![]() Within its first 10 listed results for the search term regarding Biden and illegal immigration, DuckDuckGo delivers the following websites that are center-right or conservative: National Review, PJ Media, Breitbart, and The Daily Signal on its first page results. Nonetheless, Google did not show any of these Biden-critical webpages on its crucial first page of results. It could be expected that this search term would have a conservative skew, as it did in the DuckDuckGo results, because “illegal immigration” is more of a Republican framing of the issue. With Google, none of these websites are listed - instead, its search results on the same question exclusively show websites sympathetic to his position. ![]() ![]() Not only can one learn vaccines have not been proven to cause autism by either Google or DuckDuckGo search results, one can learn why people think that: It is based on one scientist’s findings that were never able to be replicated in future experiments, and was in turn “discredited by scientists.”īut on a politically contentious issue, there are more divergent results using DuckDuckGo as opposed to Google: The search term “joe biden on illegal immigration 2020” returns many conservative websites that take a critical stance on Biden’s position in the DuckDuckGo results. Both sets of results included mainstream medical websites such as WebMD and government websites such as the Centers for Disease Control. Yet there is no need for Google to guard against “misinformation” when the free market of ideas generally takes care of that.įor example, in a search of a controversial question: “Do vaccines cause autism?” both Google and DuckDuckGo only provide search results on their first couple of pages that answer this in the negative. Leftist journalists have pressured Google to change everything from their autocomplete search bar function, to the Google Image results for “scientists,” to the search results for certain topics. One way to define bias is any manipulation of search results to achieve a political or sociological aim.Īlthough Google might try to remedy complaints of bias with the best of intentions, its actions diminish the objectivity of its search results: Are you seeing these results because they are the most popular and relevant web pages? Or are you seeing these results because Google has decided to exclude certain web pages deemed to be “misinformation” or “hate,” based on their inscrutable standards of what qualifies as “misinformation”? Yet Google’s attempt to remedy “bias” paradoxically creates bias. DuckDuckGo does not appear to similarly manipulate its search results, letting its search findings simply reflect the most popular and relevant web pages according to their search engine’s algorithm.īias can be interpreted differently by different parties. In a political environment in which the facts are often disputed by both sides, it is worrisome not just that Google has such enormous power to establish fact from fiction, but that it frequently seems to do so. As information science professor Helen Nissenbaum puts it, there are several implications for “venerated political freedoms of speech, association, communication, conscience, and religious affiliation.” When search engine companies conduct themselves in a biased manner, and when those companies have a veritable monopoly online, this effectively curtails freedom of speech. When we use search engines, there is more at stake than meets the eye. This becomes quite evident when comparing Google’s search results to its competitor search engines, such as the more politically neutral DuckDuckGo. Second, in the last few years, Google appears to have begun manipulating its search results - especially on controversial topics. But this intellectual discourse has been limited in two ways: First, Google began to dominate the market in searches, now accounting for 90 percent of web searches.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |