News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban by TomMckenny on Thursday September 20, 2018 @09:16PM (#18036547)
In this case what did or did not happen was that some employees noticed that search results for "Muslim" and "Latino" were almost exclusively anti-Muslim and anti-Latino. Since the typical person searching for those terms is obviously interested in a broader view, the algorithm was flawed or even gamed. The article title is click-baity.

But I agree it is terrifying that there are companies devoted to an overt political stance that have vast reach and even monopolies in many markets like Sinclair [0] and others [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_oper... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Networks_Group#Internation...

Re:Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban by josephh on Thursday September 20, 2018 @09:27PM (#18036588)
> Since the typical person searching for those terms is obviously interested in a broader view

I don't find it obvious at all. Do you have any evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case? Why would those terms/results show up in the first place if only few are looking them up?

Re:Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban by mikeyouse on Thursday September 20, 2018 @10:01PM (#18036709)
Google's algorithm is biased toward recency. In a universe of "Foo Badbar", "Foo Neutralbar" and "Foo Goodbar" -- If a person searches for "Foo" after there's a bunch of stories in the press about "Foo Badbar", the results will all reflect that topic. For something like "Latino", it's crazy for all the results to reflect the border wall and not at all controversial for Google to want to promote "Foo Neutralbar" and "Foo Goodbar" to balance the results.
Re:Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban by danaris on Friday September 21, 2018 @09:02AM (#18039350)
It is almost trivially obvious that the average person, even in a polarized climate like America during the 2016 election cycle, is more likely to be interested in a reasonably balanced set of results on any given topic than they are to be interested in a set of results that exclusively favor one fairly extreme position.

(Unfortunately, I would say this is even likely to be true of topics for which there is, in fact, an objectively true answer, like climate change, which many of the results will be opposing.)

Re:Google workers discussed tweaking search after travel ban by TomMckenny on Friday September 21, 2018 @12:04AM (#18037090)
>>Since the typical person searching for those terms is obviously interested in a broader view

>Do you have any evidence to suggest that this is indeed the case?

Only my apparently overly optimistic understanding of human nature.