By now you’ve probably heard about the latest lunatic lie coming from Trump:
Not surprisingly Trump has no idea how Google works.
This is being reported on many websites but I thought an excerpt from TechCrunch would be appropriate:
In fact, the report (which Trump refers to) was not “just issued,” and does not say what the president suggests it did. What both Fox and Trump appear to be referring to is a paper published in 2017 that described what the authors say was a bias in Google and other search engines during the run-up to the 2016 election.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about this particular study, I can tell you why — it’s a very bad study. Its contents do not amount to anything, let alone evidence by which to accuse a major company of election interference.
The authors looked at search results for 95 people over the 25 days preceding the election and evaluated the first page for bias. They claim to have found that based on “crowdsourced” determinations of bias, the process for which is not described, that most search results, especially on Google, tended to be biased in favor of Clinton.
No data on these searches, such as a sample search and results and how they were determined to be biased, is provided. There’s no discussion of the fact, for example, that Google routinely and openly tailors search results based on a person’s previous searches, stated preferences, location and so on.
I decided to check out how Google’s search algorithms handle a search of my name combined with his. I know this opens me to being lambasted for being a narcissist (ouch!) but if you are inclined to comment and compare me to Trump have a go at it, but this isn’t the point of this article.
Before I did this search I deleted all my previous searches. Google now allows users to do this so if you really want search results not influenced by your own biases based on your previous searches you can do this.
The result of a search of my full name with Trump is the featured picture. Below is a search merely my first name with Trump.
Because I mistakingly signed up to Daily Kos as HalBrown not realizing spaces were allowed (I’d rather be listed as Hal Brown but I cannot change this) a search of this brings up different links:
A link to my blog https://halbrown.org was number one. Considering that only about 100 people read it each day this is surprising. I do have an international readership including regular hits from Russia, so since my blog always has a link to my Daily Kos stories it’s quite possible some of them are now reading this, so Здравствуйте, русские читатели Daily Kos, прокомментируйте и дайте нам знать, кто вы и что вы думаете — (Hello, Russian readers of Daily Kos, comment and let us know who you are and what you think.) Last month the most international hits came from the UAE. I have no idea why.
I find it gratifying that anyone who decides to look up my name along with Trump will find many stories highly critical of him. Obviously though very few people will look my name up with Trump’s on their own. I admit that when I meet people for the first time and we get into discussing Trump I suggest they do this if they want t read what I’ve written.
I am especially pleased and proud that if anyone looks up “Trump malignant narcissism” two of my Daily Kos stories are on the first Google page:
So who do you trust? Donald J. Trump the world class liar or thousands of geeks at the world class search company Google to try to make your searches as accurate as possible?