Infopocalypse Now

[wayfriend]

Debunking Donald Trump's latest conspiracy theory on Google
But that's all the troll food you'll get from me.

[Zarathustra]

I never mentioned Trump or his conspiracy theories. I quoted other sources that had data that proved their claims.

But since you guys brought him up, I thought I'd conduct an experiment. You can do it yourself. Type "Trump" into Google and then click on the news tab. The top results were all bad news about Trump from liberal news sources talking about his falling poll numbers, how people don't trust him, and his "unpresidential" morning on 9/11.

Now type "Trump" into DuckDuckGo (the one I use) and click on the new tab. The results I get are straight news stories about canceling his trip to Ireland, closing the Palestinian diplomatic mission, and Trump honoring those who died on 9/11. It even included a Fox News story.

Try it! See for yourself. The differences are dramatic.

[Skyweir]

96 Percent of Google Search Results for 'Trump' News Are from Liberal Media Outlets

That's not quite how it works. I'm no fan of Google (at least, I'm a fan of the search engine (I've been using it for 20 years) but I'm not a fan of the corporation itself) but nobody is sitting out there deliberately choosing to display certain types of information.

Google will give you what you're looking for, and it will take everything it knows about you into account when it does so. (There's no such thing as "the first page of Google" any more. Search personalisation means everybody gets a different first page.)

This is close on the order of how it works. Relatively anyway: Trump Says Google Is Rigged, Despite Its Denials. What Do We Know About How It Works?

--A

This ^^^^^^^

[Zarathustra]

Way to contribute, Sky! Good to know you agree with Av. lol

[Skyweir]

I never mentioned Trump or his conspiracy theories. I quoted other sources that had data that proved their claims.

But since you guys brought him up, I thought I'd conduct an experiment. You can do it yourself. Type "Trump" into Google and then click on the news tab. The top results were all bad news about Trump from liberal news sources talking about his falling poll numbers, how people don't trust him, and his "unpresidential" morning on 9/11.

Now type "Trump" into DuckDuckGo (the one I use) and click on the new tab. The results I get are straight news stories about canceling his trip to Ireland, closing the Palestinian diplomatic mission, and Trump honoring those who died on 9/11. It even included a Fox News story.

Try it! See for yourself. The differences are dramatic.

Ok so I did this .. I entered Trump into google and got the 9 11 fist pump story, the Trump home page, Trump twitter feed, CNN, Washing Post, NY Mag, CNBC articles.

I entered Trump into duckduckgo and got Trump 9 11 fist pump article, CNBC, Trump home page, NY Post, Huff Post, The Guardian etc articles, Trump official site, Trump stores, Trump luxury real estate .. etc.

The duckduckgo search engine has a lot more ad stuff for Trump realestate and stores than google.

[Zarathustra]

I just tried it again. These were the top results from Google:

Was Donald Trump at Ground Zero Searching for Survivors Two Days ...
Snopes.com-2 hours ago
A meme echoes President Trump's 2001 comments about having hundreds of workers search for survivors after the terrorist attacks in Lower ...

Trump still can't strike the right note about 9/11
Yahoo News-10 hours ago

A History Of Donald Trump's Tasteless Comments About 9/11
Highly Cited-HuffPost-13 hours ago

Trump's Bizarre History With 9/11
In-Depth-Rolling Stone-11 hours ago

Trump's long history of lying about 9/11 and exploiting it for personal ...
Blog-Washington Post-9 hours ago

All 100% negative.


DuckDuckGo:

Trump cancels Ireland trip, dodges mass protests
President Trump cancelled his November to trip to Ireland, dodging mass protests that had been planned to greet him on the Emerald Isle, officials in Dublin said Tuesday. The government of Prime Mi_
New York Post|3 hours ago

Trump fist-pumps at 9/11 service
President Trump greeted supporters with a clenched jaw and double fist pumps as he arrived at a Pennsylvania airport for a 9/11 service - prompting a social media backlash over what many said ...
New York Post|9 hours ago

Trump administration orders closure of Palestinian office
The Trump administration ordered the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington on Monday and threatened sanctions against the International Criminal Court if it pursues investigations ...
CNBC|1 day ago

Trump struggles to embrace consoler-in-chief role
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - President Donald Trump marked the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday by stepping back into the role of consoler-in-chief - but only after spending ...
Politico|8 hours ago

Again, the difference is dramatic. Maybe you're getting less divisive results being in a country that can't vote in our elections, Sky.

[Avatar]

As I said, Google tries to give results as nearly tailored to what it knows about you as it can. If you spend time searching for and reading "liberal" sources, it will give you more of those, and vice versa. (I have several criticisms about this kind of personalisation, i.e. filter bubbles etc. but I think the point is that it is done algorithmically, not via human agency.) (Of course, it's possible that Google's algorithm "thinks" that more people want negative stories than positive ones, but that is a different issue.)

I get the following:

Google:

Trump's previously announced visit to Ireland in question
CNN-11 hours ago
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's planned trip to Ireland in November is now in question after the Irish government announced its ...

Fact check: Is Trump's economy stronger than Obama's?
CBS News-12 hours ago
President Donald Trump pitched a wildly off-base claim about economic growth Monday as the White House used selective statistics to build a ...

Trump attacked for calling Hurricane Maria response an 'incredible ...
The Guardian-2 hours ago
Donald Trump on Tuesday touted the "incredible, unsung success" of the federal response last year in Puerto Rico, where the government ...

DuckDuckGo:

Trump: Storm response in Puerto Rico 'incredibly successful'
President Donald Trump on Tuesday deemed the federal government's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago "incredibly successful" even though a recent federal report found that ...
Stamford Advocate|31 minutes ago

Trump fist-pumps at 9/11 service
President Trump greeted supporters with a clenched jaw and double fist pumps as he arrived at a Pennsylvania airport for a 9/11 service - prompting a social media backlash over what many said were _
New York Post|12 hours ago

Trump's authority crisis deepens
Donald Trump's presidency is slipping deeper into a crisis of authority at a critical moment.

--A

[Skyweir]

mmm .. you guys didnt get all the Trump real estate and Trump stores thing?

Meh .. theres not a great divide between results

[I'm Murrin]

Google's algorithm these days prefers to give recent results over most relevant ones, which is a bit of a problem really.

[Avatar]

I did, but not under the "news" tab.

Got the real estate stuff on DuckDuckGo in the "main" results.

--A

[Skyweir]

Oh yeah ... I didnt get any Trump stores or real estate on google at all

[Zarathustra]

Avatar, I do not search with Google, so I am not sure how you think it knows anything about my internet searching. Half of the population in America supports Trump. It seems odd that Google would give 100% negative stories from liberal news sources everytime I search. If this is the best its algorithm can do, I am shocked that it is the number one search engine. I have no interest in reading 100 % negative stories from CNN and other liberal sources.

[I'm Murrin]

Half? You seriously think that?

[Zarathustra]

Half? You seriously think that?

Yes, I seriously think that. Rasmussin has him at 45%. But the polls have all underestimated Trump support ever since the 2016 election. He was supposed to lose, remember? There are several reasons for the polls being wrong, but it misses my point and it's off-topic.

Regardless of the actual percentage of Trump's support, Av states that Google tailors its search results to best serve me personally (though I have no idea how it could do that), and yet I am not served one iota by 100% negative Trump news. So if Google isn't giving me the results I'm interested in, why does everyone say it's the best? And why are its results *so* off the mark? And why are they *so* negative towards Trump, whereas other search engines aren't?

It would be interesting if some other Americans ran this experiment. So far, only foreigners. I don't think you guys are getting the same results in your countries.


To get this back on track, why isn't this a source of concern in terms of AI and corporations shaping public opinion to the extent of determining elections? There is actually more evidence for that threat than the ones mentioned earlier in the thread. Are we supposed to be worried about the manipulation of information, or not? This is the "Infopocalypse," isn't it? Or is it not troubling when conservatives are the targets?

[I'm Murrin]

If almost all the news about Trump is negative, and you do not give data to google to tell it you want to see positive news, then yeah, it'll show negative news. It's not that 50% of the news is negative and they're only showing you that half. It's that 90% is negative and you're seeing that.

[Zarathustra]

Good point, Murrin! However, the news is only 90% negative if you look at liberal sources. There are plenty of right-leaning sources Google could throw into the mix. At least one of those sources is much more highly rated (Fox), so one would think that the highest rated/viewed news source would appear somewhere on the first page of search results! Right?

[Avatar]

Murrin is right about what will happen if it doesn't have data on you, given you don't use it.

But yes, I'm surprised that by default I didn't see a single Fox story.

If I search "Trump Fox" though, then the majority of the top 10 results are "positive" Fox stories and the rest are (what I assume is) other right-leaning news sources.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that "Trump" is a massively broad search term. In that case, and without knowing more about you, it will probably serve results that other people who searched for that term clicked on and didn't bounce from.

As soon as you refine the search even slightly to give the search engine a clue about what you want, the results are much more in line with that refinement.

--A

[wayfriend]

Google's primary method of ranking search results is by how frequently the page and the site is referenced (linked to) from other pages. It's also partially based on the meta-data encoded into the page (which you don't see), which people tune to get higher rankings. And also based on what you have arranged with Google for scanning your site. The first one, then, is based on aggregate behavior, and the last two are under the control of the web site author.

I don't understand how anyone can complain about bias in Google, and then in the same breath suggest that Google should skew results until the positive news quantity balances the negative news quantity.

When President Trump complains that Google Search mainly presents unflattering news about him intentionally, it reminds me of people who say there must be something wrong with the mirror when they check their appearance.

I don't know what DuckDuckGo's search algorithms are like, as they have not been the subject of speculation like Google's have been. But it advertises itself as not collecting data about searches, and as such, it's a refuge for people who search for unsavory things. It's promoted by the alt-right as a safe alternative to Google. Therefore, it's results may be biased as well. Comparing Google to ONLY DuckDuckGo is like calling CNN biased because it's not like Fox.

[Zarathustra]

Google's primary method of ranking search results is by how frequently the page and the site is referenced (linked to) from other pages. It's also partially based on the meta-data encoded into the page (which you don't see), which people tune to get higher rankings. And also based on what you have arranged with Google for scanning your site. The first one, then, is based on aggregate behavior, and the last two are under the control of the web site author.

I don't understand how anyone can complain about bias in Google, and then in the same breath suggest that Google should skew results until the positive news quantity balances the negative news quantity.

I'm open to your points as well as the idea that Trump's conspiracy theories are paranoid. FAIR POINT! I acknowledge it. I promise you I'm not trying to troll your thread.

However, if you look at the first couple links I gave, they were written before Trump won, in 2015. They have nothing to do with Trump. They are good-faith offerings for this thread. The first one in particular was written by a scientist who says that Google could accidentally steal an election (no conspiracy theory necessary!). After years of experiments, they found that people's opinions could be swayed as much as 48% of the time when they viewed news stories about a candidate that were either positive or negative. That's huge! Given the topic of this thread, I'm genuinely puzzled why it doesn't seem like a greater concern. Seriously. We are embroiled as a nation in the idea that a foreign government interfered in our election with a handful of Facebook ads that almost no one saw, but we shouldn't be worried about 90% of people's access to information being filtered through one corporation that is--without a doubt--biased? I don't see how you can be concerned with one and not the other . . . not unless it's merely being dismissed because you agree with that corporation's bias.

When President Trump complains that Google Search mainly presents unflattering news about him intentionally, it reminds me of people who say there must be something wrong with the mirror when they check their appearance.

That's hilarious. Dismiss bias as a possibility by calling the bias reality. There ARE positive things to say about this presidency. He is a wildly successful President. I don't know if you realize but there are millions of people who love this President and think he's doing an amazing job, perhaps better than any President in over a century. If that shocks you, it's because you don't expose yourselves to those views. The reason the other sides doesn't see it is because their news sources don't expose them to it. The mirrors here are confirmation bias--people seeing news that they agree with and thinking that means it's true. But there IS another side! That's the whole point. It's being lost because our media and our search engines are skewing reality.

I don't know what DuckDuckGo's search algorithms are like, as they have not been the subject of speculation like Google's have been. But it advertises itself as not collecting data about searches, and as such, it's a refuge for people who search for unsavory things. It's promoted by the alt-right as a safe alternative to Google. Therefore, it's results may be biased as well. Comparing Google to ONLY DuckDuckGo is like calling CNN biased because it's not like Fox.

That's an ironic post coming from a guy who used to worry so much about Big Data. Online privacy isn't merely a "refuge for people who search for unsavory things." How insulting! It's a way to avoid the perils of Big Data that used to bother you so much, keeping powerful corporations like Google from tracking you. You don't have to be involved in nefarious acts to want your privacy!

It's also ironic for you to debunk one conspiracy theory with another. Suggesting that DuckDuckGo is some alt-right biased search engine for people who search for unsavory things--as a strategy to avoid the demonstrably biased results in Google searches--is just the pot calling the kettle black. You have no evidence of bias in DuckDuckGo. Throwing around scary terms like "alt-right" doesn't count.

Is "bias" now going to be defined as failing to present a 90%+ negative view of Trump??? If search results of DuckDuckGo present straight news stories with a neutral or balanced view, this is now defined as "alt-right bias????"

it's downright Orwellian. Up is down, good is bad, balanced is biased.

[Zarathustra]

Can we explore this conspiracy theory that DuckDuckGo is an alt-right search engine for unsavory people a moment?

From Wikipedia:

DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results.[3] DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by deliberately showing all users the same search results for a given search term,[5] and emphasizes returning the best results, rather than the most results, generating those results from over 400 individual sources, including crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex.[6][7]

It doesn't profile its users and deliberately shows everyone the same information. That's bias? That's nefarious? That's "right?"

Nothing in the Wikipedia page mentions anything about a political bias. I'd like to see the evidence, please.

And why does it make sense to view one search engine as politically biased, but it's inconceivable to think another could be?