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Comment by tj-teej | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain why this is any different from the fact that almost every Train Station in the USA has the same couple newspapers available (NYT, WSJ, USA Today, etc.)?

If the problem is the monopoly on how people get their news, then shouldn't that be what is solved?

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> Can someone explain why this is any different

No they can't because it isn't any different.

The article is suggesting bias. There is likely some bias at play but I doubt it is anything nefarious. And it isn't enough to account for the natural bias inherit in the system of news parroting.

> shouldn't that be what is solved?

I don't know. All I know is it likely isn't something I trust anyone at Google or the Government to get right.

These algorithm on the scale of Google seems to have a feedback loop, i.e. what Googles links is what will be linked much from elsewhere favoring big players.

>seems to have a feedback loop

How is that different counting quarters in the newspaper machines? Or copies sold?

Physical spaces are much more limited real-estate wise, whereas Google has as much space as they do page loads. Surely with so many consumers and producers, a much higher breadth of news can be exposed than is currently.

No they don't.

The fundamental challenge in search is that you have two limited resources: display place and user attention span. Google won vs other search engines because they were better at figuring out what users were looking for and putting it higher in the listings.

Anyone arguing the reverse - that Google is driving opinion, not the other way around - is saying that they're massively sabotaging their core feature yet no competitor has been able to exploit this.

Fox News obviously has a large TV audience, but I'd be curious how that demographic maps to google usage. And it's worth remembering that it's not a "fox news vs cnn" comparison vs a "fox news vs the sum of the less-right-wing channels" comparison.

Why can't it be both? Google won because they were the best, yes. But there's always the possibility of feedback loops. Just look at YouTube - discovery on there of smaller channels has become almost impossible, with bigger channels being reinforced constantly. Granted, video is much harder to understand and surface to users than news. Surely there should be enough content that it's more than a tiny minority which succeeds?

Every major platform is struggling with this.

> Surely there should be enough content that it's more than a tiny minority which succeeds?

Isn't this what has always happened historically with any new media platform, from print to radio to online? Storage space got cheaper, but human attention remains limited, so popularity and feedback loops are a human problem, not a technical one.

One issue I see is that it's much more pervasive. I have no idea what the USA train stations' newspapers are, since I seldom take the train. Also because I live in Europe.

Google on the other hand, has a much bigger reach.

There's very little marginal cost to Google having more news sources.

Huge downside risk of ferreting out "fake news" and borderline-disreputable outlets in the name of diversity in news, however, which they already get blamed for.

Which is exactly what increased transparency can help with. Make the ranking algorithm or data public, or at least explain to users why some content was ranked as it was.

Downvoters: What is bad about transparency? Fake news proves what we have now isn't perfect. More eyeballs on an algorithm could be a stepping stone to solving the problem.

They just demonstrated that HN comment scoring needs a bit more transparency too.

(edit) I think every downvote should be public with their name and reason behind it.

Critical thinking skills are what we need to focus on, most people don't know what an algorithm is.

Why not both?

Something Steam has been doing is breaking down why a particular game is recommended (reviews, popularity friends, interests, other metrics,..) why not expose this data to users for news?

We build these systems to filter out the noise for us, but that doesn't mean we should be beholden to a black-box deciding what content we should see. The filter should be ours to tweak and knowing how it works is a first step to that.

Google's search algorithms are their secret sauce intellectual property. Why would they share them with you?

Usually when someone breaks out an analogy like this it's because the comparison is not like for like and there is something they want to obfuscate.

Quite simply, because Steam is not Google. Steam's value is in all the games you want to play being on Steam, not in its discovery algorithm. It loses nothing by exposing that algorithm because even if you had it, you would not be able to build Steam as you do not have the games that are on Steam. It has vendor lock in.

There's no such lock in for Google. Google doesn't have exclusive rights to the websites it indexes and anyone could, it they had an algorithm as good as Google's (and the computing resources) build Google.

The only tech factor holding Google in place as the #1 search engine is that its algorithm is better than everyone else's. The algorithm is intellectual property that Google has invested billions of dollars in developing.

Providing the weightings (and allowing as some people are suggesting the ability to hobble Google's algorithm by using your own) would be the first step towards someone reverse engineering Google and be a material business risk for them.

But then SEO firms and everyone else would know how to game the system with certainty. Obviously not what you want.

The train station is not algorithmically deciding what to show you. The station has brokered a business agreement with the newspapers in the newsstand. I am unaware of any deal Google has with CNN to make sure a percentage of their articles show up in search engine results.

What is stopping this from happening? What is stopping Google bombs?

What is preventing us from being smarter? From going out and educating ourselves? Thinking more deeply? Finding the truth? Introspecting?

Where do we get our thoughts from? Who guides our behavior?

There is a struggle going on right now to regain control of the human mind.

It used to be just a few major news/media outlets. Now it's the entire world.

Someone has to be in charge of the information we are given. Else chaos will consume us all.

No one is in charge any more. We have to fix that. People must be told what to think again. They are thinking too many different things to predict the future anymore and that is disconcerting to those in the old power structures.

what?

> The train station is not algorithmically deciding what to show you. The station has brokered a business agreement with the newspapers in the newsstand.

....what do you think a business agreement has in it to describe the costs and revenue sharing?

Because Train Stations don't double as the largest search engine in the world.

It's not a monopoly. There is an acceptable amount of competition. There is nothing to solve.

I think it reflects the way the sites manage SEO.

Fox optimizes for user browsing more than the other major outlets.

How about an analogy with recruiting:

Should googles tech workforce resemble that of the broader US? i.e. Would having a workforce that resembles the US signify an elimination of bias in the hiring process.

If you believe that Google’s workforce hiring should be free from bias, than can’t you extend the same argument to search results?

For those in favor of bias in search results, may I ask you to justify why?

That's not an analogy, but making an bias argument (spreading FUD) without evidence.

An analogy is the train station newspaper example. What you're doing is arguing that all of the Google employees are inserting their own personal bias into search results, without evidence.

I want to spur a discussion on whether bias in search results is ok or not. I’m trying to provide a counter example to argue the point that I believe that google search results should be free from bias by arguing using a corollary that hiring should be free from bias. I do not intend to spread FUD.

Can you argue in favor of bias in Googles search results? In an ideal world what should it be?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Do you want me to make an argument for bias? Why?

The search results are already biased, and they should be. That's the basis of Google Search, that it provides a biased, more useful result based on how many pages link to it.

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