Do Not Trust Google
lukeboyle.com
lukeboyle.com
Or, perhaps a balanced set of standards is being applied, and the author's Overton Window is off-kilter, and the supposedly "(merely) conservative" content described therein remains outside of the actually-balanced metric for search ranking?
(Granting, yes, perfect balance for any actor or reference frame is impossible; and accepting that some degree of filtering-scare-quotes-censorship is a positive, pro-social quality in a search engine.)
I recently spent an hour of my life trying to convince an acquaintance that a video she found on breitbart claiming the "Frontline Doctors of America" were fighting to expose a conspiracy to suppress a 100% effective covid-19 cure was faked.
That's not "conservative" content, that's propaganda that puts people people in imminent physical danger.
This is the current paradox that plagues us.
Among whom it already had enough credibility.
This logic does not work. However, conspiracy theories do not use logic and facts.
Breitbart is not being suppressed for their views or opinions, but uncritical spreading of dangerous falsehoods. Sadly, some people do not understand the difference as they drunk the "post-truth" Kool-Aid.
The video puts people in danger by telling them to not wear masks and instead take zinc.
This one was easy - the claim was not backed by any amount of previously published research.
It is legal and easy to check for a registered trial. Something this big and cheap and likely to have major consequences should have been pre-registered. (Literally deadly consequences.)
And even if it were, it should be reproduced first before being followed by general public.
Most importantly article claims that it is unnecessary to wear masks, while the trial did not involve masks at all.
Obviously the video isn't "fake". That's crying wolf. The video is real, you just don't like what those doctors have to say.
The video puts people in danger by telling them to not wear masks and instead take zinc.
Yeah, or maybe it's the opposite. That's a medical discussion. Snopes and Google should have nothing to do with it. And calling it fake is just manipulation.
Sundar Pichai was asked during testimony if they censor websites and he said (wording might be a bit off) "only in cases where it's a legal requirement or a copyright issue". If Breitbart being de-ranked was one of those then I'm sure they would have let Breitbart know. But as far as I can tell it was a concerted effort to suppress that website in particular.
If you come across any data about other sites that are similarly affected I'd love to know!
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
This seems like a legitimate HN story but it was flagged to oblivion when it was posted yesterday.
Don't talk to me about cancel culture.
- how much traffic does the website get?
- how relevant the content is to the search term (SEO magic)?
- and, most importantly, does this website fit an acceptable narrative?"
Google analytics seems like a real trojan horse. Surveillance with a side of analytics. Google benefits much more from such a product themselves, compared to the site owner/manager, who supposedly gets thses analytics 'for free'. It's all such a clever and deceptive trick: "just install this small GA snippet and maybe use our tag manager and get detailed insights". I know it's nothing new, but sometimes it just dawns on me how socially accepted all this trickery has become...
So show us the evidence.
Haven't vetted this source but I believe it's the right one
There are definitely blacklists. Here's one that was leaked for news in "Google Now" (aka assistant/suggested stories):
https://pv-uploads1.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2019/08/news-bl...
See the bottom section labelled, "sites flagged for peddling hoax stories".
Pardon my ignorance but I thought all of Googles search advertising was pay per click and not pay per impression?
invidiou.site is another instance you can import your invidious data to
I don't have to agree. Perhaps it was 'wrong' before that Breitbart ranked as high as they did earlier.
I can still go to Breitbart.com - no one is stopping me from going there. No one is stopping them from setting up their servers, hosting their content, and doing all that stuff. They don't get as much 'free' exposure via google as they used to. Other sites now get more visibility. So what? If BB kept their 'visibility' in the search index, every search result they show up in is taking space from a different site that might have shown up instead. Why are they owed anything from google? Google changes their algorithms, and there's more content to compete with too.
If we make some sort of assumption that google's algorithms get modified or perhaps simply adapt to the audience's searches, perhaps... there's less appetite for Breitbart content and ideas across google's user base, and them ranking lower years down the road isn't some grand left-wing conspiracy, but a company serving the needs and desires of its users?
I can't prove that what Google did specifically targeted Breitbart but if it was just changes to the algo then we should have seen other popular sites with similarly dramatic drops in visibility. I'd love to see other examples if they do exist
Everything is political in some form after all.
Appetite for stories doesn't drop overnight like in those graphs. You're in denial - Google is censoring search results to try and manipulate your mind.
For traffic to drop to zero overnight when nothing much is happening, and especially for election related terms, is unheard of.
Look, elsewhere on HN there is a story about how Facebook banned Breitbart because they posted a video of doctors talking about COVID, and they banned Trump for saying children aren't infectious: a claim widely made by many scientists. Tech companies are utterly untrustworthy when it comes to Breitbart. They want to erase it from the internet because it's conservative and those firms have hired far, far too many extreme leftists who loathe anything conservative.