 3y ago
    Why? The guy credentials is psychology as far as we are aware. Was he speaking about the isolation in the pandemic? Maybe he had a point there. Was he talking about anything else? Where's his research on the topic? In the pyramid of evidence "expert opinion" is at the bottom for a reason.
    - throwaway71271 3y ago
      nobody is talking about him (in this thread) but you.
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      No, it's because nobody was talking about Jordan Peterson. There are other well credentialed scientists who were censored, read the sibling-parent comment. Bringing him up as a scapegoat and then using that to mewl about how people are babies for being concerned about disenfranchisement of opinions is bad faith at best, a straw man argument, and inflammatory.
- sampo 3y ago
  > Let me guess, those well-credentialed scientists were named Dr. Jordan Peterson? The most credentialed scientists speaking against the mainstream in Covid policy were: Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford; Martin Kulldorff, Harvard; and Sunetra Gupta, Oxford. They wrote the so called Great Barrington Declaration [1]. They are highly credentialed scientist in epidemiology, and they are professors in some of the World's top institutions. Google, Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter did wrong when censoring them. But make no mistake: Their Covid views were, and are, against the mainstream. For example very different from [2]. Just because you hold the minority opinion and get censored for that, doesn't necessarily mean that you were right. I don't think Jordan Peterson said much anything about Covid when the situation was ongoing? I think Jordan Peterson only started to comment about Covid policy much later, in 2023 and 2024. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05398-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05398-2
lolinder 3y ago
> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission. Google isn't threatening to deindex them, they're threatening to pull ads on the site. This is likely not because Google-the-ad-company cares very much but rather because their advertisers are very sensitive about what kinds of content their brand is associated with. Additionally, the content that is most likely triggering Google's let's-not-scare-off-advertisers alarms is most likely not in the content itself but rather in the comment sections. For example, one of the articles they call out as being flagged falsely [0] for vaccine misinformation and hateful speech doesn't mention vaccines in the body but does have comments that would get flagged to death on HN, one of which mentions vaccines in a hostile way. So this really isn't a case of Google censoring Naked Capitalism's content, it's a case of Google's advertisers not wanting to be associated with an unmoderated right-wing comment section. We can discuss whether that is broken (for example are the advertisers less skittish about unmoderated left-wing comments?), but it's not as clear cut as you make it sound. [0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twenty-first-century-remembering-chalmers-johnson.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twe...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
raxxorraxor 3y ago
You position is still kind of anti-ideology because transparency and neutrality doesn't force a perspective, it just maximizes available information. So there is a staunch difference to how Google does behave since it delegates decision making to those that should make it. And people will do so with different results.

godzillabrennus 3y ago

I stopped using Google for search in 2017 and haven’t missed anything about it.

hnuser123456 3y ago
That's around the time that the Google Now feed became blatantly opinionated. It would find articles about things that I'm interested that were also related to political hot topics, and if I clicked the button to tell it I wasn't interested in the hot topic, the only option was to tell it I wasn't interested in the topic I am. Even if there was plenty of content about the topic I am interested in that wasn't being tied into the zeitgeist.
pbmonster 3y ago
What do you use to find businesses, opening hours, ect.?
- jolmg 3y ago
  Lots of businesses have websites that can be found on other search engines. Those websites often include their opening hours.
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    The thing google really excels at is questions like "what bakeries near here are open on Sunday after 12:00h". Sure, I can go to 15 individual websites, select the specific branch I want (if I got another map service to spit out names of bakeries) and hunt for their opening hours in 15 different styles of menus. Google is just really good if it can sell you something. And sometimes, I need something to be sold to me.
    - godzillabrennus 3y ago
      Yelp can do that.
    - ckrailo 3y ago
      Duckduckgo (uses Apple Maps) works just fine. Search for bakeries and observe every listing has a closing time or notes they're already closed. Bing maps works just fine. Search for bakeries and select "late lunch" in the hours dropdown.
- szatkus 3y ago
  For opening hours, usually Facebook pages. Google is too unreliable for that, especially when it's a holiday.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- m-p-3 3y ago
  Google is hard to beat on that matter, but I volunteer some of my time to keep my area well-mapped in OpenStreetMap, including business hours, etc. StreetComplete is a nice tool to accomplish this while I'm taking a walk.

braiamp 3y ago

> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission That's confirmation bias. I could do the same argument going the other way. That google profits of misinformation by promoting content that is demonstrably false and have caused harm in the real world. BTW, scientist can have opinions too, and such opinions can be wrong. What opinions were expressed? That closing borders doesn't work? Yes, once there are multiple spreading points restricting movement in international scale doesn't work and would be unpopular due the economic harms it brings. That mask doesn't work? Yes, they don't work because to be correctly used you literally have to have them 100% of the time when you are outside of your bubble, something that the public isn't very disciplined about.

slily 3y ago
Treating content without bias and having some things you don't like crop up next to the things you do like isn't "promoting" anything one way or the other. The moment you start meddling with boosting or deboosting things, you get into censorship territory. This is what the people fixated on "misinformation" or "disinformation" or "malinformation" or "information I don't like" don't get. Doubly so when they act like their favorite scientists, journalists and pundits are always right. Speaking of confirmation bias... And speaking of masks as well, recall how early on in the corona debacle, The Science said that they don't work... :)
- braiamp 3y ago
  The mask that were "popular" like cloth mask, etc. that weren't up to the N95 standards didn't work because the virus is aerosol. Not all masks are equal, that's what the science has discovered. Also, not being associated with certain content is the purview of each individual and organization. The EU is a standard of this, that tells companies, like Twitter, that they still have responsibility about their user content, so they must moderate their site.
  - slily 3y ago
    I distinctly remember US health authorities claiming that surgical-grade masks, perhaps specifically N95s, that I am not 100% sure, were not helpful, and this led to social media companies deboosting posts disagreeing with that assessment and applying labels basically calling them fake. I don't recall if they were banning people at that point. But I am surprised that so few people remember the constant flip-flopping and goalpost-shifting. I would think that anyone paying attention would be very wary of "informationisms" as a result. By the way, questioning the usefulness of cloth masks after that period would get you shunned or banned on many networks well past the point where we had ample evidence to prove that they were ineffective, so even ignoring the initial screw-up, there is plenty of easily provable information that was systematically censored by Internet information brokers.

dangus 3y ago

[flagged]

goodmunky 3y ago
You sound completely and utterly brainwashed amigo.
- braiamp 3y ago
  Why? The guy credentials is psychology as far as we are aware. Was he speaking about the isolation in the pandemic? Maybe he had a point there. Was he talking about anything else? Where's his research on the topic? In the pyramid of evidence "expert opinion" is at the bottom for a reason.
  - throwaway71271 3y ago
    nobody is talking about him (in this thread) but you.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    No, it's because nobody was talking about Jordan Peterson. There are other well credentialed scientists who were censored, read the sibling-parent comment. Bringing him up as a scapegoat and then using that to mewl about how people are babies for being concerned about disenfranchisement of opinions is bad faith at best, a straw man argument, and inflammatory.
sampo 3y ago
> Let me guess, those well-credentialed scientists were named Dr. Jordan Peterson? The most credentialed scientists speaking against the mainstream in Covid policy were: Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford; Martin Kulldorff, Harvard; and Sunetra Gupta, Oxford. They wrote the so called Great Barrington Declaration [1]. They are highly credentialed scientist in epidemiology, and they are professors in some of the World's top institutions. Google, Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter did wrong when censoring them. But make no mistake: Their Covid views were, and are, against the mainstream. For example very different from [2]. Just because you hold the minority opinion and get censored for that, doesn't necessarily mean that you were right. I don't think Jordan Peterson said much anything about Covid when the situation was ongoing? I think Jordan Peterson only started to comment about Covid policy much later, in 2023 and 2024. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05398-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05398-2

lolinder 3y ago

> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission. Google isn't threatening to deindex them, they're threatening to pull ads on the site. This is likely not because Google-the-ad-company cares very much but rather because their advertisers are very sensitive about what kinds of content their brand is associated with. Additionally, the content that is most likely triggering Google's let's-not-scare-off-advertisers alarms is most likely not in the content itself but rather in the comment sections. For example, one of the articles they call out as being flagged falsely [0] for vaccine misinformation and hateful speech doesn't mention vaccines in the body but does have comments that would get flagged to death on HN, one of which mentions vaccines in a hostile way. So this really isn't a case of Google censoring Naked Capitalism's content, it's a case of Google's advertisers not wanting to be associated with an unmoderated right-wing comment section. We can discuss whether that is broken (for example are the advertisers less skittish about unmoderated left-wing comments?), but it's not as clear cut as you make it sound. [0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twenty-first-century-remembering-chalmers-johnson.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twe...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

raxxorraxor 3y ago

You position is still kind of anti-ideology because transparency and neutrality doesn't force a perspective, it just maximizes available information. So there is a staunch difference to how Google does behave since it delegates decision making to those that should make it. And people will do so with different results.