Google Showing Election Bias?

[J_RaD]

---------- DO NOT BUST INTO SOME POLITICAL RANT--------

Evidence is mounting more and more each day

www.regated.com/2016/06/google-censorship-trump/

[youtube.com...]

[ibtimes.co.uk...]

Seem google has its hands in the political cookie jar and is skewing search results in order to sway votes.
Or let me rephrase, A global company is working with the US gov to skew online news and search results in order to get their selected candidate elected.

If this isn't a sign of deep corruption, yikes!

and just today, they are suppressing youtube comments on the obama endorsment

[youtube.com...]


Please keep it about THIS and not who you like or don't like.

No matter who you are voting for THIS SHOULD NOT BE GOING ON AT ALL!

[bakedjake]

Sir Humphrey said it best - no one is really upset that it is happening - they're just upset they're being told it's happening ;)

[martinibuster]

SourceFed is wrong.

Rhea Drysdale thoroughly debunked it in an article published on Medium.com, Hillary Clinton’s Search Results Manipulated by SourceFed, Not Google [medium.com]

J_RaD, you were manipulated into believing something that is untrue. You may wish to consider being less gullible about clickbait topics and memes in the future. Jump off the clickbait hamster wheel. It's a waste of everyone's time. ;)

[ken_b]

---------- DO NOT BUST INTO SOME POLITICAL RANT--------

The whole thread is political

of course you knew that when you posted it!

.

[Andy Langton]

I read the article (which gives no evidence for its claims whatsoever) and was hoping to see something better than this. They're ignoring the fact that Google suggest is totally different in the US for every search, regardless of whether it's positive or not. Why would Google 'suppress' completely innocuous searches, if the Google suggest difference is evidence of suppression? The data they're using doesn't pass even the most basic of tests - a simple control. Are the same observable difference when searching for other people evidence against Google? The first suggestion I get for "Google..." in the US is Maps, and in the UK, Streetview. Does Google want to hide Streetview from Americans? Apparently so.

And the comparison with Yahoo/Bing. Oh dear.

[tangor]

When I can see the evidence in my own browser I tend to give a little credence to the observation. Also note this type of manipulation has been studied. [cnbc.com...] This report (among others) is about more than just politics.... we've even had a few conversations here which touched on similar topics regarding search and auto complete at g.

[lawman]

I see tangor has given this at least a little thought.

[Andy Langton]

I would be shocked a company with the prominence of Google was not working closely with politicians. They certainly spend enough on lobbying. But the supposed evidence of changing autocomplete entries doesn't stack up at all.

You can literally take any famous name and compare Google.com and Google.co.uk results and there will be different autocomplete suggestions. The video would need to show that these particular differences were not accounted for. I would strongly encourage people to try this themselves.

They also make numerous wholly faulty assumptions - for instance, about the link between Google Trends and Google suggestions, and about the idea that Bing results should be the same as Google.

Even if you agree with the premise, and even if you think Google is manipulating political results, you should reject this supposed research on the ground that it is conducted by someone with no apparent knowledge of how Google works, who seemingly had an "Aha!" moment while looking at suggestions and has turned this into a conclusion that isn't supported at all by the evidence.

If you want a counterexample, try searching for "Hillary Clinton is..". The UK/US results are still different, but both entirely negative. Are Google so incompetent as to have changed the results for only the handful of poor examples in the video?

Encouraging people to accept the conclusion even though the data is questionable is not the way to do this. I would welcome any genuine evidence of Google manipulating results.

[J_RaD]

J_RaD, you were manipulated into believing something that is untrue.

When I can see the evidence in my own browser I tend to give a little credence to the observation

DING DING DING

only took me 15 mins of my own testing to see this wasn't total horse poo

even in the very last youtube link i posted you can CLEARLY see 7000+ censored comments

[RhinoFish]

donald trump lawsui = 3-4 autocomplete suggestions
hillary clinton lawsui = 0 autocomplete suggestions

haha!
she's a lawyer, millions of articles with her name and the word lawsuit.
puh leez.

[Andy Langton]

There are 194,000 exact matches for "donald trump lawsuit" and 3,790 for "hillary clinton lawsuit".

If you pick random autocomplete suggestions as evidence of things, you can come to any conclusion you want. Literally any conclusion - you just need to find an autocomplete that supports it. I'm in the UK and have no horse in this race. I would actually love to see some repeatable evidence that Google is deliberately manipulating results. Autocomplete, in the way that it is being used to support a political argument here, is definitively not it. Every example I've seen is just selection bias.

Why not try "hillary clinton hates" vs "donald trump hates" or "hillary clinton is" vs "donald trump is". You would need to willfully ignore these results if they don't match the conclusion.

[jimbeetle]

And of course, now, with millions of people doing the same sample searches from the original article and clicking on results the autocomplete suggestions are being more and more artificially manipulated.

[J_RaD]

Nope these auto complete searched seem to be permanently suppressed

google this

crooked hillary ? what you mean crooked Hillary bernie ? has that ever even been a search term?

duckduckgo

croo *bam* 4 letters in auto completes crooked hillary - and they get the data from goog.

bounce from native google, and go try duckduckgo

[Andy Langton]

You've found evidence that Google and DuckDuckGo's autocomplete are not the same. For this to tell us anything about manipulation, you have to show that this only applies to particular results. Do you see the same results on both if you search for other things? Otherwise you are just cherry-picking data that supports a particular conclusion.

As far as I know, the Duck Duck Go autocomplete barely resembles Googles. I have no idea if Google is the source or not, but if it is, it does not appear to in any way reflect Google.com autocomplete, for any keyword.

DuckDuckGo's top autocomplete for "donald trump is" is substantially negative, whereas Google's isn't. How does this fit in with the theory?

[tangor]

Andy, I see similar oddities for things NOT political, some of which suppress regular websites with perfectly valid EXACT MATCH and g shows either branded or ad paying results. Cherry picking goes both ways .... saying it is only political is reverse cherry picking.

The last few years I've cautioned clients dependent on g to CHECK FOR WHAT'S NOT in the autocomplete that you might expect to be there, OR to type out the entire query and then hit enter, OR turn off autocomplete. I don't say that about Bing.

As this particular thread does involve US politics I'm not surprised that geo locations outside of the USA might have different autocomplete suggestions, that makes perfect sense.

[J_RaD]

or this to tell us anything about manipulation, you have to show that this only applies to particular results

I can search google trends for random topics, and the auto complete leads me the same direction within 0 to 2 keystrokes.

I pick up trends for everyday search data, hit up google, hit up bing, ddg, spends 15 mins and everything looks fine.... go hit up for the latest political search terms.

goog auto complete takes a 180 nose dive... like i've said bing and other engines pick the auto complete up on a few keystrokes..where i can feed goog the ENTIRE TERM and its still ignoring it.

the fact the trends shows search data on the keyboard but googs own auto complete ignoring it totally shows some fish sauce at play.


Obamas youtube video STILL has the comments censored :-X

[Andy Langton]

Let me put it another way.

if you were to say to me that Google has the ability to manipulate search results, then I agree 100% with that.

If you say that Google might be manipulating search results, I can agree.

If you suggested that Google is probably manipulating search results, I couldn't refute that.

If the claim is that Google is manipulating particular search results, I'd like to see some evidence. The evidence that has been presented thus far is ridiculously poor. It doesn't qualify as evidence at all. It is cherry-picked data that is designed to demonstrate a particular point.

[bakedjake]

IMHO this is actually the bigger story

[publicpolicy.googleblog.com...]

[tangor]

You know what, kiddies? We might have this all wrong. What if one candidate simply asked for certain things to be be forgotten? We know g can do that in the EU. :)

[J_RaD]

IMHO this is actually the bigger story

[publicpolicy.googleblog.com...]

TPP bad!

push pro TPP canadate ? SUCCESS!

[Andy Langton]

This article includes info from Google, suggesting that people search "Hillary..." not "Hillary Clinton..." and demonstrating clearly that negative suggestions appear:

Google says charges of altering search results to help Hillary Clinton are 'simply false' [nordic.businessinsider.com]

Google have confirmed removal of 'offensive' searches in the past, so there is no reason why they would not use the same argument here - but they haven't. Most likely because erratic autocomplete behavior for niche and unpopular keywords are not worth manipulating at all.

It's unfortunate that this poorly researched video has gained such traction.

There are so many databases of search queries these days, containing rankings for millions of keywords, and thousands related to political candidates. Why doesn't someone use one of those to show that Google is manipulating rankings?

[bakedjake]

TPP bad!

push pro TPP canadate ? SUCCESS!

And therein lies the problem. Conspiracy theories are always the easiest way out because they appear to be so simple.

Ranking manipulation of this scale and in this way is not easy. I mean think about technically what you're asking. Think through what it would take and think through why Google (given various political climates right now around the world - think beyond the US) may actually *not* want to build systems which can so easily allow direct manual manipulation of results. And think through if they had those systems, how heavily internally controlled and documented those are.

[J_RaD]

Andy.........you are going to link me to a matt cutts twitter article..............................................WHAT!?

how about this, we have enough brains, skills, and tools around here to prove this wrong or right....enough talk, lets start digging.

[bakedjake]

how about this, we have enough brains, skills, and tools around here to prove this wrong or right....enough talk, lets start digging.

Because it's an absurd premise. And even if you "proved" it right, what's it matter?

If you want to have an intelligent discussion on political corruption and the role it plays, then I'm all for it. Let's invite Dr. Lessig in and discuss his writings and we can talk about lobbying and how one of the unintended consequences of protecting corporate political speech is that it may incent for-profit media ownership of all political persuasions to subtly influence the electorate. The echo chamber is a feature, not a bug, that consumers prefer. Media and civics literacy amongst the public is at an all time low.

So that's the real issue. And that's what the discussion should be about.

But if you really think that Google is going around doing a bunch of:

delete from webpages where topic = <things we don't agree with>

Then I think it's a waste of time. Google is not so stupid - both to the political ramifications of doing something like that, and to the total ineffectiveness of the strategy. No one's ever really had a problem finding anti-Clinton or anti-Obama websites using Google, have they?

And censoring comments on YouTube? As a professional webmaster, you of all people know that advertisers are turned off by vile commentary. Come on.

[edited by: bakedjake at 3:14 pm (utc) on Jun 11, 2016]

[J_RaD]

you of all people know that advertisers are turned off by vile commentary. Come on.

c'mon sir the LARGE majority of comments on youtube are vile.

Because it's an absurd premise. And even if you "proved" it right, what's it matter?

not really, we can start a list of keyword searches, test test test.. the same way you would build a keyword list for an ad account
even if it started to "look" like i was right..what does it matter? Im not saying it will shake google to its core but at least some people around here
would get a glimpse.

thats like saying la la la bad is bad what does it matter stick head in sand la la la.

meanwhile this entire thread has been about... ok sir... back it up.. spend your time giving me cold hard facts and changing my OPINION.

I didn't write those articles, I didn't make those videos, and I damn sure do not work for wiki leaks.... instead of anyone doing an OUNCE of research they instead ask me to bring it all to table as if I am the source.

and when I ask for some independent research? I get scoffs?

[edited by: J_RaD at 2:01 pm (utc) on Jun 11, 2016]

[bakedjake]

c'mon sir the LARGE majority of comments on youtube are vile.

That is a fair comment. But not so many videos are as highly trafficked as that one.

[J_RaD]

as of right now 1.8 mil
for high ranking videos...thats pretty middle of the road

i've seen MUCH higher and muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh worse.. and I know you have as well. No reason comments on this video should be blanked out and you know it.

[bakedjake]

I didn't write those articles, I didn't make those videos, and I damn sure do not work for wiki leaks.... instead of anyone doing an OUNCE of research they instead ask me to bring it all to table as if I am the source.

and when I ask for some independent research? I get scoffs?

You're the original poster. The videos are horse pucky. It would be the same if you posted an article from a blog saying that a clinic has a pill that cured cancer, and then you came here demanding proof to refute those claims. That's why you're getting this response, at least from me.

thats like saying la la la bad is bad what does it matter stick head in sand la la la.

No. If you want to have an intelligent discussion on political corruption, I would love to buy you dinner at PubCon and have that discussion. You can probably tell I'm passionate about this. I care very much about this in our society. But this isn't political corruption. Maybe it's bad editorial policy. But probably, it's just the algorithm doing algorithmic things, same as the rest of Google.

I do think that even testing the autocomplete claims made are a waste of time because it is probably impossible to do without knowing a lot about the guts of how Google stores, retrieves, and ranks information.

[edited by: bakedjake at 2:38 pm (utc) on Jun 11, 2016]

[bakedjake]

i've seen MUCH higher and muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh worse.. and I know you have as well. No reason comments on this video should be blanked out and you know it.

Yes but as a publisher I know that I have some content that is more sensitive than others that I may have to disable comments for on my website to appease my advertisers. That content doesn't always mean the most popular or highly trafficked. It's an editorial policy suited to my business.

A couple of decades of doing this makes me think that Google's disabling of comments on YouTube is better explained by money and public relations concerns than desire to suppress political speech. So I disagree with you, but you're right, I can't prove you're wrong.

[J_RaD]

you came here demanding proof to refute those claims.

I didn't demand anything... I didn't even bring up hey lets do some research till page 3

I tossed it out there because from doing some simple research....it starts to check out....which if it was total b/s it wouldn't in the least... and let me add in a MOD had to approve this before it was even posted.

It would be the same if you posted an article from a blog saying that a clinic has a pill that cured cancer,

That is a stretch.............a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng one. c'mon

I do think that even testing the autocomplete claims made are a waste of time (and probably impossible without knowing a lot about how Google stores, retrieves, and ranks information).

They might be....but from the surface, and a little digging below the surface... it looks very fishy.

wanna spit ball some keyword research?

but hey im just the guy that posted the 1 easy trick to cure cancer *with a dancing girl in the ad*

If you want to have an intelligent discussion

I'm just waiting for everyone to drop the defense. Its not like I posted this with a loaded gun...but that didn't stop me from getting surrounded by them.