Google Search Results Have Liberal Bias, Study Finds (thedenverchannel.com) 385
According to a new study reported by The Wall Street Journal, Google's search results tend to lean liberal. "An analysis by online-search marketer CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people." The Denver Channel reports: "Minimum wage" tended to yield more liberal results, while "does gun control reduce crime" resulted in more conservative ones. Searches for "financial regulation" and "federal reserve" found mostly nonpartisan links. CanIRank used the opinions of four people to determine how liberal or conservative each website was. For 16 percent of the political search terms studied, no right-leaning results showed up at all on the first page of results. CanIRank noted this could be a problem for democracy. A different study found most people click on one of the first five search results. Users rarely move on to the second page. A Google spokesperson said in an email to the WSJ: "From the beginning, our approach to search has been to provide the most relevant answers and results to our users, and it would undermine people's trust in our results, and our company, if we were to change course." According to Google, their results are "determined by algorithms using hundreds of factors" and "reflect the content and information that is available on the internet."
Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a well known fact that reality has a strong liberal bias.
Re:Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact has no bias. It just is. Bias is when we inject our emotion and opinion into facts.
It's not just reality that's biased... (Score:3)
Google results are biased towards what users at a particular location using a particular computer and a particular account find to be correct.
I.e. Billy Bob and William Jefferson the Third just may not get the same results when googling for things. Particularly when it comes to cigars.
You know... Search engine giving YOU results YOU are searching for... not what someone else might be searching for...
Something tells me that Google may be spending a lot of time and resources on getting that to actually work.
O
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BTW... Apparently Slashdot also has a left-leaning bias. Wont' let me say "Nig.ers" with two 'g's. Remember that as you read all the other posts here. This is a left-leaning site.
I hadn't realized that was in place. However, it's not so much evidence of left leaning or PC as it is a simple and obvious reaction to a long-standing category of slashdot trolls (https://encyclopediadramatica.se/GNAA).
Re:It's not just reality that's biased... (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW... Apparently Slashdot also has a left-leaning bias. Wont' let me say "Nig.ers" with two 'g's.
Remember that as you read all the other posts here. This is a left-leaning site.
So you're saying since Slashdot doesn't let you use a racial slur, it's left-leaning? So you're saying right-leaning users want to use racial slurs but are thwarted by this left-leaning site?
That's what I thought.
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I don't remember a lot of leftist outrage when whats-his-name the football player refused to stand for the national anthem.
Re:Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a well known fact that reality has a strong liberal bias.
What insufferable arrogance.
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Note how many times they have made that claim, just in this thread.
Denial be deep and wide...
Re:Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a well known fact that reality has a strong liberal bias.
What insufferable arrogance.
Then get your fellow conservatives to stop lying their assess off.
I'm sorry but if I were a Conservative with intellectual integrity I'd be absolutely ashamed of the state of my movement and wouldn't have the first idea where to go.
Did you not watch the party that represents your movement first spend years falling head over heels with an obviously incompetent Sarah Palin, only to eventually go all in behind a man so lied so shamelessly that I can't even think of a comparable individual and with only a vague idea of what a President actually does?
Did you not see The Volokh Conspiracy, a site so solidly right wing their favourite candidate was Ted "I'm going to threaten the country's solvency to launch my Presidential bid" Cruz, come out almost uniformly against Trump [washingtonpost.com].
Did you not watch virtually every respected intellectual within the Republican party either oppose Trump, or only back him with extreme reluctance?
Were you paying attention when your base was taken over by ridiculous birther conspiracies and freakouts that the federal government was about to invade Texas?!?
This is not "there's two sides to every story", or "well Liberals are just as bad". Stupid Liberal conspiracies happen too, but they're the exception, not the rule. They don't end up dominating the entire movement.
There is a valid role for conservatism to play in the public discourse, so toss out the damn clowns and hucksters and start playing it!!
But he is right (Score:4, Insightful)
So yes, even if said in jest, there is a base of truth in it.
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Re: Cold, heartless liberal bean counters (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that many people on the right behave the same way, just about different topics.
And it's annoying no matter who is doing it.
Ps both are needed, dreams AND plans (Score:2)
My first post may have cast liberals in a negative role. Both viewpoints are needed, so ideally we'd all respect the others' ways of looking at things. Liberals are strong at imagining a great thing, as dream end state. Then respect the conservatives' that the budget won't cover all that, but we CAN afford to do A, B, and C.
Re:Ps both are needed, dreams AND plans (Score:5, Interesting)
Conservatives aren't about budget responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Then respect the conservatives' that the budget won't cover all that, but we CAN afford to do A, B, and C.
Baloney. The conservatives NEVER argue to cut the things that actually matter from the budget. They just borrow the money instead of raising taxes but are just as irresponsible. Conservatives NEVER bring up cutting social security, medicare/medicaid, or the defense budget which together account for about 3/4 of the federal budget. Any politician that claims to be about fiscal responsibility who doesn't talk about how they are going to cut the defense budget or medicare is lying through their teeth about what the budget will cover. They are unwilling to make the hard choices and cut the programs that matter.
You could cut every cent of every program except for medicare, medicaid, defense and social security and you STILL couldn't balance the budget. So anyone who talks about "cutting pork" without discussing those four programs is full of shit about being fiscally responsible.
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Re: Name ANY conservative and I'll show you (Score:5, Informative)
Since I have been able to vote (1972), Democratic Presidents have lowered the deficit, and Republicans (with the arguable exception of Nixon) have raised it.
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The President generally proposes the budget, although Congress has the final say.
And, no matter if the budget was controlled by Congress or trained pigeons (and I'm not saying which would be better), the deficit has gone up with Republican Presidents (except maybe Nixon) and down with Democratic.
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Note the much higher conviction rate of Blacks than whites for the same crime, then when Blacks are sentenced to longer prison sentences for the same crimes, bigots complain that Blacks are filling up the jails. If the sentencing wasn't racist, then X wouldn't equal Z, and X shouldn't equal Z, but bigots force X to equal Z, then complain about it.
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Democrats don't want to destroy Appalachian culture. They just want to destroy the global damage caused by coal mining and burning. If the Appalachian culture was b
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Re:Cold, heartless liberal bean counters (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberals speak of what they desire *could* be, and very often of how things *should* be. Conservatives focus much more on the cold, hard facts of how things *are*. So much so that it often makes discussions difficult:
Your describing what conservatives *should* be, not what they are.
In reality, their "cold hard facts" are often aren't facts at all, but are instead per-conceived postulates. Thus, so much emphasis on "faith" and "principles", objective evidence be damned.
They are also usually focused less how things *are*, than on how they think things *were*, as interpreted through some distorted rose-colored filter.
Re:Cold, heartless liberal bean counters (Score:5, Insightful)
I have observed that liberals tend to be idealists, conservatives realists.
That's right. That's why the Earth is 6,000 years old, climate change doesn't exist no matter what the science says, evolution is a myth, market forces are the answer to any problem, implementing a minimum wage totally ruined our economy, we are safer if we all have guns despite the statistics from other countries, the government should not try to control our lives and yet somehow gay marriage not only devalues our normal marriages and causes earthquakes.
side effects of truthiness (Score:3, Insightful)
If the effect however, is that conservative opinions / viewpoints based on factual information are being deemphasized, then that's a valid point - but I don't think that's the effect going on here. Or perhaps conservative viewpoint webpages tend not to contain the same amount of credible factual information...
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not even objective evidence of what is being claimed. This is just the opinion of four people.
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
"...CanIRank used the opinions of four people..."
What the simple fuck?
Re: side effects of truthiness (Score:5, Informative)
And yet the people who assume that the study agrees with their world views are quick to accept it as some sort of reflection truth.
It is a well known fact reality is distorted.
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As a beginning writer, my 1st-year professor whipped "It is a well known fact ..." out of me with an office visit and an F.
Can you see Google's Code? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tested the theory several times through the election process. "How do I vote" would immediately fill in "for Hillary Clinton" and the name "Donald Trump" would not appear even when you typed in "Donald Trum". Searching for "Presidential Candidates" would show Hillary and Obama, with Trump being down between 6 and 9 places in the list. When millions of people report the same exact symptom, it no longer remains something you can explain with a personal anecdote.
Google Management and executives have a bias toward Democratic/Liberal politics. This can show up in their product with relative ease, and if you don't believe so perhaps spend a bit of time with data analysts who can show you how to manipulate data for the effect you want. Study Statistics, which is all about manipulating data for effect.
While it's true that the study will be accepted by people who have the world view that Google censors content, people who happen to favor Democratic/Liberal politics will disbelieve it.
Reality is not distorted, only our view of it is distorted. Without facts, such as the question in my subject, we can only speculate on the facts that we do have.
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the takeaway is that the Wall Street Journal is a fake news site.
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:4, Interesting)
In many conservatives' minds, it is, because they are obviously co-conspirators in the liberal conspiracy. All too many conservatives disregard anything that disagrees with the tinfoil hat set's holy trinity (Limbaugh, Beck, and Jones) because obviously so-called "legitimate news sources" are trying to hide the truth... the truth that gay and nonwhite people are in cahoots with the lizard people who run the Illuminati and therefore the shadow government.
Yes, some people really believe that.
It's maddening, and no amount of evidence will prove to them that "crooked Hillary" isn't, and that Trump isn't a saint. Oh, and the videos of Trump admitting to sexual assault, bragging about ripping off small businesses deeming it "good business," and so forth are faked, just like the moon landing.
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This is the kind of statement you get when people can no longer think for themselves, but rely upon demagogues.
"we are actually no different from North Korea"
Think about that for a minute.
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not even objective evidence of what is being claimed. This is just the opinion of four people.
What you don't realize is that some belief systems that have been popular for thousands of years only need a crusty old book with no contemporary evidence to basically enslave all of the Western Europe for several centuries. We've come far as a culture but still very far from rational, it pains me to say. I think we'll eventually get there though.
Re:side effects of truthiness (Score:4, Funny)
There's not even objective evidence of what is being claimed. This is just the opinion of four people.
Ya, but they were: Zeus, Athena, Apollo and Hermes -- Hades was busy with the election.
It's called a "panel". (Score:2)
a small group of people brought together to investigate or decide on a particular matter.
"an interview panel"
synonyms: group, advisory group, team, body, committee, jury, council, board, commission
"a panel of judges"
You know... like those people who score individual performances at sports events... or those people on that supreme court thing...
Some might even call such a group a "panel of experts".
On the other hand, "the four people" part seems to be a Wall Street Journal invention.
All that the actual CanIRank.com analysis mentions is "scorers from both sides of the political spectrum" and that they "were in agreement as to the degree and direction of bias for about half of the results, and were within 1 point on appro
Goes conservative on gun control (Score:3, Insightful)
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The summary in fact offers an example where conservative websites are emphasized and it happens to be on a topic where the conservatives usually have the facts on their side. Gun control. Like it or not the facts from an engineering and historical point of view favor the conservatives. The liberal side of the argument seems mostly emotion and embracing placebo "solutions".
Agreed, but that also describes the liberal view of minimum wage (at least when the liberals aren't the ones writing the paychecks).
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Google results are skewed by bloggers linking to articles they agree with. Libs have been using that for years to bias Google Search and Google News.
Google could fix it if they wanted, but their CEO is a Clinton staffer [freebeacon.com] so that won't happen
American Bubble (Score:3)
The summary in fact offers an example where conservative websites are emphasized and it happens to be on a topic where the conservatives usually have the facts on their side. Gun control.
Sorry to burst your American bubble but there is a simpler explanation: Google searches the web worldwide with the emphasis on "world". On the US political spectrum the average person in Europe and Canada probably maps to somewhere marginally right of communism and since Google will use links to judge interest those of us in the rest of the world could produce a 'liberal bias' compared to the US.
This would also explain why gun control came back more conservative. Whatever your views on it are the only c
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Which is an asinine argument because us normal people are trying to protect children from those damn things.
One of the few things the liberals get correct is that one should not leave them laying around loaded. They should be stored safely under lock and key. Once locked up the children are safe.
We're not the emotional ones. They're emotional and irrational since they love their guns more than their children.
Thank you for proving my point about liberals being delusional and emotional on this topic.
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What good is having my gun stored under lock and key when the race war starts or a bear climbs through the window?
I keep mine stuffed in the waistband of my pants like God intended. And let me tell you, there are challenges to carrying an AR-15 in the waistband of these old sweatpants. On the plus side, the fact that no bears have climbed through my window
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Sorry, I'm a little unclear here. Is that the guns or the children that should be locked up to keep them safe?
Re:Goes conservative on gun control (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary in fact offers an example where conservative websites are emphasized and it happens to be on a topic where the conservatives usually have the facts on their side. Gun control.
Most conservative "facts" when it comes to gun control are still based on the long-ago debunked statistical model of John Lott Jr. If the claims of conservative websites were true, countries like Japan wouldn't have a murder rate per capita that is less than 1/10th of the US nor would countries like Somalia with no gun control would have one that is nearly double that of the US.
Except for the fact that gun violence is more about a poor educational system and few to low quality job opportunities, and not so much about civilian access to firearms. Switzerland has a vibrant sport shooting community but they also have a good educational system, a good social safety net, etc. Plus firearms owners have had safety training and practice safe storage. What is going right in Japan and going wrong in Somalia has little to do with gun violence. Gun violence is a symptom of other problems. But to acknowledge this with respect to US gun violence would mean accepting decades of mistaken US policy and liberal politicians would rather not do that.
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Well, as they say, truth has a liberal bias, so if your search engine weights things that provide more credible factual information, and more credible factual information is associated with liberal news/information sources, what's the problem?
Oh but think of the poor people that were brought up in completely delusional belief systems and how much their feelings get hurt when they are confronted by reality. Have some compassion would you? Irrational, delusional people have feelings too.
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Well, as they say, truth has a liberal bias,..
Really, please, keep saying stuff just like that.
It merits the reward of higher social status among your peer group of the neo-progressives perennially oblivious to the midwestern distaste for snotty liberal know-it-alls presuming to be our intellectual betters while demanding ever-more tax dollars, political power and control over our lives.
Win elections much?
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people.
Four people rated the results? That sounds like pretty flimsy evidence. Why are their opinions some definitive source of truth?
No duh (Score:2)
That's is because liberal information tends to be science-based, while conservative information tends to be faith-based. eg "I believe this is true because people/jesus told me it is."
That doesn't mean that all Liberal information is correct, nor does it mean conservative information is incorrect, it just means that the basis for forming that information tends to lean liberal because liberals put more value on science or fact-checking than conservatives do. You would never use breitbart or foxnews as a prim
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Like stats about the uselessness of gun control, for example.
What's wrong about the fact:
If you have a gun and a toddler in your house, you are more likely to be shot by your toddler than to fire the gun in self defense.
Go on, prove it wrong. Tell me how it's not true. Yes, I know the non-fact based argument that most "self defense" uses are brandishing, not firing. But I've not found anyone that can find (objective, factual) fault in the fact presented.
Hillary Clinton ... (Score:3)
... can cite this damaging evidence, provided by four fucking people , to contest the election.
Oh, wait.
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Tell these people [realclearpolitics.com] that "Nobody at all likes Hillary."
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I have first-hand knowledge of this.
Do Google Search Results also have. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: Moderators that modded this down had a small penis bias.
Typo in summary (Score:2)
You probably meant to type "According to a new study reported by a fox-media-pwned newspaper ..."
Just try to find (Score:3, Informative)
I have read a lot of lines about 'the truth has a liberal bias', or 'liberal information tends to be science based', and I have to shake my head.
Try googling for any information on how to 'combat the rise of gender-fluidity', or 'how to explain physiology is a binary gender system', or 'how to explain gender fluidity is a social construct' and you get Nothing, Zip, Nada, that isn't in support of this brand of mental disorder.
Science based? Truth? Not even close. Everywhere you see sex that's outside a human social construct there's a male and female. Only humans social structure describes non-existent genders in liberal circles.
Not a troll, or flamebait, but I have asbestos underwear on, and I can already feel the flames from the mod-activism firing up.
Fact is, The science and truth hurt the liberal cause acutely no matter how much spin they try and put on it.
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Those examples can change naturally without surgery.
How many Humans have you met that can physically and completely change at will? Including having the ability to produce offspring? Hell there's not one Human that can reproduce even WITH the surgery.
I should have added; 'Fantasy is a Human characteristic.'
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What is your definition of "will" that makes you think animals change gender "at will"?
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What is your definition of "will" that makes you think animals change gender "at will"?
Fair enough, allow me to rephrase;
How many Humans have you met that can, or have, spontaneously changed their physiological gender to best suit the needs of the environment?
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Humans also don't "spontaneously" do Math, or hit three pointers or lose weight. Or become Republicans. But that doesn't mean those things are somehow unnatural and shouldn't be allowed. People don't "spontaneously" regrow limbs, but we've figured out prostheses.
There have been people changing gender for thousands of years, including Roman emperors and Egyptian pharao
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It is extremely difficult to show that there is any rise in gender-fluidity, as it can't be distinguished from a rise in being comfortable identifying as a non-binary gender.
Scienc
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Some advice for anyone about to go to university: Do not borrow any money for any course with the word "studies" in it, because there will not be any payoff at the end of that road.
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Careful, your bias is showing.
You talk about science based information, yet your example queries are textbook pseudoscience. You aren't looking for answers or explanations with those search terms. You are looking for confirmation of what you already believe to be true. If you had instead searched for neutral non biased search terms, you may have come across resources that actually explain transgender and gender fluidity beyond your preconceived notions of them.
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Careful, your spin is showing.
I referenced the science of the binary system of male and female in regards to Google searches that would help debunk the pseudoscience of transgender and gender-fluidity mental disorders and mutations.
This has been an issue going back millennia. I believe in everyone's right to whatever they want. It becomes an issue when the extreme minority of androgen receptor mutations or congenital adrenal hyperplasia afflicted humans demand that everyone start accepting people to choose
Re:Just try to find (Score:4, Informative)
Firstly, you are WAY too obsessed with trannies. Your revulsion, lust, or repressed urge to be one is clouding your mind when it comes to understanding what is even being discussed in those links.
Everywhere you see sex that's outside a human social construct there's a male and female. Only humans social structure describes non-existent genders ...
As I've explained to you more than once I believe (will this be the time the penny finally drops?), the very purpose of the concept of 'gender' used in contradistinction to 'sex' is to distinguish biology from narrative.
'Sex' is a biological fact, and it falls into the classification of male, female, or occasionally intersex. 'Gender' on the other hand is a social construct by definition, usually described by the adjectives masculine, feminine and, given there is hardly any limit to our ability to craft narrative, all this contemporary gender fluid stuff (though even in traditional societies the idea of a 3rd gender for feminine (gender) males (biological sex)).
Gender used in this sense refers to that which is not biologically determined, but instead reflects the cultural ideas of how people of a given biological sex ought to behave. Eg. Bearing children is a function of female physiology, skirt wearing is not. A clue that skirt wearing behaviour is a matter of gender, and child-bearing is not, is to be found, as we have discussed, in the fact that in certain cultures skirts are items of masculine (gender) attire. This illustrates that the idea in our culture (with apologies to all you Scots out there) that skirts are for females (biological sex) and pants for males (biological sex) is a social construct. Thus a skirt (in our culture) is a feminine (gender) garment, not a female (biological sex) one.
It will thrill you, no doubt, to learn, that the most extreme (and thus easily ridiculed) branch of feminism, ie. RadFem (cf TERF), shares your disgust not only of gender (which they understand to exist, but wish to eliminate, see 'Gender critical' or GC) but also of male-to-female transsexuals, referring to them as male-to-transsexuals (or MTTs), that is when they are not too busy calling for fun stuff like the restriction of males (biological sex) to being 10% of the human population and the like ... Horseshoe effect?
What this does indicate though is that the very concept of gender (in contradistinction to sex) can be deployed to undermine the notion of gender-fluidity (i.e. as traditional gender roles break down what does this even mean anymore?) It is for this reason that the trans-gender lobby is seeking to infect the notion of gender with physiology by relying on the, imho rather dubious, concept of "brain-sex" as an explanation of why their gendered (feminine/masculine) self-image is at odds with their biological sex (male/female). Which amounts in effect to arguing that skirt-wearing behaviour is a function of physiology. That mainstream feminism (as opposed to RadFem) is so happy to accommodate the claim of trans-gendered males (biological sex) to being 'women' (biological sex or gender???) seems self-defeating to me. Were they not trying to escape the idea of sex as destiny (i.e. physiological femininity) But as a traditionally masculine (gender) male (biological sex) all I can say it's your movement girls.
And I'm WAY too obsessed with someone being obviously wrong on the internet.
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Oh God an amateur shrink.
I bet you found your psychology book at Good Will.
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You bet wrong, I read three years of psych for one of my degrees (is that not what you would call a 'major' over there?)... damn waste of time too. I thought between revulsion, lust and longing I'd just about exhausted the possibilities for this obsession, thus avoiding making anything resembling a definitive diagnosis, but I missed one? So tell me why is transsexualism so important to you?
More pertinently, can I take your silence on the substantial matter to mean that you do now grok the sex/gender dist
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what evidence is there that it's an issue?
I see it in school children who come home and have pronounced that they have decided they aren't happy in their bodies at a critically young age when sexuality shouldn't even be a topic. I see a lot of these kids forced into it by activist parents or encouraged by their peers as the latest fashion.
I see it in full grown men that should have been treated for prostrate issues instead of given hormones and surgically mutilated while leaving the real potential problem untreated and possibly leading to a mans de
In other words (Score:2)
50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people.
In other words, four people have a conservative bias. :)
Randomly correct? (Score:2)
American political bias (Score:2)
I get it slashdot is american blah blah blah.
But many of the issues that are raising in the US as conservative vs liberal are not in the same camp when in other countries. Gun control is a prime example. In Australia the strict gun control laws were put in place by the strongly conservative party. Also minimum wage legislation was introduced by Deakin in 1904 who was the leader of the then right wing party.
Google's results are dependent on the searcher! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's results are not the same for every searcher in every locale. They are dependent on what you've searched for in the past, where you're at, what is in the news at the moment, etc.
In other words, they are quite intentionally biased to meet the likely desires of the user. This article has no basis in science, though it cloaks itself in that fashion to those who know nothing about science, and is far more biased than Google's search results.
Perhaps the Web has a liberal "bias"... (Score:2)
Perhaps the benchmark is miscalibrated (Score:2)
.
If that center benchmark is too far towards the conservative side, then the web (and, subsequently, google's search results) will appear to have a liberal bias.
In other words, maybe the web does not have a liberal bias, maybe the center benchmark that the researchers used is too far towards the conservative side.
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You nailed it, my friend. When I tell conservatives President Obama is in some respects far more conservative than Richard Nixon, they call me a liar. When I prove it by referring to their actual and legislation they backed, the cons' tiny heads explode like those little red firecrackers.
Proof again (Score:2)
As reported... (Score:2)
Given a specific selection of searches a putatively unbiased panel said the results were biased. Some of the serches were: ... liberal bias ... conservative bias ... non-partisan ... non-partisan
"Minimum wage"
"does gun control reduce crime"
"financial regulation"
"federal reserve"
Why do I feel accurate reporting of web pages would produce a that kind of bias? This seems to be a non-story tricked up to try to appear shocking.
Too small a study (Score:5, Interesting)
This study is just way, way too small to have the conclusion it claims to have.
Whether left-leaning or right-leaning results turn up depends upon a wide variety of factors, not least of which is wording (left-leaning sites and right-leaning sites often use slightly different wording for the same issue). I don't see how it is even remotely possible for a group of four people to review enough searches to make up a representative sample, and four people is too small a number to provide a solid opinion.
Also, there's a distinct possibility that for some issues, left-leaning sites have talked about those issues far more frequently and in far more depth, while right-leaning sites will have discussed other, different issues.
Finally, I see no reason why Google should be held to any sort of standard of false balance: there are many issues for which the facts very solidly support the left, and it makes sense for Google's search results to reflect that bias. One of the clearest examples here would be global warming, but there are many others.
They are the results of what people seek. (Score:2)
Study results aside, Google returns search results that are most likely relevant and ranked by what people looked at in the past. This means, if the first 8 results are no good and everyone clicks (and stays at) on the ninth result, it will make it's way toward number one. Liberal or conservative, these are the pages people looked at the most. It could be more liberal people use Google or maybe conservatives are seeking out results they disagree with but that's not really important. What is important is
News at 11 (Score:4, Interesting)
The results are liberal or conservative ... (Score:2)
... depending on whether the search is by a liberal or conservative.
So? (Score:3)
Go use another search engine that caters to your political persuasion.
The Truth Has Power (Score:2)
Re:Bias in [current year]? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligence has a liberal bias.
Google is a smart search engine built by smart people.
And yet it leans conservative sometimes ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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A "study"?!? It's FOUR fucking people.
It's worthless.
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Maybe, just maybe, the Internet has a bias.
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Reality has a liberal bias too, that's been shown again and again. That's not surprising since the other side is based on beliefs.
Re:Bias in [current year]? (Score:4, Informative)
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I've got news for you... (Score:2)
Reality has a liberal bias. The google search results merely reflect reality.
--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Now that's comedy!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"How about a search engine that just searches?"
It's obvious you've put a tremendous amount of time thinking about this.
So, what does this mean? What does the search engine return, Mr. Wizard? Web sites that have the most occurrences of the search phrase in them? Search engines have to be written to do something. It's not magic. It seems that Google is trying to return results that are the most relevant. I would imagine that part of "relevant" would be factual, which means that it's not going to point
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So, you would prefer a search engine that makes absolutely no value judgments? I bet if you really think about it, you'll figure out why that's a bad idea. And it has nothing at all to do with ideology.
If you're having trouble, I bet someone here can help you.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes.
How much SJW staff work is needed to set the tone for "offensive or disparaging" alterations?
Just for a serving politician that has the same outlook as staff?
Do search results have to protect a political dynasty over decades? Book results too? Free digital results from city and state newspapers from the 1970-90 get found or not so much?
How far and deep does a top down policy of party political "offensive or dispara
Re: (Score:2)
No, you really don't. You just can't think outside the "SJW''s want to kill my mama" cage you've built for yourself.
If search engines didn't make value judgements of some kind, you would search for, "Is the Earth flat" and be likely to get an answer that would be wrong. You might search for, "What do I do if I have seriously swollen testicles" and get sent to a faith healer or homeopath and then die horribly of something that could have been cured with penicillin.
In those cases, you might as well not
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The news on the "offensive or disparaging" results is rather easy to find
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The one thing that they didn't correct for is searching for things that have liberal and conservative biases. Search for "SJW BLM" and tell me if the results are liberal or conservative. The look I did showed very conservative results. Try again with "crooked hillary" and tell me the results. If conservatives use a different language in doing searches, then
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For every thing the
Re: (Score:3)
First, and most meaninglessly, GP was making an anti-religion point. Second, and far more importantly, black markets and illegally avoiding regulation are not examples of the invisible hand in economics.
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"Either way stop or leave. I fucking hate you."
You're not looking at this in the right way: what in hell's wrong with having an easy way to identify flamebait?