Hacker News Reader

I'm not necessarily saying I don't believe you--obviously you'd know more about working there than I would. But can you explain to me why in 2010 if I googled "evidence the moon landing was faked" I got a huge list of conspiracy sites, and now if I Google the same query I only receive articles and websites alleging the exact opposite of what I searched?

View on HN

I would apply Occam’s razor for this - the topic is becoming less and less relevant: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

I currently work for Youtube. We identify conspiracy-seeking queries, and then boost results from authoritative sources. Don't see why we wouldn't also be doing this on Google. Maybe people don't bother searching for things when the results suck (or maybe they just use alternative means of searching)?

See, this is what I assumed was going on, and also what that engineer from Google was saying.

How long ago were you working there? I noticed this trend only in the past five years.

Not that long ago. 2 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com