O/T Can Google search be trusted as a source of info?

I don't normally start threads of my own but this has just blown my mind.

I was just having my morning cup of coffee and listening to a guy I like on you tube Tim Pool, who does a sort of news aggregation type show. Often if there is a story I want to know more about what Tim mentions I'll google it and try to find out a bit more.

This morning he mentioned the Minnesota Police Chief quitting amidst the riots going on there and as an aside mentioned how the police chief was corrected by reporters that it was a protest not a riot at a press conference. If it was a press conference then it would be easy to find and I could see it verbatim rather than rely on a third party to tell me about it (it's the way I like to see news as there is a lot of distortion in the media generally).

I looked on Google and there was nothing there on a fairly specific search. I switched browser to Brave which uses Duck Duck Go as the search engine (both are free alternatives to Chrome/Google search I use for some of the web development stuff I need to do for my work as a publisher)

I've screen grabbed them side by side:

Screenshot 2021-04-14 at 08.32.54_600.png

It seems to me that Google is directly censoring the coverage of this story. I'm not sure how clear the image is so a brief description, this story isn't on the front page of google at all. On Duck Duck Go for the exact same search, it is every news story on the first page (10 in total).

Now personally I don't think Google is deliberately censoring the story per see but if you look at all the sites that carried it, they are right-leaning sites (Fox News, Washington Examiner, Breitbart etc) so I think that it is more that they are censoring, or perhaps suppressing is a more accurate phrase, news sites that are not within their ideological framework.

Firstly though, curating/filtering the news is not their job and it's not how most people think it works. THey are supposed to show us the most relevant websites related to our search regardless of any political leaning - which is what Google used to do, and what Duck Duck Go still does. Google isn't doing this anymore and is filtering the news to fit with an ideology.

The big question being, if your news is filtered to be more favourable to a certain ideology and you're kept from seeing the counter-points to allow you to make a more informed decision - do you trust the information put in front of you?

Secondly, why is it only right-leaning media that covered the story of a police chief being talked down to by reporters about the use of the word riot rather than protest at a press conference in the first place? Is all media now 21st Century versions of Pravda?

Thirdly, speaking of Pravda if propaganda is successfully done can we ever recognise it for what it is or do we take it as balanced news and trust it? Has Google now stepped across a line and become nothing more than an incredibly effective tool of woke propaganda and if so how long has this been going on?

Link to press conference if anyone interested - https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1 ... -reporters

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I've been finding pretty much the same. Any information that Big Tech don't want you to know about doesn't get out there. Google, Twitter, Facebook are all censoring anything right wing or anything critical of the left. No such thing as free speech anymore unless you're left wing or a terrorist.

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?

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.

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?

Yeah sorry I reduced the size of image to fit the board. Search term was

press correct police chief riot

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.

That's not quite the point though.

The search terms were identical across two search engines that allegedly do exactly the same thing. I could understand a slight discrepancy based on separate algorithms but not to this degree.

If Google wants to push one narrative thats there business but they cannot claim to be impartial and their dominance and prevalent role in how people access news makes it crucial that if they are suppressing certain content because of ideological reasons this should be transparent.

I wouldn't criticise the Guardian for having a left wing bias because they openly adopt such a position. Google claim to be politically neutral, but they are evidently not, yet most people would assume they are - which makes them a potentially powerful propaganda tool.

But they adnittedly work well for cat videos.

Full size screenshot to make it clearer

Screenshot 2021-04-14 at 08.32.54.png

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I'm not sure why you would expect two totally different search engines with code written by different people to give similar results unless you're looking for the nearest McDonalds. There are so many variables that go into this stuff and for the lesser known & used search engines the results will be totally different just from the amount of people using them as Google will have millions more searches & therefor clicked links the most popular will always be different.

In this case I think you may be looking for bias using broad parameters where there may or may not be any but if you look hard enough you will find it. 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.

You post some good stuff but imo this is a non story. "Press corrects police chief riot" is such a vague combination of words that millions of stories will come up. Due to you being based (presumably) in the UK it's deciding UK based stories are of a higher priority to you. Then after that, the stories from the Capitol are there probably because they're considered to have a much wider international interest.

Searching the same terms as you, I've got multiple stories about Bristol and Belfast on my front page. However I've just used a VPN to say my computer is in Washington and all the UK based stories have vanished and the front page is completely America centric.
Likewise searching "This weeks football predictions" using the Washington VPN gives me a whole page of links talking about the NFL. However using my regular UK based address all the results are for the Premier League or European games.

Honestly I find the fact that such a vague search term yields only one result stranger than Google returning links to 5 separate stories. But I'm also not familiar with DuckDuckGo and how their results are affected by previous searches or cookies so maybe it's not that strange.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All perfectly valid points.

On a completely different tangent if you see Nashville strings in your recommended sections and have a cheap old acoustic lying around but 'em.

I did exactly that via an amazon recommendation a month or so ago without really knowing what they were.

Is a weired as hell set up but really interesting sound.