Slashdot Mirror
MS admits Newsbot Biased Towards MSNBC
JasdonLe writes "According to this article at the Washington Post, Microsoft's recently unleashed news aggregator site, Newsbot will choose to display MSNBC articles over other articles on the same topic.
"As Newsbot resides on MSNBC and is branded as such, MSNBC is considered a first among equals, meaning that if they and another top-tier source offer the same story, information, etc., MSNBC will be listed first, followed by other sources," says Elizabeth Herrera Smith, Microsoft spokeswoman."
"not getting it". I know they have pie in the sky hopes to take on Google and bless their hearts they're gonna spend a lot of money but it's going to be largely futile. I like Google precisely because I don't get a bias. I also don't get bombarded by ad after ad after ad (or popup after popup after popup ala Hotmail).
... well... good luck
In many regards comparing Google search to MSN search and Google news to MSs newsbot is apples and oranges. In order for MS to unseat Google they have to be (MS execs read this carefully) BETTER. Until then
Think MSNBC (and Newsbot) will carry THIS story? :)
So the idea is that if you go to http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com/, you get some MSNBC stories, possibly followed by related stories from other news organizations.
Perhaps I'm thick, but this kind of seems obvious to me. How else would anyone expect them to do it?
...first among equals.
Does anyone besides the /. reader base really care though? I mean first of all, most of them will never hear of this bias. Secondly, of those that do, will they really care? If they're using MyMSN or MSN.com as their homepage they'll most likely get this search engine as their default and never know the difference. Once webmasters realize this, they'll start finding ways to get their sites to be listed "2nd" on MS's engine listings.
;)
There are a lot of Google users out there, but MS's name is even more widely known and I hear their advertising budget isn't too shabby.
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I checked the MSN newsbot and was suprised to find there (German) articles, that news.google.com didn't find. In the other way, MSN didn't know most sources of Google news.
What is the deal for content publishers to give MSN and Google access to their databases? If it is readers attention, this way is the wrong way.
Could MSN adopt paid content for their newsbot? This would be another business modell.
Outside Redmond.
They have such a tight knit community going on within MS that they think their way is the only one that works. While this is great for those people inside MS, and we have all read about how great they are to work for, it doesn't convince the rest of the world, and Court decisions prove this.
Why do they insist on being blinded by the branding? They could easily challenge Google if they did what Google does, but with a bigger brand, instead they choose to take away the very thing that Google is popular in with their own offering.
Google is NOT unbiased, Page Rankings count as a bias to me, but they are the very closest thing to it that we have.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
What's the problem? Don't like it? Then start your own friggin' news aggregator site!
Oh, wait...
never mind...
I guess on slow news days the editors here pull out any kind of MS story they can find to try and stir up the zealots. C'mon guys, would you go into a Ford dealership and expect the salesman to try to sell you a Chevrolet?
Of course, if you were paying attention you'd realize that Newsbot isn't displaying ONLY MSNBC articles, but MSNBC articles first (in addition to others) IF multiple news organizations are reporting the same story.
So... it's not like they're shutting out anybody. And Newsbot is part of MSNBC, so really, what would you expect, for Newsbot to ALWAYS prefer other news organization's stories over MSNBC? Is that "unbiased" enough for you?
Oh no! Next they'll tell us that Slashdot editors like to link to Everything2 and Newsforge!
At least they have divulged thier corperate tie-ins, as opposed to 60 minutes (CBS, a VIACOM company) who did an expose on Richard Clarkes book, which is published by SIMON & SCHUSTER, also a VIACOM company, basically making the whole Bob Woodward interview an infomercial, and this isnt the first time they did that ("The Price of Loyalty" by former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
..duh?? Consider Newsbot a search engine for MSNBC articles and related ones, "problem" solved =D
First of all, MSNBC gets its news mostly from the wire services like most other news websites, so cool it with the unwarranted bias talk. This makes sense. The MS developers can talk directly with MSNBC folks and try to get more advanced crawling and indexing methods in place. This is why MS is involved in MSNBC in the first place - integration. Don't you think Yahoo gets the inside scoop on how Yahoo News articles are formatted directly from the developer? Or any other portal for that matter? Shock and amazement - employees talk to each other!
Google favors it's own wallet too. When you do a google search, the sponsored links are on the top of the search results.
Whatever. Next story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
check out the links, every single one of them goes via moreover.com, if this was a MSN venture then why use moreover at all ?
m /c lick/here.pl
eg:
http://g.msn.com/0PNENUS/1?http://c.moreover.co
remember with MSN sites YOU are the product, the content is merely filler, all of their sites are just advertising and user tracking applications, not convinced ? then view source of their pages and see for yourself
nice tracking code such as
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/js/nmjs06.js
adding onmouseover/onmouseout handlers to the links so you dont spot the link tracking, if its no big deal why hide the tracking ?
if any network needs to be blocked as a security/privacy risk its MSN
In other news:
Pope is Catholic
Bear Shits in Woods
Riiiight. Ever watch MS-CNBC and notice how often they seem to be focusing on MSFT. I was watching their NASDAQ reporting one day where the female announcer was breathlessly blathering on about a 6 cent raise in MSFT. That same day RHAT was up about 2 bucks. It was never mentioned at all.
Monopolys are dangerous and self replicating especially when they begin to control the news media.
News Search Results
Find Your News: Newsbot Biased
No results
Yep, I think that says it all really.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I don't know if you ever watch the BBC, but they claim to be impartial and advertising free - yet there's loads of advertising on their channels, for their own goods and services. Right now we're bombarded with lavishly produced ads trying to get us all to sign up to BBC3 and 4, channels that are only available to digital subscribers (tho' you pay for them whether or not you even view them). EVERYONE is biased towards their own corporate siblings. At least CNN always tacks on a disclaimer that they're related when they report on an(other) AOL/TW company.
I'd say that this is hardly suprising. First time I looked at newsbot, I just assumed I'd see lots of MSNBC stories. Also, I'd imagine that many slashdotters will see this as more evil doings from Microsoft, but really there is nothing wrong with it. They have a news source, they list theirs first, it IS their site after all. Nobody faults google for placing "sponsored" ads at the top of the page, this is no different really. There WOULD be a problem if MS _removed_ news stories from the listing because it conflicted with MSNBC/MS/Windows/etc. Bottom line is: If you don't want to see MSNBC stories...MS Newsbot probably isn't the best place to look. Plus, there's always google or your own favorite news site.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Microsoft, the world leader in innovation, has developed a new innovative URL for Google's news service, "news.google.com".
Microsoft has realized that most of their customers are unfamiliar with typing URLs. Therefore, Microsoft has invented "newsbot".
This patent-pending innovation will permit internet users (for example, MSN customers) to click on a web link to read news from various news sources. The newsbot link seemlessly directs users to a near-perfect replica of news.google.com, the premier news aggregation site on the internet.
Microsoft can also leverage this technology to manipulate news stories, promoting and demoting news stories based on a customer's interests, tax records, and party affiliation.
Microsoft co-owns MSNBC with NBC-Universal. Presently, MSNBC's cable ratings are in the cellar, behind CNN and Fox"news." It really sux being in last place.
Microsoft, which is profit-minded, wishes to drive people to their product. In fact, they have taken specific steps to do that in other areas. Has anyone noticed that there is a free, installable copy of Microsoft Money given away with each copy of their operating system? (One wonders if it is ever actually installed...)
The issue here is, while there are better news sites out there, Microsoft wishes you to try theirs. If MSNBC winds up as bad as Microsoft Money as compared to Intuit's Quicken, people will start ignoring the existence of the link, unless the provenance of the link is hidden.
Frankly, I think both Microsoft and NBC Universal have a lot of work to do on MSNBC in making the content more compelling and more accurate. last I heard, MSNBC didn't work with Apple's browser and didn't work well with most of the alternatives to Internet Exploiter. Their content has gaps, many large. The NBC Network creates news stories that are run later (and in news time lots later on MSNBC -- in essence, the news is "repurposed" on MSNBC with the only actual news reported stuff that is freely available from the NBC affiliate stations (car chases and floods -- also re-purposed). Inviting Yet Another Talking Head to speak to your miniscule audience is not news.
I don't think Microsoft's spider will change the fact that there is nothing compelling on MSNBC. They're facing the same problem there that they have with their personal finance program.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Microsoft: "Not getting it"
Microsoft managers have little ability to learn and appreciate how others see them. Preferring MSNBC over other news sources is seen by them as "branding". It's seen by others as conflict of interest.
Microsoft managers don't realize that we don't want to live in the little box that they construct for us.
As Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer become more and more bored with their business, and more and more tired with doing every day what they have done since they were teenagers, Microsoft is slipping more and more out of control. There are Microsoft people who aren't actually doing anything for anyone, but who have jobs there and want to keep them.
There are fewer and fewer top managers at Microsoft who both recognize that there needs to be vigorous re-organization, and have the power to accomplish it. In years past the company was as arrogant as it is today, but more alive.
...Slashdot discovers businesses prefer to sell their own products, not their competitors.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
All newsbots are created equal... but some are more equal than others.
These goals make it impossible for M$ to ever be objective or as good or better than Google. When Slate publishes an article recommending another browser over IE, Slate is sold off. Guess where that Slate article shows up on a newsbot search for "IE Firefox." Somewhere way way after four or five blurbs about Firefox errors. A Google news search for the same thing finds an article that references Slate at #10. Google's bias is to refelect the news not to make Firefox look bad like M$'s site is. The same pattern is demonstrated whenever anyone mentions a M$ search engine. The contents are filtered by meta rules that manipulate rather than inform the reader.
I can only hope that most people think like you that it's better to be informed than manipulated.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You're wrong. I'm looking at the beta site and it contains lots of links to other news sources.
But, what's the problem, anyway? It's a commerical enterprise. It's got a big freakin' MSNBC logo on it. Why wouldn't they give preference to their own stuff?
It's not like Google's system is perfect. I don't use their news aggregator because there is no human judgment used in its story selection. When you are looking for coverage of an event, it's just as likely to give preference to a useless tertiary wire service pickup carried in some backwater newspaper as it is to primary reporting from competent sources. That lack of bias is phony, and, worse, wastes my time.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Unlike MSN, and to a lesser extent Yahoo, Google is a primarily a search engine. It will provide a list of results based on the user query. The results will be ordered based on a predetermined method or ranking that attempts to put 'top ranked' results at top. Because Google's purpose appears to be to serve users, and not cross promote other corporate assets, users will tend to believe the results are relevant to their queries. It is true that outside sources try to manipulate the results, but that is not intentional manipulation by Google. All ads are marked, and manipulation generally obvious.
All this is idealized, but the issue remains. MSN, like most MS products, do not primarily focus on providing customer service. While all MS products provide a generally useful service, they are all have reduced usefulness because an equal priority of the product is to cross promote MS goods and services.
Why is MSN behind google? Most would say simplicity. Most of the public doesn't understand simplicity. What they understand is trust, and google, due to it's lack of inherent corporate conflicts of interest, has trust. This bit of shenanigans just reinforces MS lack of credibility.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Does anyone besides the /. reader base really care though?
Yes.
The main tool of propagandists is not the big lie, but bias:
- Distort qualitative opinions and cost-benefit analyses by giving rare occurrences of one sort lots of articles, common occurrences of the other little or none.
- Give one side front-page billing, hide the other on back pages.
- Give one side the first position in the article, the other one sentence near the end.
- Use loaded terms. (Example: If you live in a "home", on "grounds", in a "church camp", or even a "mansion" you're innocent, a "compound" and you're a demon.)
The establishment media have been doing this for years, and the cost of entry (and for some, government licensing requirements and regulations) have kept other voices from being heard. Their propaganda and viewpoints have converged into lockstep - by their herd-mentality following of the "Paper of Record"'s call on what events deserve coverage if nothing else.
The internet now makes it impossible for the establishment media to bury a story, and to keep other viewpoints marginalized by consistent biased characterization. Yet they still try. So when people discover that they can find more of what they're looking for on the net they switch their news sources. This has been a disaster for the establishment media.
A news search engine biases placement of their own content first (and possibly other like-minded content second, random content third, and different-minded last), rather than giving placement solely on the search match, enables them to pull the same class of stunt on their engine's users. To people who are searching the web to escape biased news coverage this matters very greatly. Once they understand MSNBC has done this (even at a subconscious level) they are likely to avoid it in favor of other resources.
But the presence of the biased engine means many people new to the web, who latch onto that engine first, will be long delayed in their appreciation of and access to unbiased search engines and unbiased or other-biased news sources.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
MSNBC Newsbot displays MSNBC stories first. Just like CNN or Fox or any other news outlet's search does... Wow. Gee. Imagine. The horror, the horror.
Ignoring that the links sometimes go to the wrong story and the content maybe biased towards their own sites, it is just plain hard to read. Yet again someone has not undertstood what seperates google from the rest is not just having the best backend algorithims, but putting a clean clear interace on top of that.With google news, I can scan the headlines and summaries quickly and efficiently. With the MS version I cannot. Sure it's a beta, but that does not mean you have to release what the programmers wrote without having the UI design team look at it.
I've found Topix.net to be more encompassing than either site. The site was created by former Netscape employees. It categorizes news into very specialized topics. The search functions better than Google News's, which seems to have a much small database for many subjects when compared with Topix.
All of the news aggregates seem inadequate. Google News has a great interface, but often I don't find news articles on specific subjects when searching the site. Obviously, MSN Newsbot will be biased towards MSNBC. (BTW, the URL, newsbot.msnbc.com, is really redundant!) Even Topix, which I pimped up there, has some bad points too. Google remains the king for relevant and enticing advertisements, and the ads are sometimes annoying or irrelevant on Topix (tho not nearly as annoying as with most sites). And sometimes there are some repeats from other services; although, it is mostly OK. Are aggregates the "new" search engines?
(I know this is a little off-topic, so please excuse my tangent.)
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
"What you don't realise is that most people don't care."
Even people I meet who have no special interest in computers know that Google is the best search engine. They care, and they don't use the Microsoft product. They know that Microsoft will try to influence them in a hidden or not-so-hidden way.
There are fewer and fewer people who "don't care", and there is more and more competition for the attention of the shrinking pool of people who can be taken advantage of because of their lack of simple knowledge of the Internet.
"Microsoft is highly profitable."
Having a virtual monopoly should not be confused with being good at business management. If you had a monopoly on water, you would make Bill Gates look poor in a week, and all the business magazines would say what a great businessman you were.
It would be news if the above qualified for the following:
- Newsbot publicly keeps up that it is an unbiased news-site
- Newsbot is not owned (in a way) by Microsoft
- Newsbot is refusing to show the news from other equal sources, while stating otherwise
I see none of that here, so erm: why is this news ?
It's M$'s right to chose their own news over other news. Heck, they can do whatever they want with it, even spreading FUD about Linux losing shares in server-land and Windows being the most stable and fast server platform ever.
This wouldn't be a surprise, it is M$-policy.
On the other hand, we have the right to not chose newsbot for our news, and happily stay with Google's version.
So again: is this news ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
All news organizations are owned my mega-large international corporations.
All news reflects the business interests of the parent companies.
For example, in the US, that is why the Bush vs. Kerry news coverages is so incredibly biased towards Bush. For people who own millions in stock equity, etc., and for multinational corporations, 4 nore years of Bush is a big deal, money-wise.
I am not surprised that MSN routes people to MSNBC. BTW, I think that MSNBC is actually more fair-minded than CNN, CBS, ABC, etc. This is just a casual observation, but MSNBC tends to cover topics like Israel's nuclear/chemical/biological weapons programs that other news media in the US stay away from (although the NY Times also has fairly broad news coverage).
I am no fan of Microsoft, but as a news service, MSNBC is pretty good.
-Mark
Given M$'s slave driving ambitions, the reference to autocracy must be intentional. Microsoft's audacity never ceases to amaze.
If you like that kind of thing, you might as well do your research in pre 1990 Pravda or Tass which are essentially identical. Remember the Russian proverb as you do, "There's no truth in the news and no news in the truth."
The admission of preference of message is a symptom of much greater dishonesty. The other symptom is the huge proportion of the Microsoft budget that goes into PR, hype and slander.
For all the alledged "noise" RMS is accused of, can anyone imagine him doing something as pointless as the things Bill Gates did for XP launch? Imagine RMS renting helicopters to transport a carboard box, hiring Madonna and putting his face on a 40 foot high screen to announce a new version of emacs. That, my friend, is the "news" MSNBC trumpets.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Google also refuses to advertise for firearm sites. They still index them, but will refuse to advertise them. Try doing a google search for terms like pistol or rifle. Rifle turns up one link to a german artist who has nothing to do with firearms. You'd tend to think that the various firarm manufacturers would be happy to buy advertisements, right?
I don't read AC A human right
An article about biased news sources, posted on Slashdot.
Slashdot, despite being owned by VA Software, does not have post this fact on the front page or in very many news stories about Microsoft or Linux or Apple. (I'd call MS and Apple competitors of VA, but VA looks like a joke when you compare the financials.) ALL of slashdot's articles are biased towards VA's product. MSN searching MSNBC is supposed to shock me? Hell at least its automatic. Slashdot is HANDPICKED bias, all day everyday.
This "branding" aside, I find the MS site not all that well done. First off, the photos are way too large. With news.google.com, I can load the page, and see 10 or 12 stores at once. With microsoft, I might see one headline and a large photo. I run 1024x768 due to my eyesight, and so increasing resolution is not an option. The microsoft side simply does not have anything that appeals to me as it is currently designed. In addition, You need to click on the story link to see the other news sites; goolge lists them under the "dominant" headline-Drew
offering us only their biased news. I'm sticking to Slashdot for now. At least they're still a bastion for objective reporting.
Wow, that's surprising.
Maybe it's the fact that it says "MSNBC News" at the top of the screen, or the big MSNBC logo in the corner, but it is blatantly obvious that Newsbot is an MSNBC product.
http://newsbot.msn.com
Take a look - MSNBC logos all over. Why is it news at all that it prefers MSNBC stories?