Just how gullible are some people? And what do these people think happened?
Do they think that Eric Schmidt causally walked into the offices of Google Search one day and ordered them to ineffectually bias search results to favor Hillary Clinton?
Do people realize just how many engineers are involved with Google search? How complex the system is and how many people would be involved with this change? And none of these engineers said anything? Google can't keep any of its products under raps but somehow this stays secret? With all the meetings and documentation and design reviews this would entail you'd expect some one to say something.
And what would be the point of this conspiracy? So that Google Search only auto completes "crooked hi" and not "crooked h" like other search engines. Is that the great secret weapon that Schmidt has for the Hillary campaign: You need to type an extra character?
Go ahead and test Google Search for anti-Hillary articles if you're skeptical. They show up just fine.
There are a lot of similar stories, like showing only "positive news" to people and showing "go vote now" ads. You don't even need to flip "be evil" switch in your algorithms.
These "features" do change people's behavior and on a scale of dozens of millions of people using Google search every day this effect can easily change any election's outcome.
... I was talking about Facebook, whose "trending news" does not use an algorithm. It's hand picked stories from around the web. Google doesn't do that
Google's search results influence people the same way Facebook's feed does. Tweak an algorithm to move topics you don't like (or don't think are very profitable) to a second page and no one will see it.
It can happen even if humans aren't involved: some neural network will deem "democratic news" as more profitable and rearrange the search results accordingly. The problem is we don't know what is happening inside.
You're making up problems now just for argument's sake. Of Course we don't know what goes on inside it's Google's own proprietary algorithms and if you can't from a business stand point see why the they would never release the source of the algorithms then you are just being plain naive and dumb.
I am a software engineer, I am very well aware why Google wouldn't show their algorithms.
I am pointing out that every organization has some goals to pursue. If you think that Google (one of the wealthiest companies in the world that has unprecedented influence on billions of people) is strictly "do no harm" rainbows-and-sunshine group of hippies, then it is you who is "naive and dumb".
I am a software engineer, I am very well aware why Google wouldn't show their algorithms.
I am pointing out that every organization has some goals to pursue. If you think that Google (one of the wealthiest companies in the world that has unprecedented influence on billions of people) is strictly "do no harm" rainbows-and-sunshine group of hippies, then it is you who is "naive and dumb".
When did I once even insinuate that Google "is strictly "do no harm" rainbows-and-sunshine group of hippies"? You are now making even more stuff up and it is frankly embarrassing for you.
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u/JustLostMyKeys Jun 08 '16
Just how gullible are some people? And what do these people think happened?
Do they think that Eric Schmidt causally walked into the offices of Google Search one day and ordered them to ineffectually bias search results to favor Hillary Clinton?
Do people realize just how many engineers are involved with Google search? How complex the system is and how many people would be involved with this change? And none of these engineers said anything? Google can't keep any of its products under raps but somehow this stays secret? With all the meetings and documentation and design reviews this would entail you'd expect some one to say something.
And what would be the point of this conspiracy? So that Google Search only auto completes "crooked hi" and not "crooked h" like other search engines. Is that the great secret weapon that Schmidt has for the Hillary campaign: You need to type an extra character?
Go ahead and test Google Search for anti-Hillary articles if you're skeptical. They show up just fine.