Slashdot Mirror
There's No Evidence That Google Is Manipulating Searches To Help Hillary Clinton (vox.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Vox: A recent report via SourceFed surfaced suggesting that Google is suppressing the phrase "Hillary Clinton crimes" from autocomplete results, thus helping her candidacy. In the video, it shows that if you type "Donald Trump rac," Google will suggest the word "racist" to complete the phrase. However, if you type "Hillary Clinton cri," Google will suggest "crime reform" and "crisis" but not "crimes," despite the fact that Google Trend results show that people search for "Hillary Clinton crimes" a lot more than "Hillary Clinton crime reform." The video suggests some sort of reliance between the Clinton campaign and Eric Schmidt. But Vox reports there's a simpler explanation: "Choose any famous American who has been accused of a serious crime and Google their name followed by the letters "cri," and in no case does Google suggest the word "crimes." Apparently, Google has a policy of not suggesting that customers do searches on people's crimes. I have no inside knowledge of why it runs its search engine this way. Maybe Google is just uncomfortable with having an algorithm suggesting that people search for other people's crimes. In any event, there's no evidence that this is specific to Hillary Clinton, and therefore no reason to think this is a conspiracy by Google to help Clinton win the election." Earlier this week, Julian Assange stated Google is "directly engaged" with the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. It goes hand-in-hand with SourceFed's report, as they both mention Eric Schmidt's role in helping the Clinton campaign. Assange said, "The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, set up a company to run the digital component of Hillary Clinton's campaign."
Lack of evidence doesn't mean they're not guilty!
Go search "Hillary Clinton" and "Donald Trump" look at the pictures on the right. Notice anything?
Also... this is Vox so... yeah.
That isn't quite true - doing a search for Clinton FBI similarly does not return the FBI probe links, but crime is not in the phrase. Google is biased, and may be ok for technical searches but no longer for news or loaded searches.
...is that Google is tired of being sued by idiots.
That poilcy doesn't work in other languages. Try searching for "Hillary Clinton kri" in Germany and one of the suggestions is "Hillary Clinton Kriegsverbrecher" (war criminal). Same in Norwegian with general secretary of NATO: "Jens Stoltenberg kri" gives both "krigsforbryter" (war criminal) and "kriminell" (criminal).
I'm okay with that.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I searched "Donald Trump ban" and bankruptcy was not one of the top results. Your turn...
I searched Google for "secret plan to manipulate search results to help Hillary" and got zero hits on documents detailing their secret plans. Hence no evidence. Case closed. Glad I could definitively debunk this paranoid conspiracy so fast.
Reading the headline, my first thought was a guy saying "I spent all day searching with Google and could not find any evidence that Google is manipulating searches."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No doubt both sides are spending big dollars on SEO to feed data into google's databases.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yet the vox author discloses that they have a relative at google.
It's all hearsay unless google is going to do a demonstration of their code live, how it works, and in front of a live audience; even then i'm sure people would bitch abut this.
I have suggestions turned off, because it slows down the internet.
From TFS:
"The video suggests some sort of reliance between the Clinton campaign and Eric Schmidt."
Um, could that be alliance? Or do Schmidt and Clinton rely upon one another?
Does anybody out there edit this stuff any longer?
Google manipulates every search based on any number of factors that are hidden from us. That means potentially some users may see results stilted towards Hillary and other users may see results stilted towards Trump. It would take a very large effort to isolate all the contributing factors and document the level of bias.
The article gives TEN, count 'em, TEN examples of Google's tampering, not just the one silly example cited in this silly Vox blog post. And I'm sure there are many, many, many more.
Oh right, Groundwork. So yes, Alphabet (nee Google) is manipulating searches to help Hillary Clinton. But the same could be said of any SEO outfit.
Type in "richard nixon cri" and see what you get.
if republicans were so concerned about biased political reporting from media outlets, they could always restore the fairness doctrine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Plenty of evidence there.
Of course they manipulate what people think. What an understatement.
They have access to a vast amount of power which there is absolutely no regulation on.
Of course they abuse it. It's what they were made to do. It's their purpose.
I thought that they started blocking suggesting negative terms as it was too easy to google bomb names?
No evidence, or just no evidence that SHOWS UP ON A GOOGLE SEARCH!?
Excusing it because it's an algorithm isn't a defense because Google has been through this before.
Remember the gorilla incident?
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7...
"Google attempted to fix the algorithm, but ultimately removed the gorilla label altogether."
If something is right algorithmicly but nonetheless wrong they have no problem implementing a kludge.
Instead of just using the autocomplete, I typed "Hillary Clinton Crimes" into Google, Bing and Duck duck go.
Both Bing and DDG show up similar results about HC's crimes.
Google shows all top results with "HC and Google not cooperating to hide crimes" and "HC did not commit any crimes.
I suspect that no matter how your sugar coat it, Google returns positive results about HC while everyone else does not. Odd.
Crime - auto-complete compare of "did X commit a crime".
Google - pro-Hilary bias?
did X commit a c
did bernie madoff commit a cr
did ted kaczynski commit a c
did bernie sanders commit a cr
did donald trump commit a cri
did hillary clinton commit a crime.... nothing??
did bill clinton commit a crime.... hmmm??
did chelsea clinton commit a cr
did george w bush commit a crime...
did i comm
Bing - anti-Hilary bias?
did x commit a crime....
did bernie madoff commit a crime....
did ted kaczynski commit a crime....
did bernie sanders commit a crime....
did donald trump commit a crime...
did hillary clinton c
did bill clinton commit a
did chelsea clinton commit a crime
did george w bush com (war crimes)
did i commit a
Yahoo - no bias?
did x commit a
did bernie madoff commit a
did ted kaczynski commit a
did bernie sanders commit a
did donald trump commit a
did hillary clinton commit a
did bill clinton commit a cr
did chelsea clinton commit a
did george w bush commit a
did i commit a
You don't know what to look for even if it IS going on. They're not going to be so crass as to directly influence a search for a well-known scandal. If they're in the tank for Hillary, they'd do much more subtle things to give her an edge, and they've got better researchers and data than you do to figure out how to allocate resources in that regard, so the things you can think of might not even be the things that are actually most effective.
If I was looking to create a Hillary win, I wouldn't focus on Hillary OR Trump. I'd focus on making sure ads for 3rd parties that appeal to on-the-fence Republicans get the most effective placement (or even a few freebie showings.. how could an outside auditor detect extra ad impressions?). I'm sure someone with access to the kind of marketing data Google has could come up with a much more effective and subtle idea than that one.
There's No Evidence That Google Is Manipulating Searches To Help Hillary Clinton
It's true. I searched for evidence on Google and couldn't find any.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Even if Google isn't manipulating this particular election, do you really think that such a massive, centrally controlled influence on public opinion wouldn't eventually be used for things like this? It's inevitable, given that the ability exists it will be used. The Chinese government does exactly the same thing only it's more blatant. Westerners like their social control systems to be more subtle.
Looks like Julian Assange is correct. Else, why the "subliminal" push back!
After all. Obama does NOT want the next President on 12:01 EST 20 January 2017 to be sitting at a table, with live-streams, announcing in-order each of Obama's Executive Orders, Secret and Otherwise, being nullified one-by-one with the signature of a pin on a piece of paper.
HillyBilly Vice President will be: Barak Hussein Obama.
Ha ha
Even more intriguingly it doesn't list "crimes" as a search term even for people who are only famous for their crimes. There's probably a script somewhere that blocks autocompletion on *crimes.
And yet if you search for things like "Trump" and "racist" like SourceFed did, you sure get results from Google. Ditto for stuff on Bernie. To me, the damning evidence is the "trending" searches on each candidate. Hillary searches are very much linked with things like Benghazi and her email scandal, yet those results just aren't showing like "racist Trump," even though searches for those terms are just as popular.
If Google has a policy about pushing down search results for ANYTHING, regardless of who or what it is, that's a bad thing. Search engines should be as neutral as humanly and algorithmically possible. Otherwise, even if this is a perfectly innocent "mistake" by Google, it gives the APPEARANCE of bias.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Here is all you need to know about the RACIST in the 2016 election.
https://i.sli.mg/oi5moL.jpg
I've tried the search myself. If you type in Clinton everything comes up roses. If you type in Clinton indi it still comes up roses. Only until you type in Clinton indi"C" or fully type " FBI"does anything come up regarding her indictments or the FBI investigation.
Is it full blown concealment of the truth? No, but Google is making it so you have to dig and the average person who just glosses over searches won't see a single thing condemning about her until they go hunting for it. That's clear and present bias.
Want to see how Alphabet/Google/Youtube totally doesn't manipulate the public opinion? Go ahead and open this video on Hillary Clinton's official channel, and try to load comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9W0F2mz1jc
See, Hillary would never disable comments on her video, she can take criticism just fine! The comments not showing up is just a hiccup on Google's part. Which, uh, has been happening for at least 12 hours - it's undoubtedly a very complicated technical issue. And every single other video on youtube loads comments just fine. Yeah, nothing fishy here at all.
Perhaps the reason searches for " cri" doesn't expand to "crimes" from Google is the Google is trying to avoid violating Europe's (and others) "right to be forgotten" laws, or rather, trying to avoid lawsuits from it.
You would think that if they wanted to find such evidence it would be on the internet.
Google knows about finding things on the internet, right?
And if they wanted to make sure they could find where folks look, they could do it.
They know how finders look to find things. They know people behaviors, right?
I think that if you don't cleverly ask the question in the way a few billion engineer-hours can't beat, then you don't get to know the answer to the question.
If you say you know it now, it likely means you do not.
After "googling" around a bit, Startpage.com is now my default search engine. (n.b. it is not a default option in Chrome... you have to "add" it, and don't be fooled by "searchpage" which is really yahoo.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They fucking are.
Too much false PR on slashdot these days.
About 1.5 hours ago I could reproduce the results of this video
And now, mysteriously (even non-google) searches for "hillary clinton ind" are mostly coming up with "indiana" instead of "indictment"... weird.
of course, maybe in the last hour, zillions of sock puppets are searching and clicking thru on indiana...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Bill and Hillary just do it better than most.
Now that Google is in the political game, there's no reason to believe that Google doesn't lie, too. "There's no evidence" is clearly a lie of the first order. Hey, they're pretty good at it! Just like Bill and Hillary, they've learned to deny, deny, deny.
If you say something often enough, a lot of people will believe it whether it's true or not.
For some strange reason, I was unable to find that she has been convicted of any crime. Damn Google!
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
The headline is "There's No Evidence" but there was evidence presented in the video. Decisive evidence? Persuasive evidence? You decide.
For me, the most persuasive part was where they used Google Trends to see how popular the autocompleted searches actually were. The autocomplete suggested "hillary clinton crime reform" yet Google Trends said that search didn't happen often enough to graph. It was super rare and yet it was the most popular completion to "hillary clinton cri"?
Okay, let's ask Google Trends what is popular. I am providing you with clickable links so you can see the graphs for yourself. "hillary clinton indicted" vs. "hillary clinton indiana"
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=hillary%20clinton%20indicted%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20indiana&cmpt=q
Hmm, "indiana" was roughly as searched for in May as "indicted" but searches for "indiana" have dropped to near zero while "indicted" shot way up. So Google Trends says "indicted" is much more searched for than "indiana".
Here, let's add in "hillary clinton india" as another item on the graph.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=hillary%20clinton%20indicted%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20indiana%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20india&cmpt=q
Nope, "hillary clinton india" clearly isn't a popular search.
Okay, for "hillary clinton cri" what is the more searched-for completion, "hillary clinton criminal" or "hillary clinton crime reform"?
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=hillary%20clinton%20criminal%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20crime%20reform&cmpt=q
When they tried it they couldn't even get a graph for "crime reform" but by asking for a comparison of the two I got a graph. And wow, slam-dunk win for "criminal", way more searches.
Okay, I decided to try one on my own. I went to Bing and typed "hillary clinton cor" and the top suggestion was "hillary clinton corruption" Google? The top suggestions were "hillary clinton corporate" and "hillary clinton correct the record"
Okay, Google Trends, which of those three is the most popular?
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=hillary%20clinton%20corruption%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20corporate%2C%20hillary%20clinton%20correct%20the%20record&cmpt=q
And it's "corruption" by a large margin.
Interestingly, there is a completely different autocomplete for Google News results.
"hillary clinton cri" -> "hillary clinton criminal prosecution", "hillary clinton criminal video"
"hillary clinton ind" -> "hillary clinton indictment for emails", "hillary clinton indiana", "hillary clinton indianapolis"
"hillary clinton cor" -> "hillary clinton correct the record", "hillary clinton cory booker", "hillary clinton corruption reddit"
Now, Google claims that what is going on is just a standard thing where they block certain terms like "criminal" from searches. This story from The Verge argues, persuasively, that Google is telling the truth. http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/10/11906912/google-denies-autocomplete-search-manipulation-hillary-clinton
The most interesting point: most of the people searching for dirt on Hillary Clinton don't bother to type her full name, and the autocomplete gives more negative results if you just search for "hillary". Let's try that.
"hillar
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It works bit different in Japanese language but If I search " " (=Hillary Clinton + (first kanji for crime/violation)), all results except one are Hillary's emails and other scandals. One exception is about Bill Clinton's sex scandal.
Amusingly, if I do same with Donald Trump, just one result is about a scandal, but it's reporting about an article from that "Mirror" (UK) on a sex party in 1994 where a woman claims to be raped there by Trump. Others are how he makes "racist" attack on ethnic groups and calls for harsh punishments.
So, Google is apparently supporting Donald Trump in Japan!
The evidence is presented in their video. It's there. It's real, and clearly irrefutable -- anyone can test it. And, it's pretty damning. The fact that VOX is now trying to do damage control makes it obvious that they, too, are complicit. Fuck you VOX!
sig: sauer
http://freebeacon.com/politics/here-are-10-more-examples-of-google-search-results-favorable-to-hillary/
Picking one and saying "no evidence" is crap. Slashdot is better than that.
.. and the check is in the mail. It's OK, I'll only put in the tip.
You can always tell they're lying when they have to go to great lengths over small items to proclaim their innocence, and ignore the 800 pound gorilla proving them wrong.
Hillary for Prison 2016. Now we know she lied about classified markings on her emails too.
Corporations are people, they can have political views. You have no right to tell them what they can think. You can just use different services.
So.. it's really all a moot point. We know corporations are biased because.. reality. We know corporations exist and operate with political bias, like Fox or Kosh Industrials and many many others.
This is nothing new. Corporations are made of people, people have opinions. Corporations can have opinions and they don't have to be yours.
Chances are you don't share the same political views with the owners of Walmart, but millions shop there and when Walmart supported National Health Care in 2007. Their CEO called for Universal Care for all by 2012. Was there a mass exodus of conservatives from Walmart? I didn't notice that happen. Seems to be just as much trailer trash there as usual.
Ah, remember the years when google had the opposite sort of ideas about George Bush?
I assume they don't do that sort of thing anymore, since I haven't used that engine in, oh, a decade or so. But that's because of their general creepiness.
Gee! I wish I knew more about Hillary Clinton's crimes. I know! I'll use that Google thing to find out! OK, here we go: H-I-L-L-A-R-Y C-L-I-N-T-O-N C-R-I. Oh boy! I'm so tired of typing! Still three more characters to go. I don't think I can make it! I wish Google had autocompleted my search for me. I don't see "hillary clinton crimes" in the list of suggestions, though. Oh! If only there was a way for me to do this search! But no, it's impossible! Wait a minute! Of course! IT'S OBVIOUS! GOOGLE WANTS TO HIDE CLINTON'S CRIMES FROM ME!
The first suggestion in the box is "Nixon crime". I tried this Friday and just now (Sat, 4:30-ish AM CST).
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
And, even then, evidence of guilt doesn't prove they're guilty. The facts are what they are and evidence is only those facts you found.
And, despite trump being bankrupted multiple times, you won't find anything.
Now search Benghazi with Clinton and with Trump. Apparently since clinton is there but not trump, they must be promoting trump!!!!
Or the logical connection you wish to make is a load of crap.
I can't believe someone at Slashdot is using Vox as a legitimate source for anything involving Hillary. Vox is practically a spokesperson for the Democratic party. O course they won't be able to see the search manipulation that is right before their eyes.
Here are more examples of how Google skewed the search results involving Clinton. Don't trust sources. Trust factual information that you can test yourself. http://freebeacon.com/politics...
three black teens of course she will not turn up as a superpredator.
It's pretty clear what is going on this is just more search engine manipulation http://m.pnas.org/content/112/...
Try following in Google, Bing and Yahoo search (tested on firefox google search box, web interface gives slighty different, but nevertheless similar results):
Hillary Clinton inv for investigation (Bing) or investment bank (Google)
Hillary Clinton fbi for fbi/investigation/breaking news/indictement (Bing) or fbi/interview/some site (Google)
Hillary Clinton cha for charges/chairman/charity (Bing) or charity/chairman, but no charges (Google)
Also try croo (ked / cross stitch ?? really?). Funny how search box bolds other search combos instead of crook.
This one is strong, too: corr (uption / correct the record)..
I'm sure you can come up with more examples.
Well, Google can deny all it wants... All that cannot be a simple coincidence.
It's bad for the election if they were helping her through, but in my opinion I really don't think that is the case.
PanadasDigital is a SEO bureau
I remember Digg and Obama campaign. It was brainwashing stronger than in Orwell's 1984. Now we see same with Hilary Clinton. Some things never changes.
Why are people idiots? Google autocomplete completes based on search terms people enter, not spelling from a dictionary.
Unless people are already searching for Hillary Clinton crimes, nothing would show up in autocomplete.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why the fuck would they block terms like "crime"? That's literally retarded
Use of the term "no evidence" exposes this article for the propaganda that it is. There is not "no evidence". There IS weak evidence. If some drunk guy claims to have seen John Smith commit a crime, that wouldn't be "no evidence". It would be weak evidence. Those are not the same thing.
If every other search engine on the internet displays the highest ranked search results as suggestions, but Google does not -- wouldn't this be detrimental to Google's reputation? Yes, yes it would. So yes, you are wrong.
If there's nothing going on between them, why on earth is Google supporting the TPP?
enuf said.....
Or, Google is doing this to help Clinton's campaign, but went ahead and filtered out autocompleting "crimes" for all people in order not to get caught.
Just because there is "no evidence" doesn't mean it's not happening. Politics is sold to the highest bidder, it pretty much always has been. To believe that presidential campaigns are not directly funded and manipulated by people / organisations with their own agenda is perhaps the pinnacle of political ignorance.
I’m confused... Why shouldn’t Google be able to rank their search results any way they want to? Google is a private company, not a utility or common carrier, they can and should be able to manipulate their search results any way they want to, with whatever innate biases they feel are necessary to keep their users happy. Are the people that are complaining about supposed bias seriously saying that they think some government bureaucrat should police search engines and shut down the ones they don‘t like? Really?? Come on people, get a grip! Chill out and let the invisible hand of the market do its thing. If you don’t like Google’s search results, the solution is obvious: use another search engine!
There, problem solved.