Google Pushes Conservative News Sites Far Down Search Lists | Hacker News Reader

Google Pushes Conservative News Sites Far Down Search Lists

realclearpolitics.com

22 pointsMelchizedek8 comments

This is a somewhat puzzling article given that the change appears to be "less credible sources are downranked" and not "conservative sources are downranked." The article even mentions, after the lead, that liberal news sites were also downranked. It might be a valid if conservative new sites were disjoint from mains stream new-sites, but I don't believe that to be the case.

Breitbart is terrible. On the other hand, Google is clearly manipulating the search results in order to affect the US Presidential Election, and Wikipedia certainly isn’t a reliable source of reputation.

I am not aware of any evidence that Google is deliberately trying to influence the election.

The article suggests otherwise.

If google is making changes to their algorithms in response to the last election, then it is by definition an attempt to manipulate the results of the next election.

Google is pushing "less credible" sites down, and one of the candidates in the election is an awesome liar. Of course that move will influence the election. It'll affect any election where one or more candidates is a fountain of lies, and supported by sites that are also fountains of lies.

I can see two plausible connections: 1) Google explicitly wants to boost honest sites over liars, and of course they know that Trump is. 2) The issue may have become more urgent because Trump shocked Googlers' sensibilities so often in the past four years. He has rather kept the issue on the agenda.

I agree with these connections, and I think it’s deeper than that.

I think the goal to promote truth over lies is a good one.

However I don’t think claiming that is the goal means that’s actually what google is doing.

All politicians lie, and all voters know this.

Frequency of lies is less salient than consequences of those lies.

I don’t believe that Google is able to make a determination about the salience that is not based on their political beliefs.

If they have the ability to identify lies, it would be far more helpful for them to actually make available a summary of the lies as a link alongside each result.

Otherwise this is just them imposing their political beliefs on the results in secret in order to manipulate the election.

Well Breitbart isn't reliable news, so there ya go; its a trash dump.

I don’t believe for a second that Google is only punishing right-wing websites. Anti-war and socialist websites cop the same treatment.

It’s all about silencing dissent on both sides of the political spectrum in favour of “establishment” news sources like MSNBC and FOX.

This is not a “left” versus “right” issue. It’s establishment versus anti-establishment.

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