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Comment by foolinaround | Hacker News Reader

> Google hasn't really done anything too overtly Orwellian (e.g. only promoting news that shows it in a good light).

Well, they already are...

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/09/11/report-google-bias-...

Wow, this is a horrible graph: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/media-pg.... Forbes and CNBC are apparently liberal media and WSJ is conservative? Also from the article:

> There's no way to know whether a drop in search traffic is a result of changes in user behavior (i.e. fewer searches for a particular topic) or even the result of changes to the back or front end of a website (Google is reportedly cracking down on interstitial ads). Goldstein concedes at the end of his paper that the "PGSTN of individual domains is not sufficient for conclusions."

The plot in the linked article gives so little information that it is absolutely useless at concluding any sort of bias. It does establish that there is a trend, with higher referrer traffic to sites identified as left/liberal. In order to establish bias, this would need to be identified as something intentional and inaccurate on the part of google.

What differences exist in user patterns? Do users of conservative news typically browse certain websites, while users of left-leaning media search for articles?

No attempt was made to look at the relationship between website size and google referral traffic. Glancing at the websites listed, most of the conservative sites are much smaller, and so I would expect them to have lower search rankings and referral traffic as a result.

If you call that Orwellian then I think you need to use your imagination a little. This company has most of my passwords, my emails, my 2-factor, the accounts to which I reset my bank/investments, my credit card and other PII, my voice (google now), my physical fingerprint (unlocking my phone), knowledge of all of my close associates, and sits between me and all my online activity (chrome) or cellular activity (phone).

Would you consider it Orwellian if said company shut off access to your email, de-monetized your YouTube Videos and for all intents and purposes killed the account with all of the info you described above? Because Google has begun doing just that to those who hold a differing opinion from Google HQ. Jordan Peterson is a fairly good example of such an instance http://www.torontosun.com/2017/08/01/free-speech-advocate-jo...

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