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?
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...
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
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Yep, I think that says it all really.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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.
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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Microsoft managers don't realize that we don't want to live in the little box that they construct for us.
What you don't realise is that most people don't care. Most people who use a new search engine want to find relevant news. If the news is relevant, few will care whether its source is MSNBC or CNN.
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.
Why do you think so? Microsoft is highly profitable. I'd say that a rather robust indicator they're doing something right.
From a business perspective their actions make total sense.
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.
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