Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:46 am
Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:14 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:51 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:57 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:12 pm
EastShoreBlue wrote:What is the search term you're using in both? It's quite hard to make out. It looks like "Press conference police chief riot" not sure if that's correct though?
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:20 pm
Welshman in CA wrote:Can't make out your search terms but I just put in the correct information and bang there was the press conference top of the google search. He's wasn't the Minnesota police chief anyway, he was Brooklyn Center police chief & the two are totally different but even using Minnesota police chief google gave me a link to the actual press conference.
You can usually find something on the internet to justify any position anyway, there are a load of you tube videos explaining why the earth is flat & there's a big cover up to keep us from the truth. But there is very little actually looking & thinking about both sides of anything.
We should have just stopped at cat videos obviously.
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:30 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:34 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:52 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:18 pm
Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:24 pm
Welshman in CA wrote: I have way too many cat videos to watch to care about searching for bias and will stick to my own thoughts rather than looking for shit to justify my position.
Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:50 pm
ealing_ayatollah wrote:Fair enough lads take the comments on board maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there, but it just strikes me as odd same search terms have such discrepancies.
The VPN thing, did consider that but as both searches were UK based not sure how if that should skew results as both should be affected equally.
To be honest on reflection I should have compared it to a couple of other search engines as well for a more balanced view.
Still a long way from convinced that Google doesn't show bias in its results though and that is the key point here for me. If they do have a bias it should be transparent. I'll be keeping an eye on it more, and making better use of alternatives but maybe its not as exaggerated as I first thought?
As an aside I must say Brave is a fantastic browser if anyone is looking for an alternative to Chrome. Believe it is based on the same open source code but it has some very nice features and is super fast.
Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:28 pm
ealing_ayatollah wrote:Welshman in CA wrote: I have way too many cat videos to watch to care about searching for bias and will stick to my own thoughts rather than looking for shit to justify my position.
In fairness I wasn't looking for shit to justify a position, I happened to notice something that possibly reinforced an pre-existing idea that there is a clear bias in big tech - a subtle yet important distinction that should be made.
Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:56 pm
Welshman in CA wrote:ealing_ayatollah wrote:Welshman in CA wrote: I have way too many cat videos to watch to care about searching for bias and will stick to my own thoughts rather than looking for shit to justify my position.
In fairness I wasn't looking for shit to justify a position, I happened to notice something that possibly reinforced an pre-existing idea that there is a clear bias in big tech - a subtle yet important distinction that should be made.
Sorry, that was more directed at the general populace, didn't think you went looking for it rather you may see it if it's not there, just like us mere mortals. You're still my favorite chimp.
Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:00 pm
EastShoreBlue wrote:ealing_ayatollah wrote:Fair enough lads take the comments on board maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there, but it just strikes me as odd same search terms have such discrepancies.
The VPN thing, did consider that but as both searches were UK based not sure how if that should skew results as both should be affected equally.
To be honest on reflection I should have compared it to a couple of other search engines as well for a more balanced view.
Still a long way from convinced that Google doesn't show bias in its results though and that is the key point here for me. If they do have a bias it should be transparent. I'll be keeping an eye on it more, and making better use of alternatives but maybe its not as exaggerated as I first thought?
As an aside I must say Brave is a fantastic browser if anyone is looking for an alternative to Chrome. Believe it is based on the same open source code but it has some very nice features and is super fast.
I'm not denying there's a bias but I don't think it's anything malicious, just a business move. As I said, I'm not clued up on DuckDuckGo but if it's an America centric search engine that doesn't tailor results by location as much as google then it's arguably worse from a user and business standpoint. If I search "directions to Birmingham" and the city in Alabama comes up first or I search "football results" and NFL scores come up ahead of the Premier League then I would use a different search engine that better catered to my, non American, needs. In this case Google.
It's no different to Amazon or Ebay or the majority of shopping websites coming up with "other customers also bought" or "you might be interested in" because it makes them money. If I buy a guitar off Amazon, they'll show me guitar strings in the recommended section because I'm more likely to spend 10 quid on a spare set of strings than spend 10 quid on whatever the next random item is.
Again, considering how vague the search is I think it's much stranger that all 8 of the results were about one single story. Perhaps DDG tracks cookies differently and linked the vid you watched with people reading about that story or something along those lines. But I find it very weird why a UK based search, with such generic terms wouldn't yield any UK based results especially since there are topical stories to match with the search terms.