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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.
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?
There's not even objective evidence of what is being claimed. This is just the opinion of four people.
This.
"...CanIRank used the opinions of four people..."
What the simple fuck?
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!
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.
And yet the people who assume that the study agrees with their world views are quick to accept it as some sort of reflection truth.
It is a well known fact reality is distorted.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
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.
Most conservative "facts" when it comes to gun control are still based on the long-ago debunked statistical model of John Lott Jr. If the claims of conservative websites were true, countries like Japan wouldn't have a murder rate per capita that is less than 1/10th of the US nor would countries like Somalia with no gun control would have one that is nearly double that of the US.
Except for the fact that gun violence is more about a poor educational system and few to low quality job opportunities, and not so much about civilian access to firearms. Switzerland has a vibrant sport shooting community but they also have a good educational system, a good social safety net, etc. Plus firearms owners have had safety training and practice safe storage. What is going right in Japan and going wrong in Somalia has little to do with gun violence. Gun violence is a symptom of other problems. But to acknowledge this with respect to US gun violence would mean accepting decades of mistaken US policy and liberal politicians would rather not do that.
I guess the takeaway is that the Wall Street Journal is a fake news site.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's not even objective evidence of what is being claimed. This is just the opinion of four people.
What you don't realize is that some belief systems that have been popular for thousands of years only need a crusty old book with no contemporary evidence to basically enslave all of the Western Europe for several centuries. We've come far as a culture but still very far from rational, it pains me to say. I think we'll eventually get there though.
We'll make great pets
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.
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.
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.
So you're saying since Slashdot doesn't let you use a racial slur, it's left-leaning? So you're saying right-leaning users want to use racial slurs but are thwarted by this left-leaning site?
That's what I thought.
passetspike!
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.
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.
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