Employee leaks hundreds of Google documents revealing its search-results manipulation and biases

ThePD · August 16, 2019

19 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

In a couple other recent threads, another poster accused me of having an anti-Trump bias and of just trying to make Trump look bad. In this thread, I'm apparently alt-right and trying to argue a conspiracy of bias against right-wing news outlets. In all concerned threads, I'm none of the above. It seems some people have lost their ability to deal with plain objective information.

Being objective in 2019? Bold Move Cotton.

Thaldor · August 16, 2019

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

RT is pretty much the most objective English MSM available right now. You'll find more truth there than at any of the other outlets in Google's site-ranking image that are rated higher than it. That's a part of why talent from places like BBC, NYT, NBC, CNN, keep going to work at RT, at least in their own words.

Just to mention that RT is part of Rossiya Segodnya which isn't even close to be truthful and unbiased news outlet, more like the lap dog of the Kremlin. Even it's head (named by Putin) is more than know from his extreme opinions about political opposition, the west and sexual minorities. Rossiya Segodnya tried to keep their foreign news side Sputnik News open in Finland but got so badly entangled with Russian politics and just straight caught from spreading Russian propaganda that 2 years and they were closed (and those 2 years they worked in Finland they were more or less compared in quality of the news to the MVlehti which is extremist right-wing and neonatzi news site which apparently is manually blocked from Google News, how not surprising with that amount of false news, racism and breaking every single moral code of news corporation), they did say that there just weren't enough readers to be profitable, but by that time everyone knew that it was more or less the growing interest to launch police investigations about spreading propaganda and generally being the laughing stock.

And before you say it's quite odd that RT and Rossiya Segodnya have the same editor-in-chief and RTs funder ANO TV-Novosti is the last bit left from TV-Novosti when it changed it's name to Rossiya Segodnya and they reside in the same address and in the end funding really doesn't matter because it's coming from the Russian government either way.

Froody129 · August 16, 2019

Why would you use Google if you want unaltered info? Basically their whole business is tailored search results that give you what you're looking for 'better' than the competitors.

Marinatall_Ironside · August 16, 2019

What people seem to forget is that the truth can be bent and twisted and even be used to manipulate people because people are simply too ignorant to know any better.

I have my personal issues I take seriously with corporations and especially politicians on ethical grounds. Again, using the truth, and using fallacies, old wives tales, and even lying to the people so they can do what you (as a politician or some other person of power) want them to do for you.

What I observed is both the left and the right are known to lie and manipulate people using information that may be otherwise truthful to do something you want them to do. And I am extremely adamant against this practice.

Especially where I live, the degree of truthfulness is arbitrary, and frankly, there needs to be one that's set in stone, and require politicians currently in office and those campaigning for one to be absolutely truthful with the information they present, and be of good ethical standing.

On topic... It's no surprise that Google filters search results to suit their agenda or their vision, whatever fits the bill better. Do I care? Not really because I'm really adamant about political discussions and I hate it. I pay more attention to things like tech and automotive news, and psychological studies. Should I care? I'll leave that one up to you.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Jurunce

Thaldor · August 16, 2019

1 hour ago, Delicieuxz said:

IWhy don't you discuss the thread topic rather than ramble on a tangent about your personal bias and prejudice, which is not related to the thread topic? Did you know that the UK government appoints the BBC's board of directors and also the BBC chair-person? Did you know that the US government has a hand in a vast amount of US news services and funds over 1,400 news outlets, and also appoints the head of US state news outlets like Voice of America? Did you know that France, Germany, Canada, the US, the UK, and other Western countries all have state-funded broadcasters, which often deliver the most popular news in those countries? Talk about looking for a conspiracy where none exists.

RIA Novosti was merged into Rossiya Segodnya. Why would it be strange if they have similar people working at them?

Russia also isn't know for their freedom of the press, more or less the contrary.

For the topic. If I could I would give Google a medal for manually banning MVlehti from Google Now and if they also suppress their site in search results, that would give 2 medals to Google. That site is so much fear mongering, racism and against every moral code that I would rise a monument for organization that can ban them from the whole net. Their usual "news" are only about crimes that immigrants and asylum seekers commit and usually it doesn't end there but they also as soon as possible publish who they have heard is the culprit and their social media accounts and everything (in Finland it's one of the cornerstones of press morals that press doesn't publish names, faces or anything identifying about culprits before they have been sentenced except if the police publicly asks help from the population and release information about the culprit). And generally it's even hard to talk about "news" if MVlehti is mentioned: their articles rarely have any better source than some social media post and quite often even that is one made by the writer of the article, they don't do any background work for their articles and never fact check anything (they don't even spell check anything) and there also nothing more than a ton of text what the writer thinks and imagines about the situation. They also actively attack against other media outlets and even try to provoke violence against reporters of other media outlets.

So yeah, get that shit out of my internet and Google a prize for banning them. If something is cancer that's prime example of it.