Google's Pichai denies any political bias in search results during lengthy Congressional t...

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  • Reply 41 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Try the same "Idiot" image search on the Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories shown. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    edited December 2018 dewmeGeorgeBMac
  • Reply 42 of 86
    maestro64maestro64 Posts: 5,043member
    maestro64 said:
    My take away from the hearing, there may not be direct pollical bias, meaning Google is not making the algorithm respond in a particular political way. However, its more clear that end users know how Google's algorithm's work and the exploit it to their advantage.  The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. I am not say that Google employees are not doing some other own software magic of their owns to skew results, I have seen this on no political things so they are doing it.

    This is no different than the problem Amazon is having with company trashing competitors reputation to rank them lower. Amazon is finding Chinese and Indian companies have figure out how the Amazon AI works on ranking products and they are using the AI against the competitors. The one example is posting negative reviews about a competitors product moves them down the list. Also making claims the products are counterfeit and will automatically cause a company be set to inactive while Amazon investigate. This weekend I went to order something,  found a couple companies offering the same product and one company had a lower price, of course I order from them. Only problem Amazon would not allow me to place it in my cart, thought it was problem with the iPhone app so I went to the computer and could not find the seller with the lower price only the one with the higher price. Amazon disable the account right as I tried to order it, went back to the phone app and it was still there and I looked at the reviews and someone was claiming it was counterfeit. When I refreshed the app the seller was gone on the phone as well. 

    In the end if you automate things, humans are still smarter than computers and AI systems can be analyzed to figure out what they are doing and then work with it or around it to accomplish your goals. Whether it is associating the word "Idiot" with Trump or taking out your competition with fake bad reviews, the systems can be manipulated once you see the trends and what they are doing.
    Google’s alg is not that dumb and without knowing how their algs perform exaclty, doing what you have described with images and key words will not work. Sorry, this is not 1990s anymore..
    Either your right and Google engineers are programming in their bias that any search for "idiot" automatically associate it to Trump, by the way this is call word mapping, this is stand practice in the AI world, This is done all the time for common words and phases which are used interchangeable by people to reference the same things. Or I am right and Google is using metadata that people are using to describe things and it is individuals with their bias causing this problem. In reality it is both, and congress should have asked google to show them the word/image mapping data for the word "idiot." But we all know the people who represent us have no clue about this stuff.

    Now if you want to see real AI bias, there was a hold controversy with Amazon and Alexia. If you asked Alexia who was Jesus, it would said he was fictional religious character, but if ask who Mohammad was, it would go into long explanation about how he was this very caring and loving religious prophet. Amazon got flack over this so now if you ask about Jesus it refers you to a Wikipedia page, but still talks about Mohammad. BTW Siri in both cases refers you back to the web sources on the topic, which I would say is the better way to handle this. 

    If anyone thinks this is new, it is not, Google got lots of flack over the whole Rick Santorum political controversy. People who did not like his values used Google's search algorithms against him, when you search for Rick Santorum these other than endearing websites would come up and bash him. His own Presidential campaign showed up on page two. Google claim there was nothing they could do to fix this due to how pages were ranked back in 2008. At the time they had no incentive to fix it since it was obviousl they did not like him either. However 8 years later the problem was in fact solved and the less flattering pages stop showing up on page 1. Why, because similar takes were being used against the same groups of people who di it to Rick. I never like Rick and his view and thought the websites were funny, but I also knew it was wrong what Google was allowing to happen. At the time Google drove sites with higher ad sense revenues to the top of the list, Since pollical campaigns site can not advertise the people who hated him knew this and used Google's system to drive his site to the bottom of the list. I saw the same thing in non political things, google drive sites with accurate information down over a site that had wrong information but more ads pasted all over their websites. This was for technical and product information. Google promotes sites that generate them $ over one which at truly helpful and may not have a monetarizing motive.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 43 of 86
    jcs2305jcs2305 Posts: 1,336member
    Well, if he said that there is no bias, then there is no bias. Case closed. /s
    What evidence do you provide to the contrary? Any? None? Old white guys having no clue how technical things work won't do, sorry. That includes congressmen and the president.


    1. Evidence is that in the last 1/2 a year a lot of people were banned from platform, mostly right wingers. It was so obvious that it required a congress committee to question that. Some of those were right wing clowns, just like the clowns on the left. But the clowns from the left were not banned for hate speech ( aka  “community” rules) despite them preaching hate, while the right wingers were. I do not support a lot of those folks, but I disagree with censorship, especially when it is done very dishonestly, like facebook and youtube did.

    2. Why did you bring the race in your response? Are you racist? Or do you have evidence old people of other races understand the tech better? What relevance that remarked had to the conversation in question?

    it would be good, if you could think through your response, before you typed it. But the MSM training kicked in before you could.
    A racist? ..knock it off. You knew exactly what the OP meant.  If you didn't know what the OP meant and took that statement as racist you must not live in the US.



    Rudy Giuliani Says Twitter Sabotaged His Tweet. Actually, He Did It Himself.



    This is a prefect example of what the OP was referring to.


    Giuliani is the informal cybersecurity adviser to the president btw. Enough said..





    GeorgeBMacwatto_cobra
  • Reply 44 of 86
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    georgie01 said:
    It can be very difficult to believe someone in an authoritative position because too many times we’ve seen people like that clearly lie, even testifying in court. They play games with words or facts that any idiot knows is a lie but at face value eludes accountability.

    Who knows if he’s telling the truth, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t and that he was being knowingly misleading. 
    Most likely he knows very well what he is doing. He is not an idiot and certainly can understand what is going on, which leaves me no other option but to conclude his malicious intent for “greater good”.
    What malicious intent are you referring to? Are you claiming that there is intentional search bias in place from Google to disadvantage conservatives (!) and if so what evidence of it do you have? If it is simply your opinion that search results are being intentionally manipulated to "hide the truth" then fair enough. We all have opinions. 
    Malicious intent of platforming people with certain political views, that companies do not support, of course. Yes, there IS intentional bias in the company so much so that when facts are stated by one of the employees, that gets that person fired from the company. Dont tell me there is no bias, and a person got fired for being a nazi.
    What does that have to do with Google Search results? Of course people in offices and stores and schools and neighborhoods have biases, including people they like and people they don't, you and me included.

    "IN JANUARY (2018), FIRED Google engineer James Damore filed a lawsuit alleging that Google discriminated against white men and political conservatives. On Wednesday (February/18) , another former Google engineer, Tim Chevalier, sued the company for firing him for posting what he calls politically liberal content, including criticism of Damore, on Google’s internal message boards."

    So which is it: Google fires employees for being too liberal or instead for being too conservative? The simple answer: Disruptive employees often get fired no matter what viewpoint they're using to negatively interfere with the business and or create a hostile workplace.  It's a simple concept, particularly if you've ever had to manage anything in business. Ever manage anything? 

    So to repeat, do you have any proof whatsoever that the Google Search algorithms are intentionally designed to introduce political bias favoring one party over another? Anything? Are you considering perhaps it's your own bias rearing its head? 
    Stop lying. Damore was fired for saying that women are not like man. Literally. The fact that some disruptive liberal employee could have been fired is irrelevant, becasue I never stated that Google only fires conservative, which Damore never was. You are all over the place with your “logic”. As said before, google fires those employees whose political opinion they dont like. The same goes for commentators on YT. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 45 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    georgie01 said:
    It can be very difficult to believe someone in an authoritative position because too many times we’ve seen people like that clearly lie, even testifying in court. They play games with words or facts that any idiot knows is a lie but at face value eludes accountability.

    Who knows if he’s telling the truth, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t and that he was being knowingly misleading. 
    Most likely he knows very well what he is doing. He is not an idiot and certainly can understand what is going on, which leaves me no other option but to conclude his malicious intent for “greater good”.
    What malicious intent are you referring to? Are you claiming that there is intentional search bias in place from Google to disadvantage conservatives (!) and if so what evidence of it do you have? If it is simply your opinion that search results are being intentionally manipulated to "hide the truth" then fair enough. We all have opinions. 
    Malicious intent of platforming people with certain political views, that companies do not support, of course. Yes, there IS intentional bias in the company so much so that when facts are stated by one of the employees, that gets that person fired from the company. Dont tell me there is no bias, and a person got fired for being a nazi.
    What does that have to do with Google Search results? Of course people in offices and stores and schools and neighborhoods have biases, including people they like and people they don't, you and me included.

    "IN JANUARY (2018), FIRED Google engineer James Damore filed a lawsuit alleging that Google discriminated against white men and political conservatives. On Wednesday (February/18) , another former Google engineer, Tim Chevalier, sued the company for firing him for posting what he calls politically liberal content, including criticism of Damore, on Google’s internal message boards."

    So which is it: Google fires employees for being too liberal or instead for being too conservative? The simple answer: Disruptive employees often get fired no matter what viewpoint they're using to negatively interfere with the business and or create a hostile workplace.  It's a simple concept, particularly if you've ever had to manage anything in business. Ever manage anything? 

    So to repeat, do you have any proof whatsoever that the Google Search algorithms are intentionally designed to introduce political bias favoring one party over another? Anything? Are you considering perhaps it's your own bias rearing its head? 
    Stop lying. Damore was fired for saying that women are not like man. Literally. The fact that some disruptive liberal employee could have been fired is irrelevant, becasue I never stated that Google only fires conservative, which Damore never was. You are all over the place with your “logic”. As said before, google fires those employees whose political opinion they dont like. The same goes for commentators on YT. 
    All you needed to say is you you don't have any evidence for your perceived Google Search bias beyond you think there is, therefor there is. The rest of your post is silliness. 
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 46 of 86
    jdgazjdgaz Posts: 403member
    Personally I stay away from Google. I have never trusted them. Guess I never will. And yes, I am an older white guy. 
    edited December 2018 GeorgeBMacwatto_cobra
  • Reply 47 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    maestro64 said:
    maestro64 said:
    My take away from the hearing, there may not be direct pollical bias, meaning Google is not making the algorithm respond in a particular political way. However, its more clear that end users know how Google's algorithm's work and the exploit it to their advantage.  The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. I am not say that Google employees are not doing some other own software magic of their owns to skew results, I have seen this on no political things so they are doing it.

    This is no different than the problem Amazon is having with company trashing competitors reputation to rank them lower. Amazon is finding Chinese and Indian companies have figure out how the Amazon AI works on ranking products and they are using the AI against the competitors. The one example is posting negative reviews about a competitors product moves them down the list. Also making claims the products are counterfeit and will automatically cause a company be set to inactive while Amazon investigate. This weekend I went to order something,  found a couple companies offering the same product and one company had a lower price, of course I order from them. Only problem Amazon would not allow me to place it in my cart, thought it was problem with the iPhone app so I went to the computer and could not find the seller with the lower price only the one with the higher price. Amazon disable the account right as I tried to order it, went back to the phone app and it was still there and I looked at the reviews and someone was claiming it was counterfeit. When I refreshed the app the seller was gone on the phone as well. 

    In the end if you automate things, humans are still smarter than computers and AI systems can be analyzed to figure out what they are doing and then work with it or around it to accomplish your goals. Whether it is associating the word "Idiot" with Trump or taking out your competition with fake bad reviews, the systems can be manipulated once you see the trends and what they are doing.
    Google’s alg is not that dumb and without knowing how their algs perform exaclty, doing what you have described with images and key words will not work. Sorry, this is not 1990s anymore..
    Either your right and Google engineers are programming in their bias that any search for "idiot" automatically associate it to Trump, by the way this is call word mapping, this is stand practice in the AI world, This is done all the time for common words and phases which are used interchangeable by people to reference the same things. Or I am right and Google is using metadata that people are using to describe things and it is individuals with their bias causing this problem. In reality it is both, and congress should have asked google to show them the word/image mapping data for the word "idiot." But we all know the people who represent us have no clue about this stuff.
    See post 41...
  • Reply 48 of 86
    gatorguy said:
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    Another nice strawman you got yourself here, eh, gator? How do you do that? You must be a walking strawman factory.
    It is not that google elliminates the results with certain keywords. It is the emotional tone of the articles is what you should be looking for, if you were in any way honest about your small “research” into the matter. Instead, you pretended not to understand what others have said here, or simply dont care what the actual problem is. Propaganda is done not via full censorship of the information. It is rather a different approach, that is a bit more subtle (subtle for people like you). For example, harvard, which is in no way a right wing place, had this to say about the tone of the coverage of Trump https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, if you show people more of the left leaning msm in search results, that pretty much guarantees that the coverage will be 80-90 negative for that particular topic. That is the whole point of propaganda, when you do it in a more subtle way (for the average joe), and you still achieve the goal of brain washing the masses. How do you think Hitler’s propaganda or USSR propaganda was so successful? It was successful for the same reason - you dont censor everything fully, but you put a twist on every piece of info as to create a coherent (yet deceitful) picture. So, msm not doing their job of being journalists (instead writing hit pieces) + google provising links more to those types of articles, guarantees the coverage will be VERY biased (look up that study) for the majority of the population. Of course, what you DONT WANNA HAVE (when you do propaganda) is a whole bunch of alternative sources that will disprove you. So, in an open society you start calling thosr sources nazies and banning them from the your platforms for the masses, as to elliminate the threat.

    This is exaclty what has been happening in the last year or so. Multiple platforms banning the same person within 24 hrs is not a coincidence. No amount of talking on behalf of CEO can undo those facts. You of course can deny facts, but that does not change  the reality of the problem.
    edited December 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 49 of 86
    Well, if he said that there is no bias, then there is no bias. Case closed. /s
    What evidence do you provide to the contrary? Any? None? Old white guys having no clue how technical things work won't do, sorry. That includes congressmen and the president.


    1. Evidence is that in the last 1/2 a year a lot of people were banned from platform, mostly right wingers. It was so obvious that it required a congress committee to question that. Some of those were right wing clowns, just like the clowns on the left. But the clowns from the left were not banned for hate speech ( aka  “community” rules) despite them preaching hate, while the right wingers were. I do not support a lot of those folks, but I disagree with censorship, especially when it is done very dishonestly, like facebook and youtube did.

    2. Why did you bring the race in your response? Are you racist? Or do you have evidence old people of other races understand the tech better? What relevance that remarked had to the conversation in question?

    it would be good, if you could think through your response, before you typed it. But the MSM training kicked in before you could.
    Nope, that isn’t evidence. That’s poorly behaving people getting banned for violatating the rules of private platforms. 

    I brought up “old white guys” because that’s who congress is, who asked all the dumb questions. What part are you struggling with?

    Oh! The MSM! Boo! Hiss! 

    lol. you people. 
    Face it, you’re a racist.
    anton zuykov
  • Reply 50 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gatorguy said:
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    Another nice strawman you got yourself here, eh, gator? How do you do that? You must be a walking strawman factory.
    It is not that google elliminates the results with certain keywords. It is the emotional tone of the articles is what you should be looking for, if you were in any way honest about your small “research” into the matter. Instead, you pretended not to understand what others have said here, or simply dont care what the actual problem is. Propaganda is done not via full censorship of the information. It is rather a different approach, that is a bit more subtle (subtle for people like you). For example, harvard, which is in no way a right wing place, had this to say about the tone of the coverage of Trump https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, if you show people more of the left leaning msm in search results, that pretty much guarantees that the coverage will be 80-90 negative for that particular topic. That is the whole point of propaganda, when you do it in a more subtle way (for the average joe), and you still achieve the goal of brain washing the masses. How do you think Hitler’s propaganda or USSR propaganda was so successful? It was successful for the same reason - you dont censor everything fully, but you put a twist on every piece of info as to create a coherent (yet deceitful) picture. So, msm not doing their job of being journalists (instead writing hit pieces) + google provising links more to those types of articles, guarantees the coverage will be VERY biased (look up that study) for the majority of the population. Of course, what you DONT WANNA HAVE (when you do propaganda) is a whole bunch of alternative sources that will disprove you. So, in an open society you start calling thosr sources nazies and banning them from the your platforms for the masses, as to elliminate the threat.

    This is exaclty what has been happening in the last year or so. Multiple platforms banning the same person within 24 hrs is not a coincidence. 
    Ah, so what you're saying is ALL the world's search engines are in cahoots, maybe using some backdoor channels where they secretly discuss what to promote and what to hide. Did I get that right? 
    edited December 2018 GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 51 of 86
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    Another nice strawman you got yourself here, eh, gator? How do you do that? You must be a walking strawman factory.
    It is not that google elliminates the results with certain keywords. It is the emotional tone of the articles is what you should be looking for, if you were in any way honest about your small “research” into the matter. Instead, you pretended not to understand what others have said here, or simply dont care what the actual problem is. Propaganda is done not via full censorship of the information. It is rather a different approach, that is a bit more subtle (subtle for people like you). For example, harvard, which is in no way a right wing place, had this to say about the tone of the coverage of Trump https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, if you show people more of the left leaning msm in search results, that pretty much guarantees that the coverage will be 80-90 negative for that particular topic. That is the whole point of propaganda, when you do it in a more subtle way (for the average joe), and you still achieve the goal of brain washing the masses. How do you think Hitler’s propaganda or USSR propaganda was so successful? It was successful for the same reason - you dont censor everything fully, but you put a twist on every piece of info as to create a coherent (yet deceitful) picture. So, msm not doing their job of being journalists (instead writing hit pieces) + google provising links more to those types of articles, guarantees the coverage will be VERY biased (look up that study) for the majority of the population. Of course, what you DONT WANNA HAVE (when you do propaganda) is a whole bunch of alternative sources that will disprove you. So, in an open society you start calling thosr sources nazies and banning them from the your platforms for the masses, as to elliminate the threat.

    This is exaclty what has been happening in the last year or so. Multiple platforms banning the same person within 24 hrs is not a coincidence. 
    Ah, so what you're saying is ALL the world's search engines are in cahoots, maybe using some backdoor channels where they secretly discuss what to promote and what to hide. Did I get that right? 
    1. You dont need all search engines to be “in cahoots”. You just need google and facebook news agregator, becasue about 70-80% of the population use both to get their news from. You dont need more to achieve a goal of controlling the masses, becasue you already got them.
    2. If tech companies have coordinated the purge of the alternative sources (as in, removing a person from various platforms of different tech firms within 24 hrs), why cant they coordinate their algs to be doing the same? What makes you think it is impossible? What justification you have for even trying to fool yourself into thinking it is not possible? 

    again, you seem not to think your responses through, do you....

    I also like how you glossed over the facts in my post, and instead proceeded to bravely construct another strawman that you immediately attempted to defeat via mockery. Smh. 
    edited December 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 52 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    Another nice strawman you got yourself here, eh, gator? How do you do that? You must be a walking strawman factory.
    It is not that google elliminates the results with certain keywords. It is the emotional tone of the articles is what you should be looking for, if you were in any way honest about your small “research” into the matter. Instead, you pretended not to understand what others have said here, or simply dont care what the actual problem is. Propaganda is done not via full censorship of the information. It is rather a different approach, that is a bit more subtle (subtle for people like you). For example, harvard, which is in no way a right wing place, had this to say about the tone of the coverage of Trump https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, if you show people more of the left leaning msm in search results, that pretty much guarantees that the coverage will be 80-90 negative for that particular topic. That is the whole point of propaganda, when you do it in a more subtle way (for the average joe), and you still achieve the goal of brain washing the masses. How do you think Hitler’s propaganda or USSR propaganda was so successful? It was successful for the same reason - you dont censor everything fully, but you put a twist on every piece of info as to create a coherent (yet deceitful) picture. So, msm not doing their job of being journalists (instead writing hit pieces) + google provising links more to those types of articles, guarantees the coverage will be VERY biased (look up that study) for the majority of the population. Of course, what you DONT WANNA HAVE (when you do propaganda) is a whole bunch of alternative sources that will disprove you. So, in an open society you start calling thosr sources nazies and banning them from the your platforms for the masses, as to elliminate the threat.

    This is exaclty what has been happening in the last year or so. Multiple platforms banning the same person within 24 hrs is not a coincidence. 
    Ah, so what you're saying is ALL the world's search engines are in cahoots, maybe using some backdoor channels where they secretly discuss what to promote and what to hide. Did I get that right? 
    1. You dont need all search engines to be “in cahoots”. You just need google and facebook news agregator, becasue about 70-80% of the population use both to get their news from. You dont need more to achieve a goal of controlling the masses, becasue you already got them.
    2. If tech companies have coordinated the purge of the alternative sources (as in, removing a person from various platforms of different tech firms within 24 hrs), why cant they coordinate their algs to be doing the same? What makes you think it is impossible? What justification you have for even trying to fool yourself into thinking it is not possible? 

    again, you seem not to think your responses through, do you....
    Of course nearly anything is possible, even Google taking in on themselves to intentionally link a series of Trump photos anytime "idiot" is searched in order to paint conservatives with a  bad brush. That doesn't prove that thing you imagine happened actually happened. You already knew that. 

    At this point it has become obvious to me at least that the only evidence that you have to offer is you think it to be so. There's nothing else you have is there? if not then the discussion is at an end since I suspect this will rapidly devolve into a series of he said/she said posts sprinkled with ad-homs. I'm not interested if that's what it's coming down to. 

    But I encourage you to come up with some proof of this unfair and intentional Google search bias and I'll happily respond. Otherwise i believe we're probably done.  
    edited December 2018
  • Reply 53 of 86
    In response to an earlier comment, I did an image search on DuckDuckGo and here are the top results:


  • Reply 54 of 86
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    gatorguy said:
    curt12 said:
    maestro64 said:
    The example they use in the hearing search idiot and get Trump picture, so end users are all tagging Trumps photos with the word idiot so when google craws around the web, it finds a bunch of website with Trumps picture tagged with idiot. So now Trumps picture is now associated with Idiot. 

    If I search "idiot" on Bing or Yahoo, Trump is also among the top image hits. So multiple major search engines agree on the relevance of that association.
    FWIW so does DuckDuckGo. In fact at DDG nearly every first page result includes Trump. Evidence that search is driven by user interaction more than anything else no matter what search engine is used. 

    Russian search engine Yandex? Yup lots of Trump stories. The uncensored Gibiru Search? Yup you got it, more Trump. Even the Czech Republic's Seznam will give the same results. It's not a Google thing. 

     
    Another nice strawman you got yourself here, eh, gator? How do you do that? You must be a walking strawman factory.
    It is not that google elliminates the results with certain keywords. It is the emotional tone of the articles is what you should be looking for, if you were in any way honest about your small “research” into the matter. Instead, you pretended not to understand what others have said here, or simply dont care what the actual problem is. Propaganda is done not via full censorship of the information. It is rather a different approach, that is a bit more subtle (subtle for people like you). For example, harvard, which is in no way a right wing place, had this to say about the tone of the coverage of Trump https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, if you show people more of the left leaning msm in search results, that pretty much guarantees that the coverage will be 80-90 negative for that particular topic. That is the whole point of propaganda, when you do it in a more subtle way (for the average joe), and you still achieve the goal of brain washing the masses. How do you think Hitler’s propaganda or USSR propaganda was so successful? It was successful for the same reason - you dont censor everything fully, but you put a twist on every piece of info as to create a coherent (yet deceitful) picture. So, msm not doing their job of being journalists (instead writing hit pieces) + google provising links more to those types of articles, guarantees the coverage will be VERY biased (look up that study) for the majority of the population. Of course, what you DONT WANNA HAVE (when you do propaganda) is a whole bunch of alternative sources that will disprove you. So, in an open society you start calling thosr sources nazies and banning them from the your platforms for the masses, as to elliminate the threat.

    This is exaclty what has been happening in the last year or so. Multiple platforms banning the same person within 24 hrs is not a coincidence. 
    Ah, so what you're saying is ALL the world's search engines are in cahoots, maybe using some backdoor channels where they secretly discuss what to promote and what to hide. Did I get that right? 
    1. You dont need all search engines to be “in cahoots”. You just need google and facebook news agregator, becasue about 70-80% of the population use both to get their news from. You dont need more to achieve a goal of controlling the masses, becasue you already got them.
    2. If tech companies have coordinated the purge of the alternative sources (as in, removing a person from various platforms of different tech firms within 24 hrs), why cant they coordinate their algs to be doing the same? What makes you think it is impossible? What justification you have for even trying to fool yourself into thinking it is not possible? 

    again, you seem not to think your responses through, do you....
    Of course nearly anything is possible. That doesn't prove that thing you imagine happened actually happened. At this point it has become obvious to me at least that the only evidence that you have to offer is you think it to be so. There's nothing else you have is there? if not then the discussion is at an end since I suspect this will rapidly devolve into a series of he said/she said posts sprinkled with ad-homs. I'm not interested if that's what it's coming down to. 
    1. Google consistenly favours left leaning media
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/16/google-news-results-left-leaning/1651278002/

    2. Left leaning media coverage for trump was 8: 1 - 11:1 negative.
    https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-trump-media-coverage-harvard-kass-0521-20170519-column.html

    so, google showing more left leaning coverage + the knowledge that the left leaning MSM have HEAVY leaning toward negative news associated with trump clearly shows that you are wrong here, gator.
    Stubborn facts and reality are a bitch, eh gator?

    In order for you to cast doubt on what I said, you have to disprove 1 and 2. And you cant, because now you have to find actual facts.... which would be impossible to do, because those reports already contain facts indicating that you are wrong.

    As for knowing whether Google has its algs modified to do that or not - the proof is in the pudding i.e. results of how those algs perform and what they present. It is a black box problem, and you dont need to know what is inside, to know the high level laws it operates on, when you have results like that.
    edited December 2018
  • Reply 55 of 86
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    In response to an earlier comment, I did an image search on DuckDuckGo and here are the top results:


    Only one Trump image/photo in that one (in Catholic church garb), followed up of course by dozens of article links to President Trump if you're being honest. 
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=idiot+image&t=h_&ia=news

    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 56 of 86
    spice-boyspice-boy Posts: 1,450member
    Google and it's search engine the first a business the second it's money maker can be as bias as it wants to be. Free market blah blah blah. Google is not a government funded agency designed to provide facts but a machine designed to display "information" wrapped in adverts.  

    Having said that, as a platform for free expression it does have a responsibility to not (shout fire in a crowed theatre). It also has a right to shut down those promoting hate speech, certain forms of pornography which are illegal in the USA, etc... Unless our government wants to fund it there is no way they can control its political leaning. 
  • Reply 57 of 86
    spice-boy said:
    Google and it's search engine the first a business the second it's money maker can be as bias as it wants to be. Free market blah blah blah. Google is not a government funded agency designed to provide facts but a machine designed to display "information" wrapped in adverts.  

    Having said that, as a platform for free expression it does have a responsibility to not (shout fire in a crowed theatre). It also has a right to shut down those promoting hate speech, certain forms of pornography which are illegal in the USA, etc... Unless our government wants to fund it there is no way they can control its political leaning. 
    spice-boy said:
    Google and it's search engine the first a business the second it's money maker can be as bias as it wants to be. Free market blah blah blah. Google is not a government funded agency designed to provide facts but a machine designed to display "information" wrapped in adverts.  

    Having said that, as a platform for free expression it does have a responsibility to not (shout fire in a crowed theatre). It also has a right to shut down those promoting hate speech, certain forms of pornography which are illegal in the USA, etc... Unless our government wants to fund it there is no way they can control its political leaning. 
    I agree, except when it has control over vital information flows for 60 - 80% of the populaton. Its services either have to be controlled via govt (not a good idea) by becoming a public utility/service (like electricity or water) or it has to be broken up into smaller pieces. Becasue google or apple control a lot more info and public opinion than the govt while not being subject to the same scrutiny. That is really bad.
  • Reply 58 of 86
    gatorguy said:
    In response to an earlier comment, I did an image search on DuckDuckGo and here are the top results:


    Only one Trump image/photo in that one (in Catholic church garb), followed up of course by dozens of article links to President Trump if you're being honest. 
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=idiot+image&t=h_&ia=news

    Fyi: ducduck still uses google. 

    Upd: i think I am wrong on that one.. 
    edited December 2018 SpamSandwichsteven n.
  • Reply 59 of 86
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    I don't believe that there is purposeful or intentional bias in the AI/predictive algorithms in Google's search engine, but there is definitely plenty of unintentional bias expressed in the search results because of the way the source data and metadata is statistically/algorithmically processed. It's simply an artifact or side-effect of the processing in the same way that DSP processing of complex audio data can produce unwanted artifacts that need to be filtered out in post-processing. In fact, evidence of this is apparent in Apple's word prediction algorithm in Messages. Try these on your iPhone:

    If you type "The doctor" (or nurse if you prefer) followed by a space Apple will produce emojis for both a male doctor and a female doctor. A few years ago in older versions of iOS (or android) the same exercise would very likely have provided the word "he" as a predicted next word for the doctor case and "she" for the nurse case, strictly based on probability of association and prevailing demographics that were baked into the back end data used to formulate the prediction. I strongly suspect that Apple is actually performing some sort of post-processing to remove the unintended bias that emerged from the raw prediction results.

    A more interesting bit of post-processing intervention evidence, in Messages again, is to start typing the phrase "James is a businessman" but only type up to the letter "i" in businessman to trigger the next word prediction. When I type "James is a busi" on my iPhone Xs Max with the latest iOS beta the next word prediction choices I get are "business" and "businesswoman." From what I can tell, using any traditionally male name (including Jesus) does not alter the next word results that include "businesswoman." One could infer that the post-processing is intervening in a way to suppress the inherent bias in the raw results, and doing so in a rather heavy-handed way.

    This begs the question: what should the presenters of data that emerges from algorithms with an impression of bias do? Is it better to simply present what the algorithms spit out or to intervene to reduce the appearance of bias? Put another way, should the data scientists forcefully break the statistical association between the words "Trump" and "idiot" by scrubbing the source data or should they filter the results so the "Trump" and "idiot" association does not show up in the results? There is no clear answer because either way try to "fix it" you're going to be accused of manipulation. The algorithms don't care, they are just chugging away on data and spitting out results.

    The whole notion that Google or anyone else can manipulate data, data processing, or the results of data processing in a way that would not be trivially easy to detect by a statistician or data scientist is absurd. There are times when people simply have to grow a spine about things they don't like, apply some logic and judgement, and be a lot more aware of their own personal biases that impact their view of the world. Sorry, but you can't blame this one on Google. 
    philboogie
  • Reply 60 of 86
    dewme said:
    I don't believe that there is purposeful or intentional bias in the AI/predictive algorithms in Google's search engine, but there is definitely plenty of unintentional bias expressed in the search results because of the way the source data and metadata is statistically/algorithmically processed. It's simply an artifact or side-effect of the processing in the same way that DSP processing of complex audio data can produce unwanted artifacts that need to be filtered out in post-processing. In fact, evidence of this is apparent in Apple's word prediction algorithm in Messages. Try these on your iPhone:

    If you type "The doctor" (or nurse if you prefer) followed by a space Apple will produce emojis for both a male doctor and a female doctor. A few years ago in older versions of iOS (or android) the same exercise would very likely have provided the word "he" as a predicted next word for the doctor case and "she" for the nurse case, strictly based on probability of association and prevailing demographics that were baked into the back end data used to formulate the prediction. I strongly suspect that Apple is actually performing some sort of post-processing to remove the unintended bias that emerged from the raw prediction results.

    A more interesting bit of post-processing intervention evidence, in Messages again, is to start typing the phrase "James is a businessman" but only type up to the letter "i" in businessman to trigger the next word prediction. When I type "James is a busi" on my iPhone Xs Max with the latest iOS beta the next word prediction choices I get are "business" and "businesswoman." From what I can tell, using any traditionally male name (including Jesus) does not alter the next word results that include "businesswoman." One could infer that the post-processing is intervening in a way to suppress the inherent bias in the raw results, and doing so in a rather heavy-handed way.

    This begs the question: what should the presenters of data that emerges from algorithms with an impression of bias do? Is it better to simply present what the algorithms spit out or to intervene to reduce the appearance of bias? Put another way, should the data scientists forcefully break the statistical association between the words "Trump" and "idiot" by scrubbing the source data or should they filter the results so the "Trump" and "idiot" association does not show up in the results? There is no clear answer because either way try to "fix it" you're going to be accused of manipulation. The algorithms don't care, they are just chugging away on data and spitting out results.

    The whole notion that Google or anyone else can manipulate data, data processing, or the results of data processing in a way that would not be trivially easy to detect by a statistician or data scientist is absurd. There are times when people simply have to grow a spine about things they don't like, apply some logic and judgement, and be a lot more aware of their own personal biases that impact their view of the world. Sorry, but you can't blame this one on Google. 
    There is intentional bias and it does not matter whether you believe it or not. 
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/16/google-news-results-left-leaning/1651278002/
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