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Google Search Results Have Liberal Bias, Study Finds (thedenverchannel.com)
According to a new study reported by The Wall Street Journal, Google's search results tend to lean liberal. "An analysis by online-search marketer CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people." The Denver Channel reports: "Minimum wage" tended to yield more liberal results, while "does gun control reduce crime" resulted in more conservative ones. Searches for "financial regulation" and "federal reserve" found mostly nonpartisan links. CanIRank used the opinions of four people to determine how liberal or conservative each website was. For 16 percent of the political search terms studied, no right-leaning results showed up at all on the first page of results. CanIRank noted this could be a problem for democracy. A different study found most people click on one of the first five search results. Users rarely move on to the second page. A Google spokesperson said in an email to the WSJ: "From the beginning, our approach to search has been to provide the most relevant answers and results to our users, and it would undermine people's trust in our results, and our company, if we were to change course." According to Google, their results are "determined by algorithms using hundreds of factors" and "reflect the content and information that is available on the internet."
It is a well known fact that reality has a strong liberal bias.
Well, as they say, truth has a liberal bias, so if your search engine weights things that provide more credible factual information, and more credible factual information is associated with liberal news/information sources, what's the problem?
If the effect however, is that conservative opinions / viewpoints based on factual information are being deemphasized, then that's a valid point - but I don't think that's the effect going on here. Or perhaps conservative viewpoint webpages tend not to contain the same amount of credible factual information...
Intelligence has a liberal bias.
Google is a smart search engine built by smart people.
CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people.
Four people rated the results? That sounds like pretty flimsy evidence. Why are their opinions some definitive source of truth?
That's is because liberal information tends to be science-based, while conservative information tends to be faith-based. eg "I believe this is true because people/jesus told me it is."
That doesn't mean that all Liberal information is correct, nor does it mean conservative information is incorrect, it just means that the basis for forming that information tends to lean liberal because liberals put more value on science or fact-checking than conservatives do. You would never use breitbart or foxnews as a primary source because the information is at best misleading and at worse outright fabrication. Likewise Liberals would would not use CNN as a primary source either because the information tends to be hype-based. Liberals tend to have to look at CBC in Canada or BBC in the UK for a unbiased fact-checking, but may still need a truth filter because both CBC and BBC are government broadcasters. The US has no government broadcaster (NPR/PBS is about as close as you get as a neutral source.)
As the summary indicates the bias varies with the topic. Having a conservative bias on gun control suggests the engine is getting things correct. In this case the conservative side is more fact based and less appealing to emotion and placebo "solutions". So yeah, maybe the search engine page ranking is working fine.
... can cite this damaging evidence, provided by four fucking people , to contest the election.
Oh, wait.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
a fact bias? Because that could explain things. . .
Note: Moderators that modded this down had a small penis bias.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The summary in fact offers an example where conservative websites are emphasized and it happens to be on a topic where the conservatives usually have the facts on their side. Gun control. Like it or not the facts from an engineering and historical point of view favor the conservatives. The liberal side of the argument seems mostly emotion and embracing placebo "solutions".
I have read a lot of lines about 'the truth has a liberal bias', or 'liberal information tends to be science based', and I have to shake my head.
Try googling for any information on how to 'combat the rise of gender-fluidity', or 'how to explain physiology is a binary gender system', or 'how to explain gender fluidity is a social construct' and you get Nothing, Zip, Nada, that isn't in support of this brand of mental disorder.
Science based? Truth? Not even close. Everywhere you see sex that's outside a human social construct there's a male and female. Only humans social structure describes non-existent genders in liberal circles.
Not a troll, or flamebait, but I have asbestos underwear on, and I can already feel the flames from the mod-activism firing up.
Fact is, The science and truth hurt the liberal cause acutely no matter how much spin they try and put on it.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Google's results are not the same for every searcher in every locale. They are dependent on what you've searched for in the past, where you're at, what is in the news at the moment, etc.
In other words, they are quite intentionally biased to meet the likely desires of the user. This article has no basis in science, though it cloaks itself in that fashion to those who know nothing about science, and is far more biased than Google's search results.
"How about a search engine that just searches?"
It's obvious you've put a tremendous amount of time thinking about this.
So, what does this mean? What does the search engine return, Mr. Wizard? Web sites that have the most occurrences of the search phrase in them? Search engines have to be written to do something. It's not magic. It seems that Google is trying to return results that are the most relevant. I would imagine that part of "relevant" would be factual, which means that it's not going to point to lots of sites run by people using the "SJW" acronym.
Funny that your last point is incorrect, demonstrating your own bias. We see the so-called invisible hand at work all the time, typically in black markets and people finding ways to end-around regulation. Supply exists to meet actual demand regardless of legality or whether its morally objectionable. Free markets tend to outperform state-controlled or centrally planned ones based on historical data. Note that this doesn't say anything about where the wealth ends up being concentrated.
For every thing the conservatives tend to believe that has no empirical basis (e.g. climate change is a hoax, creationism, etc.) there are just as many "unscientific" views held by liberals (e.g. gun-control policies, vaccines causing autism (both sides have some adherents to this, but it tends to be most prevalent among liberals), etc.) that are essentially faith-based or run contrary to established science. Try having a conversation about genetic components of intelligence with a liberal and you'll quickly find them rejecting that science as racist just as fast as a conservative will tell you that the global warming science is just as biased.
I've generally found that regardless of whatever a person believes they tend to overlook the cases that don't confirm their biases while focusing on those that do. I don't really blame them though as some scientists believe that these cognitive biases made our ancestors more fit from an evolutionary perspective. Perhaps humanity is slowly shifting away from this, but there isn't a lot of selective pressure against this trait. If anything it probably helps people find mates with a similar set of in-group biases as themselves while people who tend to be more objective just piss off everyone for some reason.
I think that many people on the right behave the same way, just about different topics.
And it's annoying no matter who is doing it.
This study is just way, way too small to have the conclusion it claims to have.
Whether left-leaning or right-leaning results turn up depends upon a wide variety of factors, not least of which is wording (left-leaning sites and right-leaning sites often use slightly different wording for the same issue). I don't see how it is even remotely possible for a group of four people to review enough searches to make up a representative sample, and four people is too small a number to provide a solid opinion.
Also, there's a distinct possibility that for some issues, left-leaning sites have talked about those issues far more frequently and in far more depth, while right-leaning sites will have discussed other, different issues.
Finally, I see no reason why Google should be held to any sort of standard of false balance: there are many issues for which the facts very solidly support the left, and it makes sense for Google's search results to reflect that bias. One of the clearest examples here would be global warming, but there are many others.
Google results are biased towards what users at a particular location using a particular computer and a particular account find to be correct.
I.e. Billy Bob and William Jefferson the Third just may not get the same results when googling for things. Particularly when it comes to cigars.
You know... Search engine giving YOU results YOU are searching for... not what someone else might be searching for...
Something tells me that Google may be spending a lot of time and resources on getting that to actually work.
On the other hand... both the list of "50 politically-relevant keywords" and their methodology ARE left-leaning by default.
Their methodology includes MANY "relevance" checks - which is bound to select for left-leaning results when googling for terms such as "abortion" instead of "baby murder" or "global warming" instead of "global warming hoax".
Hell... they didn't even search for "Mexicans", "Muslims", "N-word", "terrorist"... Nor was there a single search for "Pepe".
Or "pussy" for that matter. And speaking of matter...
Don't these people know that it's not just "black lives matter" but that "all lives matter" and "blue lives matter" too?
You know... Actual right-leaning vocabulary.
BTW... Apparently Slashdot also has a left-leaning bias. Wont' let me say "Nig.ers" with two 'g's.
Remember that as you read all the other posts here. This is a left-leaning site.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The summary in fact offers an example where conservative websites are emphasized and it happens to be on a topic where the conservatives usually have the facts on their side. Gun control.
Sorry to burst your American bubble but there is a simpler explanation: Google searches the web worldwide with the emphasis on "world". On the US political spectrum the average person in Europe and Canada probably maps to somewhere marginally right of communism and since Google will use links to judge interest those of us in the rest of the world could produce a 'liberal bias' compared to the US.
This would also explain why gun control came back more conservative. Whatever your views on it are the only country which really debates gun control now is the US, everywhere else the debate is pretty much over except for the odd discussion about changes to the gun control regulations in a particular country which is far less of an emotive discussion and usually affects only a small fraction of the population.
Search phrase wording affects results returned. GASP!!! Almost like the algorithms are working as designed.....
First, and most meaninglessly, GP was making an anti-religion point. Second, and far more importantly, black markets and illegally avoiding regulation are not examples of the invisible hand in economics.
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Liberals speak of what they desire *could* be, and very often of how things *should* be. Conservatives focus much more on the cold, hard facts of how things *are*. So much so that it often makes discussions difficult:
Your describing what conservatives *should* be, not what they are.
In reality, their "cold hard facts" are often aren't facts at all, but are instead per-conceived postulates. Thus, so much emphasis on "faith" and "principles", objective evidence be damned.
They are also usually focused less how things *are*, than on how they think things *were*, as interpreted through some distorted rose-colored filter.
I tested the theory several times through the election process. "How do I vote" would immediately fill in "for Hillary Clinton" and the name "Donald Trump" would not appear even when you typed in "Donald Trum". Searching for "Presidential Candidates" would show Hillary and Obama, with Trump being down between 6 and 9 places in the list. When millions of people report the same exact symptom, it no longer remains something you can explain with a personal anecdote.
Google Management and executives have a bias toward Democratic/Liberal politics. This can show up in their product with relative ease, and if you don't believe so perhaps spend a bit of time with data analysts who can show you how to manipulate data for the effect you want. Study Statistics, which is all about manipulating data for effect.
While it's true that the study will be accepted by people who have the world view that Google censors content, people who happen to favor Democratic/Liberal politics will disbelieve it.
Reality is not distorted, only our view of it is distorted. Without facts, such as the question in my subject, we can only speculate on the facts that we do have.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Go use another search engine that caters to your political persuasion.
Except that's complete nonsense. Conservatives have been responsible for the vast majority of new spending in the last decades. They sign the laws and then blame the liberals for the costs. Conservatives just use the budget excuse to complain about things they don't want to do.
The data indicates that Blacks commit crimes less than whites, but that prison correlates with crime more than white does, so the racism of the system handing out more and longer sentences to Blacks shows statistics that have Blacks offending more. Correct for SES, and Blacks commit more crimes. Correct for recidivism and Blacks offend less.
Democrats don't want to destroy Appalachian culture. They just want to destroy the global damage caused by coal mining and burning. If the Appalachian culture was built around goats or sheep herding, the Democrats wouldn't have any issue with them.
Learn to love Alaska
I have observed that liberals tend to be idealists, conservatives realists.
That's right. That's why the Earth is 6,000 years old, climate change doesn't exist no matter what the science says, evolution is a myth, market forces are the answer to any problem, implementing a minimum wage totally ruined our economy, we are safer if we all have guns despite the statistics from other countries, the government should not try to control our lives and yet somehow gay marriage not only devalues our normal marriages and causes earthquakes.
Reality has a liberal bias too, that's been shown again and again. That's not surprising since the other side is based on beliefs.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I will explain you why. Most right wing party are what we call "conservative". Which means a tendency to not change the status quo, to ark back to position which static , "what was done before is good enough" etc... It is only a tendency so look at the average. By nature conservative stay on the habitual position we had. The problem is, science and the new technology we have had for the last 100 years and especially 20-30 years are disruptive. New knowledge is disruptive of the habits of the old one. For example science discovered that spanking is contra productive. Science pointed out at global warning. The problem is that that "new" fact , is disruptive of "old" fact. So they go AGAINST the current for conservative. That is why even it is said in jest, science and new stuff , as disruptive of old stuff as they are, have an anti-conservative bias by nature. New discovery by necessity disrupt old habits/old knowledge, and so by definition will be anti conservative. Some people say "liberal" bias but I would say "disruptive" as politically neutral, as some of the cow of "liberals" (I hate those term) are also slaughtered by disruptive new findings.
So yes, even if said in jest, there is a base of truth in it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I suspect if you actually dug into Google's algorithms you'd discover that Google is probably not biased but that the internet almost certainly is
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Then respect the conservatives' that the budget won't cover all that, but we CAN afford to do A, B, and C.
Baloney. The conservatives NEVER argue to cut the things that actually matter from the budget. They just borrow the money instead of raising taxes but are just as irresponsible. Conservatives NEVER bring up cutting social security, medicare/medicaid, or the defense budget which together account for about 3/4 of the federal budget. Any politician that claims to be about fiscal responsibility who doesn't talk about how they are going to cut the defense budget or medicare is lying through their teeth about what the budget will cover. They are unwilling to make the hard choices and cut the programs that matter.
You could cut every cent of every program except for medicare, medicaid, defense and social security and you STILL couldn't balance the budget. So anyone who talks about "cutting pork" without discussing those four programs is full of shit about being fiscally responsible.
They TALK sure, but they don't do. Instead they actually borrow from the social security coffers which makes it insolvent, then claim it is unworkable because it is insolvent. And they don't even talk about cutting defense spending which is the biggest issue.
Since I have been able to vote (1972), Democratic Presidents have lowered the deficit, and Republicans (with the arguable exception of Nixon) have raised it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
http://www.nccdglobal.org/site... Not directly, but using that as a starting point, and following some of their cites, and you'll land on it, or something close to it.
Learn to love Alaska
The President generally proposes the budget, although Congress has the final say.
And, no matter if the budget was controlled by Congress or trained pigeons (and I'm not saying which would be better), the deficit has gone up with Republican Presidents (except maybe Nixon) and down with Democratic.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes