https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl...
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jun/23...
(Disclosure: I work at Google, but this opinion is my own)
I'm not ruling out the possibility that google actually is manipulating search results, but this is not proof of that.
* donald trump email * donald trump email address * donald trump email list * donald trump email newsletter * donald trump email list signup
And just to drive the point home I tried "root_axis emai" and got "root_axis email". Try anyone else and you get similar results, 'barack obama emai', 'george bush emai', etc etc. So yes, this is proof that the results are scrubbed for Clinton email.
Since Hillary Clinton is not unique, then it's not proof that her results are treated differently.
I’m not saying google is manipulating auto complete intentionally (though they might be), I’m just saying your counter examples are irrelevant.
It would be like “Donald trump Russia” NOT auto completing then someone saying “but neither does Taylor swift Russia, so we’re good.”
Claiming that she's unusual, since you expect it to work for her based on stories written about her is a different claim.
1. I said "only for Clinton" in the contect of Trump vs Clinton. Then I compared to other U.S. politicians, where the example still holds. The intended meaning is perfectly clear.
2. Obviously the fact that Clinton was the topic of a scandal involving email is the assumed context here. That's why I said "if anything, we would not expect "email" to be autocompleted for trump" (implied: but for Clinton, email is a more relevant search term based on published news, etc.).
Compare these results:
* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hillary%20clinton%20em...
* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=will%20smith%20email
Also, if I type "hillary e" I get "Hillary Emails PDF" as an autocomplete suggestion. If I type "clinton e" I get several email suggestions "clinton email PDF" ,"clinton email film", "clinton email FOIA", "clinton email download".
Please include these confounding results in your analysis
I think the bigger problem is that these adjustment appear to be done manually. We know that's what they're doing to avoid racist autocomplete phrases (and reasonably so, I think most people would agree). Having such judgments made on specific political topics/events/scandals will inevitably result in political bias, especially in an organization whose workforce is so politically skewed to one side.
This is the problem with search query anecdotes, it ultimately produces a subjective and pointless debate about how one should interpret search suggestions for arbitrarily selected one-off queries. There is no methodology here, and we don't even know how widespread any particular suggestion results are. Any person with an agenda will be able to cherry-pick search queries that confirm their narrative.
I just tried searching again a few times with new private windows, and "email" alternates between first and fourth suggestion for trump. But the more important point is the absence of the suggestion for clinton: we know it's been in the news extensively, we know people searched for this phrase a lot, and now "email" has been removed from the suggestions only for Clinton. I tried searching a few more U.S. politicians, and for all of them "e" autosuggests "email" somewhere between first and fourth place. So the complete absence for Clinton does not look like a generic algorithm change.
It is a rather suspicious result. Suspicious enough that it is hard not to imagine a deliberate act is behind it. I admit that I don't have any proof.
Curious....Did you get any results for "hillary clinton e-mails"?
I searched from a Firefox private window over a VPN from the Netherlands. But since the results are the same (regarding presence/absence of "email" as an autocomplete term) I don't think it matters much.
If the trend data is not being used for the autocomplete results, what is? And why?
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=hillary%20...
what's up with that
Would be nice to know whether it was because of the search history bubble he lived in or not.
If I type "Hillary Clinton Emai" I don't even get a suggestion for email :/
https://sputniknews.com/us/201609121045214398-google-clinton...
I know Sputnik isn't a good source, but according to him, they were the only ones who would publish the findings without edits.
They only let him do that because it fits with their agenda. The real test is if they would let him publish an article on Putin's corruption...without edits..
Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? Is their data proving those claims wrong? Because with all the Google political controversies over the past few years, and given the political donation history of Google employees, it’s highly plausible that search results are manipulated to favor certain politics over others.
If the “questionable claims” have been disproven or are inaccurate, then it would seem that you’d provide some proof. Essentially, it you are to claim the search engine was not biased towards Clinton, certainly there would be some proof of that? It’s more reasonable to suspect Google manipulating search engines than not, given the political environment at Google.
The real “questionable claim” is that Google is neutral in any way — which is kind of the entire premise of the article. If Google were completely neutral, then why would their monopoly on search need to be broken?
I'm going to retread a comment I made when I first learned about Epstein a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084
In short, and ignoring my ad hominem attack on his motivations, I encourage you to read/skim his two "studies" [1][2] and see how absurd they are. You might dismiss my claims and summaries as biased, but I think I was pretty open-minded towards his conclusions until I read them.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with...
[2] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Metho...
the claims are questionable because his methodology is questionable. If he claims google is biased, he should have a good peer reviewable study that proves this..not google is biased because google didn't auto prompt me with "created AIDS" when I typed in hillary Clinton....
And he's the one making the claim that google is biased...The burden of proof is on HIM.
This is a forum for people in the tech world, right? Shouldn't we question N=1 "studies"?
Even if the specific engineers and managers in the video clips don't have the level of authority to make the changes they're talking about, it's still chilling that their attitude could be common in Google and they see political ends of their great power as being some kind of great responsibility; instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.
Maybe this Google 'expose' is the first time they're not guilty of that, but anyone who still finds them credible after their last several blatant mischaracterizations is far more forgiving than I would be.
" ... Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation. The video then goes on to stitch together a series of debunked conspiracy theories about our search results, and our other products. ... "
Going to go out on a limb and say I don't respect "Hitler was a bad man" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" equally. Individual employees are allowed to have opinions...even opinions I don't agree with.
That's not really off-topic - The fact that the author still supports the claim calls into question their ability to make further claims about the subject.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-...
[2] https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl...
None of these debunk the claims made by Google employees in the Project Veritas videos.
All you can do is disprove the claims of their existence. Someone tries to claim there's a pink unicorn in the garage, and you can check the garage and say that the it is pink unicorn free. Someone tries to claim political bias exist for hillary clinton in instant search results, and these articles disprove that claim as using cherry picked evidence.
Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence - preferrably without cherry picking evidence to fit an agenda yourself. Otherwise it's just hand waving and click bait.
The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence you can see for yourself as a user. In addition to that I know many people who work at Google and the vast majority of them have extreme political bias.
Likewise, the handful of people you know having political views, in an organization of 85,000 people, is not evidence that that organization's search results being biased.
If there is so much anecdotal evidence then it should be easy for you to prove, right? Or are you afraid of being disproven?
James Okeefe is publicly known for selectively editing video to make false representations, and this duck is no different.
You specifically claimed that there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. Where is it?
https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo...
> anecdotal evidence > I know
So much hard data here...real hacker news material...
"The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video."
>Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation.
Robert Epstein (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today,
He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#cite_note-15
His research is based entirely on his own experience
“It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any Clinton-related suggestions when one types a negative search term,” writes Dr. Robert Epstein, Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.