Why Did Google Suppress Auto-Complete for “Clinton Body Count”?
medium.com
medium.com
What O’Keefe’s video leaves out, though, is that his much-hyped insider is not as credible as he claims. On social media, Vorhies is an avid promoter of anti-Semitic accusations that banks, the media, and the United States government are controlled by “Zionists.” He’s also pushed conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate, and the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism.
This is the scary part: if there is right-leaning bias, people are protesting in the streets. left-leaning bias? crickets and business as usual with many people even denying that this is even a problem.
Also, I'm going to disagree in "cases like this". This particular case, autocomplete on "Clinton Body Count" is nothing more (if it even exists) than stopping auto-complete on a unproven, highly unlikely, conspiracy theory. You might as well bring up suppressing autocomplete on "Elders of Zion" or "illuminati world control".
We are also no seeing a bias online because many sites will secretly shadow ban inconvenient comments that show disagreement with the current narrative...HN included.
I do see something akin to conservative bias. Conservative framing of every debatable issue occurs. Conservative writers get what amounts to affirmative action. By calling "liberal bias" on every report they don't like, Republicans have conditioned editors, reporters and fact checkers to merely repeat what Republicans say verbatim. No analysis, no context, no history. Democrats, on the other hand, what they say is totally up for shredding based on who, history and context.
I find the idea of "shadow bans" laughable. I get downvoted and argued with all the time. My opinions are not popular: you are arguing with me about something you take as gospel, and I think is totally false right now. I've never been "shadow banned". I know that HN does something like that, mostly for people who just disrupt conversations. But here's some news: getting argued with because your opinions are poorly formed, poorly stated or even false on the face of them is not bias, and downvotes are not shadow bans.
Would Facebook take seriously an anti-liberal bias accusation? I don't think so. There's actually incentive for Facebook and other companies to "do something" about accusation of liberal bias, but very little to no incentive to take (currently non-existent) accusations of conservative-bias seriously.