And maybe your site doesn't get ranked well because it's directly tied to project veritas. I don't like being too political, especially on hn and on an account tied to my real identity, but project veritas and it's associates exhibit appalling behavior in duplicity and misdirection. I would hope that trash like this does get pushed to the bottom.
Of course Google's own bias (and involvement in particular political campaigns) is well known, and opposed to Project Veritas, so it's quite possible that you are right and Google is downranking PV.
Would that be good? Well, that's an opinion that depends mostly on the bias of the commentator.
I doubt this affected search rankings but Project Veritas does have a ton of credibility issues.
If this surprises you, then welcome to the systematic bias of wikipedia.
"Gotchas" and "gaffes" are taken out of context all the time. And when reporters lie to go undercover and obtain a story, they're usually hailed as heroes.
These objections are only used to "discredit" opposing viewpoints. People don't object when sources they agree with use the same tactics.
And to be even more fair, you aren’t talking about “people” here but the OP who can clearly state their own personal preferences, without the need for you to construct a theory of hidden bias.
Most people don’t identify as independents, and, anyhow, studies of voting behavior show that most independents have a clear party leaning between the two major parties and are just as consistently attached to the party they lean toward as people who identify with the party.
So not only is it the case that most people don't identify as independents, most of those who do aren't distinguishable from self-identified partisans when it comes to voting behavior.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/15/facts-about...
That's not “on the contrary”; 38% < 50%; most Americans don't identify as independents.
Heck, even 43% (the number that don't identify as either Republicans or Democrats) is less than 50%; most Americans specifically identify as either Democrats or Republicans.
> but independents are much more important in politics than they are usually given credit for.
On the contrary, independents are given outsize importance by the major media, because they are treated as just as large of a group as they actually are, but are treated as if their voting behavior was much more different from that of self-identified partisans than it actually is.
> most Americans specifically identify as either Democrats or Republicans
Now you just did the same thing I did but in reverse! See my comments about more specific words for plurality such as "most".
> independents are given outsize importance by the major media
I don't think independents are given much importance at all by the major media, but I have increasingly disconnected from that circus too so I might not be a good judge of it.
No, I didn't.
> See my comments about more specific words for plurality such as "most".
“Most” (as an adjective applied to a group) is for a majority, not a plurality, but that's okay, because 57% is an absolute majority, anyway, which is why my reference, which did use “most” for a majority, was not what you did.
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Majority
Maybe not the best source, but quite a few sites returned similar verbiage about most usually but not always referring to a plurality. I'm open to correction on this point, and am genuinely curious about this meta argument now. Having a hard time finding a statistical dictionary that references the words we are using here (majority, most, etc).
Why the assumption of left or right, when at least
in the US most people identify as independents?
Voters declaring themselves as independent of a major
political party rose nationally by 6 percentage points
to 28 percent of the U.S. electorate between 2000 and
last year’s congressional midterm contest in states
with party registration, analyst Rhodes Cook wrote
in Sabato’s Crystal Ball political newsletter at the
University of Virginia Center for Politics.
But as few as 19 percent of Americans identifying as
independent truly have no leaning to a party, according
to the Pew Research Center.[1]
'Difference-maker' independent voters in U.S. presidential election crosshairs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-deciders-ind...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/15/facts-about...
The gist of it is that for any given party, more people are not members of it (e.g. 70%+ of Americans are not Democrats) so you are not safe in guessing someone political affiliations. Stats wise, you will likely be wrong.
Secondarily, saying that someone who leans to a party is basically in that party is wrong.
For example, I am an independent. I lean republican on the local level, but in the Federal elections I lean Democrat. If you polled me, I would say I lean republican since that’s usually what’s on my mind
Look up the story I'm talking about and you'll see that it was ignored by left-wing sources:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cnn+edited+video+of+sister&t=ffab&...
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cnn%20edited%20video%2...
The entire media establishment ignores these tactics when used by other organizations they agree with.
You're free to select the occasional time when a news agency gets it wrong (and apologizes and issues a correction)...but to try and compare it to an intentionally biased organization that always, intentionally gets it wrong (by willfully setting up people, then editing their responses, to paint things in a particular light), and never backs down, never apologizes, well...at best, your bias is showing.
And I'd say you are mistaken when you call changing "take that [violence] to the suburbs" into "a call for peace" merely getting it wrong. What CNN did could hardly be anything other than intentional deception from an organization with a strong left-wing bias[1].
That's quite a claim. If that's true, why aren't they in jail?
I'm sure they have many powerful enemies who would love to see them convicted of these multiple felonies.
O'Keefe plead out to a misdemeanor and served probation + a fine. But the crime he committed was a felony.
> In January 2012, O'Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters.
That's probably a felony in most parts of the US, although O'Keefe claims it wasn't since he didn't actually vote.
Not among credible sources.
People have a vested interest in destroying the idea that anything can be a non-partisan "fact". Anything can become a smear. Only the most absolutely egregious ones can be reined in by legal action (e.g. Alex Jones libelling the Sandy Hook parents).
(This is not just internet, of course; the British press mendacity towards the Royal family is playing out at the moment.)
Here is someone who believes that a private company's open attempts to rank websites by quality amounts to "seditious behaviour" deserving of criminal prosecution, and the only people willing to pay attention were Project Veritas. Google has plenty of ethics issues, but this guy's claims are absurd.
I just tried it, it's just showing results for "zach vorhies" instead, which it thinks you meant. I just tried a few other random "people's names as URL" websites I could find, sometimes it does this, sometimes it doesn't.
Furthermore, the results that do appear are hardly unsympathetic to you. If google is censoring you/your opinions, they're doing a very poor job of it.
> If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website then the raters are instructed to provide a low page rank score
This sounds like a good thing to me. Sites that contain lies, fabrications, and falsehoods should not be as highly ranked as those which do not.
Why should shareholders sure Google for, as far as I can tell from your argument, trying to provide users with a more useful product?
Google does not have the moral authority to censor the internet, and it's absolutely wrong for them to attempt this. Information should be free, and you don't have the right to get in the way of that.
They do run a popular search page, and have to decide what to do with a search like "Is the Earth flat?".
Personally, I would prefer they prominently display a "no". Others would disagree, but a search engine is curation by definition, that's what makes it useful.
Oh hey! I just tried this, and it does! image: https://i.imgur.com/OqqxSq3.png
What you ask for isn't freedom but control over everyone else - there is nothing stopping you from running your own spiders, search engines, and rankings.
The fun thing about facts is that nobody needs to decide whether or not they are true. Perhaps the fact that you can honestly claim to think otherwise means you need to take a step back and examine your reasoning.
This is an example of a "fact" that I'm talking about. It's not a fact, it's an opinion being presented as fact. I guess if you present yourself this way online you have no problem with Google controlling what "facts" are found when you use their search engine.
I guess I'll just have to wait until they start peddling a perspective you disagree with.
> If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website
Just remember that this is the comment we're discussing... how does one determine if a statement is slander? Are you telling me Google has teams of investigative journalists following up on each of their search results? Or did someone at Google form an opinion, then decide their opinion is the one that should be presented as "fact" on the most popular search engine in the world?
I am not sure what is happening but I directly searched for your website : zachvorhies.com on Google (in Australia, if that matters), which returned the website as the first result:
[0] https://i.imgur.com/S2rPywz.png
Also, is this guy a Q follower or something? The favicon is a Q.
Actually the favicon is a headshot.
https://www.zachvorhies.com/favicon.ico
And that's also the icon in the page source:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href="favicon.ico" type=”image/x-icon” />
I wonder why Google shows a Q.
A placeholder used if the algorithm thinks the favicon is not appropriate for some reason.
Anyhow, I would be interested to know what results you get in the EU.
For what it's worth, I'm in Australia and have the same search results as erklik.
I wouldn't trust a single word that comes out of this guy's mouth.
> Don't listen to the people who say
> this beast has to do with a secret Page Rank score that Google's army of workers
Anyone who tells you to not listen to others intends to tell you gossip about why you shouldn't gather data that conflicts their own views. They'll SAY all sorts of things to try to make you "see" it their way. Rational people DO things to prove or disprove a given belief. (Just to note SAYING a bunch of stuff does not equal DOING a bunch of stuff.)
For anyone rational and interested, Google "this video will make you angry" and bump the speed to 75%. The idea is that memes will compete for "compute" space in both people's minds and the space in which they occupy the Internet. Those who get "infected" with a given meme, will go to all sorts of lengths to rationalize why that meme is true, even though the meme the arguing against is just as irrational as their own.
I should know - I blew the whistle on the whole censorship regime and walked 950 pages to the DOJ and media outlets.
--> zachvorhies.com <--
What did I disclose? That Google was using a project called "Machine Learning Faireness" to rerank the entire internet.
Part of this beast has to do with a secret Page Rank score that Google's army of workers assign to many of the web pages on the internet.
If wikipedia contains cherry picked slander against a person, topic or website then the raters are instructed to provide a low page rank score. This isn't some conspiracy but something openly admitted by Google itself:
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...
See section 3.2 for the "Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness" score.
Despite the fact that I've had around 50 interviews and countless articles written about my disclosure, my website zachvorhies.com doesn't show up on Google's search index, even when using the exact url as a query! Yet bing and duckduckgo return my URL just fine.
Don't listen to the people who say that's its some emergent behavior from bad SEO. This deliberate sabotage of Google's own search engine in order to achieve the political agenda of the controllers. The stock holders of Google should band together in a class action lawsuit and sue the C-Level executives of negligence.
If you want your internet search to be better then stop using Google search. Other search engines don't have this problem: I'm looking at qwant, swisscows, duckduckgo, bing and others.
~Z~