google top: reddit post about "What are you if you just don't give a fuck about gender and you have no kind of dysphoria?"
DDG top: blog post titled "Don’t care about gender Self-ID? Here’s why you should"
Both normal and incognito on Google return similar results to what was returned to you.
• You have phrased the search in a way that people expressing that view wouldn't be likely to use, yet is similar to how people holding contrary views would express theirs. I think that's the case here. If you search for “gender does not exist” or so, you may get the results you want.
• Google's results are customised based on what they think you would be interested in.
• Content from one side of a contentious topic may be less popular online and/or not linked to as many authoritative sites, and thus have a lower PageRank.
2) so I am clearly of a more conservative bent, yet google frequently gives articles which are hostile to conservative views. So if its doing this its doing a terrible job.
3) agreed. And that is, imo, problematic. Or at least really fucking obnoxious and kneecaps the utility of google.
One upon a time Google was a really cool search engine. Entire books were written about how to use it wisely. E.g.
Google Hacks
100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
Now, it's impossible to properly qualify searches. Quotes don't mean shit. Appending "&tbs=li:1" to get verbatim results doesn't mean shit.
Google just does whatever the hell it wants to. Which is probably great for the unwashed masses but really sucks for advanced users.
I remember when you could finesse google for really odd or specific shit and its damn near impossible now.
Reminds me that yesterday I tried googling around the topic of how covid affects fertility (eg. "covid fertility") and nearly every result that comes back is about vaccines not affecting fertility. Okay, thanks Google, but how about the actual disease? Results were a fair bit more relevant by adding "disease" to the query, but still got one or two about vaccines.
I don't think you can call that behaviour favouring left. It feels as though they're creating vaccine hesitancy.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=COVI...
It's entirely possible that such a disproportionate number of persons is more likely to access links about vaccines and such politics than what you searched for that the machine, not the man, has elected to favor those without having any real political motive.
I wish google was more concerned with accuracy of matches rather than populatrity
Covid side effects -> covid vaccine side effects
Best burgers -> McDonald's
Best coffee -> Starbucks
Best way to sort a list -> bubble sort
I don't see what you are describing at all.
On the other hand, the top Google results go to The Guardian, Wikipedia, Time, the BBC, etc., discussing the topic -- hugely popular sites.
Google's meant to find popular relevant pages for your search terms. Remember, that's what PageRank was all about. So seems to be working as expected.
Personally, I have yet to see any “credible” news source and the adage remains that every news article about anything I have even the most minor inside knowledge of seems completely inaccurate, especially the politically laden ones.
No matter what mechanism Google uses to assign such ranking: be it their own judgement or simply an agnostic a.i. that lets the masses decide, I cannot see anything good coming from it and there will always be a bias not based in factuality, but politics.
Well, Google isn't omnipotent and thus it only echos back results which are popular with people, which is basically politics, so yes. If everyone tomorrow instantly started thinking the world was flat (and previous flat earthers start saying the world is round) Google's results would shift pretty dramatically to whatever is the most popular side.
...that it's incentivized to return the results that the most people are looking for? As measured by clicks?
If you don't believe the news and you don't find popularity useful either then I honestly can't imagine what you're even looking for then.
Google returns a list of left leaning sources down playing it, DDG returns a list of right leaning sources condemning it.
The results are night and day different.
Also your username gave me a chuckle
I just Googled "I don't care about gender identity" and the top results are all agreeing with that statement.
The search is working perfectly. Google isn't inserting any kind of left-wing bias whatsoever. It's finding the same types of pages as DuckDuckGo does as well.
So why are you spreading this misinformation?
The example further down about the moon landing is a much better example though. Its a lot worse right when some political event happens. Like if trump said sonething really controversial and you search for more context around it, on google top results would all be articles about how shitty the thing he said was whereas on DDG youd have a greater probability of actually getting some context.
Like when pandemic was in full swing trying to get information that was against the mainstream narrative was impossible on google but was doable on ddg.
This might not be like an active decision by google but their results do skew really heavy left. It might just be a function of popularity rankings. But id imagine ddg uses a similar ranming system so not sure what makes the difference.
There are times tho when ive searched for something I know exists like word for word and it still wont come up on google but will on ddg so, go figure.
So, the one example you provided you hadn't taken the 10 seconds to validate?
You're not providing value here. Please make an effort to make meaningful and additive comments instead of spewing misinformation or made up anecdotes.
My point stands shitty example or not.
You have no point if you have to make things up to make it.
Hard to feel there's a compelling interest in supporting bigotry when knowledge is best advanced by open inquiry and the net result of bigotry is a suppression of voices which will lead to less knowledge.
As to conspiracies and lies? Very little truth value there, unclear why Google would want to uprank that kind of content.
Were there real debates about truth with actors in good faith on both sides, I might be more open to your framing of the problem as left wing vs right wing.
So thats my point : I don't want google to give me the truth, I want it to give me the internet, warts and all. I don't want google to gatekeep the information I have access to. Lol I remember everyone being in a tizzy when net neutrality gor the axe cause ISPs would start gatekeeping. But if a wholesome company like google does it its in pursuit of truth.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
> As an example which illustrates the use of PageRank, anchor text, and proximity, Figure 4 shows Google's results for a search on "bill clinton". These results demonstrates some of Google's features. The results are clustered by server. This helps considerably when sifting through result sets. A number of results are from the whitehouse.gov domain which is what one may reasonably expect from such a search. Currently, most major commercial search engines do not return any results from whitehouse.gov, much less the right ones.
> ...The biggest problem facing users of web search engines today is the quality of the results they get back. While the results are often amusing and expand users' horizons, they are often frustrating and consume precious time. For example, the top result for a search for "Bill Clinton" on one of the most popular commercial search engines was the Bill Clinton Joke of the Day: April 14, 1997. Google is designed to provide higher quality search so as the Web continues to grow rapidly, information can be found easily.
You used to be able to find all kinds of weird ass fucked up shit on google but now its all internet based news media. I miss the raw shit.
"Yes, we do use PageRank internally, among many, many other signals. It's not quite the same as the original paper, there are lots of quirks (eg, disavowed links, ignored links, etc.), and, again, we use a lot of other signals that can be much stronger." [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1232014208180592641 John Mu, Search Advocate at Google.
Well, yes, that's the basis of the anti-trans campaign: obsession. It ends up taking over people and causing them to become mono maniac posters on the subject, sometimes to the detriment of their careers. It's worse than scientology.
People not caring about gender identity would in many cases be a huge improvement.
Also, google has always personalized their search results (personalized pagerank) and maybe that's impacting you?
Google will return only content that tells you why that opinion is wrong e.g. "why you should care about gender identity"
Whereas duckduckgo will return stuff that actually matches your search.
Google always errs on the side of left wing political platform.
Its actually really egregious once you start testing it out. To the point that google actually completely buries really valuable information such as primary sources for controversial events, scientific studies etc and instead promotes shitty wapo articles ans the like that tell you how to think about the thing you are actually searching for.