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Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the quite-the-name-you-got-there dept.

Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ — each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports at Cnet that along comes Blekko, whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' Categorization lists are applied by appending a 'slashtag.' The query, 'climate change /conservative' will give you politically slanted results, for example. 'Climate change /science' will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept — that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed — gets some traction, writes Needleman. But 'Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.'"

11 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Bias? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    1. Re:Bias? by N0Man74 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.

      Are you suggesting that NPR promotes the left as FOX promotes the right?

      Have you actually listened to NPR, or are you just assuming that the FOX propaganda regarding NPR is true?

  2. politically biased searches for the win! by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Obamacare fiscal implications /liberal = Will save us trillions!
    WMDs in Iraq /neo-con = We'll find them on every street corner!
    Sex education /catholic = Condoms don't prevent AIDS
    Gun control /bloomberg = We need tougher gun laws because criminals follow them
    How to give a concession speech /howard dean = YEEEEEEAAAAAAH!
    Unbiased news /conservative = Fox News
    Unbiased news /liberal = MSNBC
    Unbiased news = No results round.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    1. Re:politically biased searches for the win! by jahudabudy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As an aside, after watching The Rally to Restore Sanity, I did a quick comparison Sunday. Fox online article gave the definite impression it was a pro legalizing marijuana/anti-tea party rally. MS NBC gave the impression that it was a pro Dem/Liberal rally. NY Times gave the same impression (and was the only place that didn't have a front page article on the rally). All three of them portrayed it in a somewhat negative light (Fox actually was the mildest article as far as it's language, despite the bizarre focus on legalizing marijuana as a goal of the rally). CNN was the only organization that mentioned the anti-media theme of the rally, and mostly concerned itself with describing what happened, listing the participants and brief descriptions of each act. They gave little to no interpretation of whether the rally was either liberal or conservative.

      --
      ...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
    2. Re:politically biased searches for the win! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Would you report much about a group specifically opposed to your quality of reporting other than to make them look crazy, when you are paid based on ratings / agreeing with the boss's agenda?

      I am somewhat amazed though that they tried to tie them to pot, probably trying to make them look like "a bunch of dirty pot head liberal hippies" I guess...

  3. Like left-right.us by Anonymusing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This looks like a professional heavyweight cousin of Left-Right.us, a relatively simple Google hack I posted some weeks back. Very cool.

    (though I still like seeing the results side-by-side.)

    --
    Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
  4. Unneeded? by JSBiff · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If I want to further specify search keywords to add bias to my search in Google, I can. Unless Blekko is *really, really* good at this, I'm not sure I see how it will end up better than google with the same keywords without the slash?

    I suppose it's an interesting *idea*, but the devil will be in the detail of getting the filtering to be really good, better than bing, yahoo, or google with similar searches.

  5. Won't work as intended by MikeRT · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Political factions are not siloed. They come together, mix, mutate and spread apart under a variety of circumstances, personalities, etc.

    For example, I've known many religious conservatives who social views are "reactionary," but are functionally libertarian in their politics. Likewise, many liberals claim to be about individual freedom, but the policies they support (non-discrimination laws, speech codes, gun control, high taxes) when applied to individuals are extremely illiberal.

    Most people cannot even get Fascism right. They think it's just "totalitarianism" or "corporations owning the government" (I've even had teachers say it is just "militant nationalism") rather than understanding that it is a fusion of right-wing and left-wing thought into a more advanced form of Socialism which attempts to achieve Socialist ends through a more market-oriented system (where the state generally directs, but doesn't explicitly own, private business through regulation).

    In order to even train some sort of AI to figure this out, the developers would have to have an incredible level of domain knowledge of politics and history that would rival the level of knowledge that hardcore game designers typically have of Physics and Geometry.

    I suppose they could do something like PageRank where they just assume that certain similarities imply a position in politics, but that won't be accurate for obvious reasons.

  6. That's all we need... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More confirmation bias.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  7. The problem is people confuse what bias is by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I mention this in another post.

    So Fox news is NOT biased. No, really, they aren't. The reason is they know exactly what they are doing. They don't think they are perfectly in the center, they don't think they are trying to be equal. They know they are supporting republican causes and agendas. They may not admit as much, bu they know it. It is an active, purposeful stance. It is not bias.

    Bias is when you are trying to do something, but don't (at least not completely) because you are predisposed for or against something. So bias in the media would be something like a story not getting reported on because the editors decide it "isn't news" because it tells a narrative they don't like. They aren't actively working to suppress it, they just don't like it and thus decide it isn't news worthy, not realizing what they are doing.

    You do discover bias in new media, no surprise it happens in all human endeavors. Fox News just isn't a good example because they are actively working towards a stance. It isn't bias if it is your actual goal.

  8. Re:One problem by eriqk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Then again, liberal has been conservative since 1848.