Is It Time To Regualte Goolge / Twitter / Facebook Like Public Utilities

[GURPS]

Over the weekend, Paula Bolyard published a report at PJ Media detailing the troubling results of her attempts to search for Trump news. Despite using multiple computers registered to different users, Bolyard consistently found an overwhelming degree of bias in the search results: Nearly all of the first 100 articles Google pulled up were from liberal outlets. Bolyard writes that while she expected to find some bias, "I was not prepared for the blatant prioritization of left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets."

"Not a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results," she writes. "But it got much, much worse when I analyzed the first 100 items that Google returned in a search for news on 'Trump.' CNN, by a wide margin, appeared most frequently, with nearly twice as many results returned as the second-place finisher, The Washington Post. Other left-leaning outlets also fared well, including NBC, CNBC, The Atlantic, and Politico. The only right-leaning sites to appear in the top 100 were The Wall Street Journal and Fox News with 3 and 2 results respectively."

In total, she found that 96% of news articles on Trump produced by her searches ended up being produced by liberal outlets. The political bias, she noted, has been pointed out by other researchers, including search engine optimization company "Can I Rank," which found that when searching for information on "political candidates and controversial issues...top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a 'Left' or 'Far Left' slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results."


https://www.dailywire.com/news/35113/trump-threatens-action-google-others-are-james-barrett

 

[vraiblonde]

I don't necessarily require "right leaning sites". I'd just like my search results to match my search terms.

Up until two years or so ago, I was a googling wiz. Specific search terms brought back what I was looking for, results that matched my query. In the last couple years, however, it doesn't matter what I put in the search - up comes a bunch of negative stories about Trump that have nothing to do with any of my search terms. Top results are almost always Buzzfeed and Newsweek crap about Trump and Russian collusion.

Normally I'd say, eh, private company, and use something else. But Google has eaten everyone else and they really have no competition. That, my friends, is called a "monopoly". And it used to be against the law. Ask Microsoft.

 

[GURPS]

Bing gives me most everything Trump from


News About Trump
Trump.com
Videos of Trump
Trump on Twitter
DonaldJTrump.com
Wiki - Trump
YouTube - Trump

Finally Huffington Post - Trump

Shop.donaldjtrump.com

this was even better ....

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Trump&t=hg&ia=news

 

[GURPS]

Google has since responded, insisting in a statement to Gizmodo that its algorithms have no political bias and the company would "never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

"When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds," the statement reads. "Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology. Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."



https://www.dailywire.com/news/3512...mp-vowing-action-against-rigged-james-barrett



Algorithms may not, but the engineers coding them do .......

 

[vraiblonde]

Google has since responded, insisting in a statement to Gizmodo that its algorithms have no political bias and the company would "never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

This is a lie because I've seen it myself.

The only other explanation is that since they put paid advertising at the top of search results - which is an industry standard, advertisers get top billing and best position - all those prog blogs are paid advertisement (and therefore fake news) and that's why I see them at the top of my results when their stories have nothing to do with what I searched for.

So perhaps their statement is technically correct, but they are leaving out the part where they manipulate search rankings based on paid positioning, which really should be disclosed.

 

[SamSpade]

This is a lie because I've seen it myself.

Me too.

I've aimlessly browsed on the Internet about issues, and occasionally come across articles defending his decisions on this and that.

But Google can't seem to find them. If I type in something like "why the trade deal is a good thing" I will get stuff that says it isn't - even though I JUST READ THE ARTICLE
and it was on something like American Thinker or Investor's Business Daily or the Wall Street Journal.

My best shot at finding it again is usually to retrace my steps, because Google isn't any help at all.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

Is It Time To Regualte Goolge / Twitter / Facebook Like Public Utilities

I can't see how. Utilities such as electric, water, gas, services, [monopolies], are necessary to modern living that are reliable and safe, need regulation. And though voluntary to sign up for such service, many jurisdictions require households to have, one, or all of these services. Internet companies such as Google/Twitter/Facebook, offer free products that people voluntarily sign up for, or use. Absent those entities that pay for advertising, there is no charge to the end user. There is no true "need" for people to have them. As such, they are not utilities, but glorified interactive newspapers. Competition is what will change things. People waking up and looking for alternatives will change things. There are already many sites doing just that, competing by operating honestly. But remember, when things are free, you get what you pay for.

 

[Midnightrider]

I don't necessarily require "right leaning sites". I'd just like my search results to match my search terms.

Up until two years or so ago, I was a googling wiz. Specific search terms brought back what I was looking for, results that matched my query. In the last couple years, however, it doesn't matter what I put in the search - up comes a bunch of negative stories about Trump that have nothing to do with any of my search terms. Top results are almost always Buzzfeed and Newsweek crap about Trump and Russian collusion.

Normally I'd say, eh, private company, and use something else. But Google has eaten everyone else and they really have no competition. That, my friends, is called a "monopoly". And it used to be against the law. Ask Microsoft.

Except that there are numerous search engines you can use. So it’s more like the opposite of a monopoly.

 

[SamSpade]

Except that there are numerous search engines you can use. So it’s more like the opposite of a monopoly.

I hear ya - but this is like claiming there are numerous browsers you can use, or many operating systems you can run on your computer.
Of course there are, but for whatever reason, for practical purposes the numbers are small. Google has spread far beyond a simple search engine,
or anything Yahoo intended to become - even TV, newspaper, movies and magazines use "Google" as a verb to mean, look it up on the Internet.

I don't recall Webcrawler, Yahoo, AltaVista, Bing or any other search engines of past or present achieving such notoriety.

Facebook as well, although to hear kids talking, its future may be grim. There are lots of other social media platforms, but Facebook is the most widely used.

And I don't know how to answer this. For one, I GET the argument - "you're gonna fault some company for producing something so popular, that its usage
is nearly synonymous with its function?". They've made something so popular, that using an alternative isn't desirable. That's the thing with social media -
if it is NOT popular, it can't attract customers, because no one wants to be on a social media platform that no one they know uses - like MySpace.

But I know I don't want government oversight for something like this. Right now, competition is an insufficient factor - the alternatives aren't as
ubiquitous. If you don't like one fast food joint, or one soda, or one beer or one TV channel - one is as good as another. Unless you live in a small town,
and there's only one store (I'm not drawing a comparison, except to say that in the face of limited competition, something IS effectively a monopoly,
even through no fault of their own). If you live in a rural area and the only store for twenty miles is xxxxx - it doesn't matter if they're a bunch of racist,
sexist pigs or it reeks - you're gonna shop there - or drive twenty miles. Probably shrug - and shop there.

You want to know something a bit ironic? As the #WalkAway movement grows - they've been concerned about their presence on Facebook - because
they believe that sooner or later, Facebook will find a way to minimize their impact - or just pull the plug. They can do that - Facebook can yank anyone.
Hell, I believe Google has the right to steer its algorithms to left leaning sites. I just don't like it.

 

[Kyle]

They can do that - Facebook can yank anyone.

And they do.

A friend of mine gets shutdown almost regularly.

Facebook is unyielding when it comes to ideas they don't like.

 

[GURPS]

I don't recall Webcrawler, Yahoo, AltaVista, Bing or any other search engines of past or present achieving such notoriety.

Nope ... none of them ever rose to the notoriety of being the very word for search 'on line'