[HN Gopher] Daily Mail owner sues Google over search results
___________________________________________________________________
Daily Mail owner sues Google over search results
Author : fredoralive
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-04-21 10:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| _wldu wrote:
| I guess I'm in the minority, but I actually like the Daily Mail.
| They have stories with videos and photos that I cannot get
| anywhere else on the Internet.
|
| In my experience, they have better American news than many local
| America news outlets (much more detail and photos/videos).
|
| While some of their stories are sensational, they also have a lot
| of great articles with solid journalism.
| georgiecasey wrote:
| I like it as well, whenever there's some breaking story of some
| scandal and I want to see 'pics', DailyMail always seem to have
| the pics first. Like a kid, I look at the images more than I
| read the articles.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It's worth noting that standard news practice of selective
| choice of images is going to give you a skewed a perspective.
| belatw wrote:
| I can imagine their CTO, Oleg Vishnepolsky's deposition:
|
| We hired a FELON to do our SEO
|
| Nobody would give him a CHANCE after he lost his HOUSE.
|
| The other companies FIRED him because they thought it was his
| FAULT because their google PR was LOW.
| yrgulation wrote:
| If anything google should downgrade the daily mail even more. Not
| for its content (which i personally dislike, but censorship is a
| risky business), but rather for its spammy practices and
| clickbait titles.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Then you might as well include every major media organization
| there is since they all thrive on sensationalism. Google should
| not be in the business of deciding what's appropriate for us to
| see. I didn't vote them in as the arbiter of truth.
| mojzu wrote:
| No, but by using Google you did decide they were most likely
| to have a good answer to your query (or that they were most
| convenient), and if they're not allowed to rank results
| because of 'fairness' that would kind of break the entire
| value proposition of a search engine
| bagacrap wrote:
| The core service that Google provides its users is filtering
| out useless stuff.
| gran_colombia wrote:
| Google is not in that business. The Daily Mail does not
| allege that Google is preventing it from being accessed.
| Censorship is not part of this conversation.
| arp242 wrote:
| > For example, it claims that British users searching for
| broadcaster Piers Morgan's comments on the Duchess of Sussex
| following an interview with Oprah Winfrey were more likely to see
| articles about Morgan produced by smaller, regional outlets.
|
| A quick test does bear out this claim[1], I see no Daily Mail
| articles with that search even though they are indexed[2].
| However DuckDuckGo has similar results[3], so...
|
| A much more likely explanation is that 1) The Daily Mail is just
| a shitty "newspaper" hardly even worthy of the title and not
| generally considered to produce high-quality content, and/or 2)
| that the other articles were much more widely shared, linked,
| etc. and much of society at large ignored the nonsense from The
| Daily Mail.
|
| There's a reason The Daily Mail is generally not accepted as a
| reliable source on Wikipedia.
|
| Aside: I am flabbergasted that Piers Morgan managed to survive
| this long at all, considering he's been one of the most disliked
| people on TV for a long time (and for good reason IMO).
|
| [1]:
| https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Su...
|
| [3]:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Piers+Morgan+Duchess+of+Sus...
| oblio wrote:
| > and much of society at large ignored the nonsense from The
| Daily Mail.
|
| Isn't it one of the most sold newspapers in the UK? I like how
| elitist folks are. In Romania everyone I know would also go "no
| one buys Libertatea" (one of our trashy newspapers) but it is
| the most sold newspaper in Romania.
|
| High brow people badly underestimate how much influence these
| tabloids have. There's a reason their readers made folks like
| Kim Kardashian a billionaire.
| tim333 wrote:
| It sells quite well but not necessarily for good reasons. One
| of it's nicknames is the Daily Hate
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Daily%20Hate
|
| You can check out their coverage of Romanians if you want
| some examples https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Adailym
| ail.co.uk+rom...
| bazzabingo wrote:
| It is high brow left wing types in particular that delude
| themselves about the oddness of their own beliefs. The Daily
| Mail becomes a special object of hate because it is a
| reminder that they are - at least politically - very strange.
| arp242 wrote:
| Sure, but that doesn't mean these particular articles were
| also widely shared or read.
|
| I think this is confusing the general ("Daily Mail is the
| most read paper in the UK") with the specific ("this article
| was shared, linked, and read a lot").
| [deleted]
| Taniwha wrote:
| maybe it's simply that few people bother to link to Daily Mail
| pages
| Tycho wrote:
| The Daily Mail seems to do more real reporting of events in
| America than prestigious American newspapers do.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Like, non-celebrity-related events?
| jb775 wrote:
| Completely agree. "Prestigious" American newspapers do so
| much selective coverage it's insane...most people have
| absolutely no idea the extent of it. It produces the result
| of censorship without needing to actually censor. Just look
| at the Hunter Biden laptop story for an example -- initially
| blacked out and denied by American media, blanket rejection
| of underlying premise of story & suppression of relevant
| facts, eventual subtle admission on page 10 that everything
| was true all along.
|
| The average person on the left will deny and reject this
| since the communist American owned media only feeds them
| stuff they want to believe. Truth hurts sometimes.
| chownie wrote:
| This doesn't follow, the laptop story's premise doesn't
| pass the sniff test at all.
|
| A laptop is left with a computer repair salesman for some
| reason, in Delaware for some reason, and for some reason no
| contact information is given for the laptop's return, and
| for some reason the repairman both wanted to and was
| capable of getting a direct line to Rudy Giuliani who for
| some reason gave the only copy of the hard drive to the NYT
| without screening any other news outlets.
|
| The repairman goes on to give contradictory statements
| repeatedly about the origin of the laptop. The FBI acquires
| the device for investigation into Russian disinformation
| campaigns.
| kbutler wrote:
| Adam Schiff's "Russian disinformation campaign" assertion
| was denied by the director of national intelligence, and
| yet it persists.
|
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-ratcliffe-
| rejec...
|
| "This is not part of some Russian disinformation
| campaign. The intelligence community has not been
| involved with Hunter Biden's laptop. Hunter Biden is a
| U.S. person, and he would be subject to any investigation
| regarding fraud, or corruption would be rightfully the
| jurisdiction of the FBI. So, the FBI has had possession
| of this, and what I can say without commenting on any
| investigation that they may have in corruption or fraud
| -- is to say that their investigation does not center
| around Russian disinformation, and the intelligence
| community is playing no role with respect to that,"
| Ratcliffe said. "Adam Schiff saying that this is part of
| some Russian disinformation campaign and that the IC has
| assessed that or believes that is simply not true, so I
| appreciate the opportunity to be able to tell the
| American people that that is the case."
| throwaway4china wrote:
| I suggest you read up on the scandal more, you either
| leave out details willingly or you are severely ignorant
| of the facts.
|
| When you say "for some reason" you are alluding that
| there is no answer and you're trying to downplay it, you
| are lying.
|
| The laptop was turned in by Hunter because it was
| waterlogged. He signed the form. When he didn't come back
| in to get it and the owner noticed the illegal things on
| it, a copy of the hard drive was first given to the FBI,
| another was later given to Rudy because nothing was done
| by the FBI.
|
| The emails and photos on the laptop have not been
| disputed. His business partner has confirmed the emails,
| and the DKIM of at least one of the emails have been
| verified.
| throwaway4china wrote:
| Nothing I said is false, any of you downvoters want to
| dispute what I said?
| amaccuish wrote:
| No, because when you're so deep, you can't be saved. I'm
| sorry. I wish you all the best.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Ironically, DM did enough journalistic leg work that they
| managed to get their hands on a copy of Hunter Biden's
| hard drive and had "forensic expert" examine it.
| Something the rest of the "reputable" media couldn't do.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9445105/What-
| Hunter...
| Tycho wrote:
| What does it matter? The information on the laptop is
| still subject to all the normal procedures of journalism:
| follow-up, look for corroboration, seek confirmation,
| _ask questions_ , look for evidence tampering, and so on.
| Instead, the story was buried and ignored. It boggles my
| mind that anyone could defend this as proper behaviour by
| the press.
| arp242 wrote:
| > The information on the laptop is still subject to all
| the normal procedures of journalism: follow-up, look for
| corroboration, seek confirmation, ask questions
|
| And The New York Post did _none_ of this.
|
| There are plenty of other articles written by about it by
| almost every news outlet[1]; it was never "buried". The
| difference was they treated the suspicious weird story as
| exactly that, instead of immediately rushing to
| conclusions.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hunter+biden+laptop
| Tycho wrote:
| The laptop is/was real. Are you actually maintaining that
| it is fake?
| barbacoa wrote:
| We live in a world of subjective truths. "Hunter Biden
| laptop is fake" is to the left what "wide spread voter
| fraud" is to the right. People are too emotionally
| invested to have adult conversation on these topics.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Do you have an example handy?
| Tycho wrote:
| I haven't been keeping a list, and sometimes it's not so
| much a major scoop/exclusive as it is providing details and
| getting quotes on stories that are missing elsewhere. But
| it's a definite trend I've noticed over time.
|
| Some examples I can think of
|
| - locating where Ghislaine Maxwell was hiding out
|
| - Anthony Wiener sexting scandal
|
| This article chronicles their American operation. They do
| aggressive tabloid reporting/investigation, which may
| generate a lot of forgettable celebrity content, but is
| also brought to bear on politicians, officials, and other
| 'important' news subjects. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/w
| ww.vanityfair.com/news/2020/...
| arp242 wrote:
| Like what? I don't see anything that's not covered by other
| outlets.
|
| I do see stuff like "Can you THINK yourself thin? A hypnotist
| to the stars says you can - and reveals the five-step
| technique to try if you want to shed the 'lockdown stone'"[1]
|
| Taken from the front page right now. The article is even
| worse than the title suggests.
|
| Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
|
| [1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9492639/Hypno
| tist...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=paul+rossi+grace+church
|
| NY Times has conspicuously not been covering this NY story,
| whereas Daily Mail and NY Post have.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Is that... like... a story though? "Private school you've
| not heard of in NYC has minor curriculum and staffing
| dust-up". That _should_ struggle to make any part of the
| paper in a major city, and if it does, maybe a little
| column buried in the middle.
|
| The only way that could possibly count as _international_
| news, certainly, is if you 're looking for examples of
| _some certain phenomenon_ and failing to come up with any
| more important or relevant than that.
| jason0597 wrote:
| >Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
|
| Ahhh this takes me back. What an amazing video. Made 11
| years ago and it's just as accurate as it was back then.
|
| Honestly? Fuck the Daily Mail. Also The S*n, Daily Express,
| etc.
| arp242 wrote:
| The Piers Morgan episode of _Have I Got News For You_ ,
| from when he was still the editor of The Daily Mail, is
| also a hilarious watch; highlights:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6TcgfjcOPU or full
| episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeOIfKrWyVA
|
| The Daily Mail stalked Ian Hislop for years after this in
| an effort to find "dirt" on him (never found any), all
| because Piers made a complete arse of himself :-/
| znkynz wrote:
| Morgan has edited the News of the world, and the Mirror.
| He has never edited the Mail, though has been published
| there from time to time.
| arp242 wrote:
| Oh right, I got Daily Mail and Daily Mirror mixed up >_<
| afavour wrote:
| In what possible world could that be true?
| wyxuan wrote:
| Ummm no?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| "Real" === "fits my biases"
| Tycho wrote:
| You think the news is about 'takes'. It's not, real news is
| about scoops.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Other than celebrity news, what meaningful scoops are the
| Daily Mail getting? Genuinely curious.
| louthy wrote:
| If I'm searching for coverage of a news story via a search
| engine, I will always choose any other option than the DM even
| if its ranking is lower. It is a source of right wing hate,
| propaganda, racism, and generally all round poor journalism.
|
| It doesn't deserve a click.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| and I strongly believe that YOU get to make that decision. I
| don't believe that google in their monopoly position gets to
| make that decision on your behalf without clarity into how
| it's made.
| surement wrote:
| it's much more likely that it doesn't appear in results
| because people don't click on it when it does
| planb wrote:
| How would that work? Google always decides the order of
| search results. Are they supposed to show a random result
| that matches the search terms just to be ,,fair"?
| admax88q wrote:
| I also decide by choosing search engines that are more
| likely to deliver the results I'm looking for.
|
| Daily Mail should not be able to litigate their way to my
| eyeballs.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| When monopolies exist. Do we let the government tell them
| what to do (beyond the laws applicable to all businesses)?
| Or do we just break them up?
|
| Let's say I accept your claim about Google being a
| monopoly. Should the government force them to rank sites
| the way the government wants? Or do we just break up
| Google?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's not an either/or in the US. Trusts can be ordered to
| stop engaging in anticompetitive behavior as well as be
| broken up.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Why does this feel like the standard HN "things didn't work
| because you suck" ad hominem attack on daily mail
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Remember when Piers was caught in the phone-hacking scandal and
| f*ked off to the US in shame? Why'd he ever come back..
| jquery wrote:
| I was about to say, this article makes perfect sense to me. The
| Daily Mail is one of my last choices of news, and I generally
| don't use it as a source at all. I wouldn't be surprised if
| Google's algos have figured out the same thing many of us
| have...
| walshemj wrote:
| And remember that search results are personalized unless you
| browse incognito.
| hkt wrote:
| Wikipedia agrees:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not.
| ..
|
| tl;dr best quote (imo) "The Mail should be on the citation
| blacklist. There's no area of news where it is actually
| reliable. It can be relied on to accurately report celebrity
| gossip, but in that case the gossip itself is frequently
| false and the Mail doesn't check it. Their coverage of
| medical, science and political topics is a byword for
| deliberate inaccuracy."
| throwaway4china wrote:
| Wikipedia's editors are significantly biased.
|
| Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning.
|
| God forbid you have to use it for research of any political
| topic, always check the references and compare to right
| leaning sources.
|
| It's funny because their critique of DM can be applied to
| Wikipedia as a whole.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Any somewhat political article is extremely left
| leaning._
|
| I've seen that same argument before to argue how the
| Nazis, and modern neo-Nazi groups are supposedly all
| "left wing", their categorization on Wikipedia as right
| wing and far right is allegedly only the result of that
| very same "left leaning" bias you are claiming.
|
| Which, as a German, is just a tad bit weird, because it
| wasn't Wikipedia that defined these groups as such, those
| results come out of the political sciences. Nazis being
| right-wing, and neo-Nazis having moved further into the
| far-right is a very established fact in Germany.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Their name has "socialist" right in the middle of it. You
| might argue over definitions of socialism and whether
| it's left or right. But I don't think you can say "a
| group that calls itself socialist has at least this one
| left-leaning trait" isn't a position reasonable people
| can disagree on.
|
| What I find worse than people going both ways on wether
| nazis are left or right leaning, is someone in a position
| of authority like wikipedia saying, one side is
| objectively right [about a question that isn't even
| rigorously posed] and will be treated as such.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I suppose you believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of
| Korea is democratic then?
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Oh, I don't think socialism is only in the name of nazis,
| I think their nationalization of many practices and
| aspects of culture is key. Do you think "nazis had
| socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable
| people can take?
|
| I didn't mean to suggest taking the name itself as the
| only evidence of socialism.
| danans wrote:
| > Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a
| position that no reasonable people can take?
|
| Yes, because a socialism that benefits only members of
| the "Aryan race" to the exclusion of others in the same
| country is not socialism.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| What on earth are you talking about? You seem to have a
| deep misunderstanding of political philosophy and
| history.
|
| The word socialist doesn't mean the Nazis were left-wing.
| throwaway4china wrote:
| You can pick out a single article that we may all agree
| on, but my point still stands that overall Wikipedia's
| political articles are biased to the left.
|
| Even Wikipedia's co-founder agrees
| https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-
| biased/
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Even Wikipedia 's co-founder agrees_
|
| Those are some odd examples...
|
| On one hand he complains Obama's article doesn't mention
| the Benghazi Attack, when that's actually listed as one
| of the events during his first term.
|
| On the other hand Trump's article doesn't mention the
| 2019 attack against the US embassy in Baghdad.
|
| The choice of topics after that doesn't help dispel the
| notion of the author having a bit of an bias issue
| himself: Abortion, Jesus (a _whole_ lot of that), global
| warming and vaccines. It 's like a best-of of the deeper
| ends of American conservative talking points, the only
| thing missing is 2A and some good old "teach the
| controversy".
|
| Particularly that Jesus part is very difficult for me to
| take serious: Recognizing that the biblical Jesus is
| mostly a myth is not "bias", as much as it might offend
| some religious sensibilities.
| throwaway4china wrote:
| You're not being genuine if you are trying to argue that
| the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as
| conservatives.
|
| Possibly you don't notice the biases because you agree
| with them, but it's there.
|
| There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia.
|
| https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Examples_of
| _Bi...
|
| This situation pretty much reflects the state of all
| outlets, there's few if any places with no bias, you have
| to cross reference sources with each other and decide for
| yourself, especially for politically charged topics.
|
| Wikipedia cannot be trusted by itself because they
| usually do not allow right leaning sources or edits even
| if they are factually correct. They are very lenient to
| liberal sources even if they are blatantly false.
|
| - edit: replying to the commenter below -
|
| I did not say Conservapedia is the arbiter of truth or a
| non-bias source.
|
| This is where their religious biases show, at least they
| are honest about it in the naming and function of their
| site.
|
| The problem with Wikipedia is they masquerade as a bias-
| free collection of sources, which is false.
| arp242 wrote:
| > There's a reason why there's a Conservapedia.
|
| Conservapedia is nothing short of batshit crazy unhinged
| lunacy. Have you ever even looked on it?
|
| "Simply put, E=mc2 is liberal claptrap."
|
| Literal quote: https://conservapedia.com/E%3Dmc%C2%B2
|
| You are citing a source that _considers Einstein 's
| theories of relativity as examples of liberal bias_.
|
| If that's not batshit crazy unhinged lunacy then I don't
| know what is.
|
| The rest of the site is hardly any better.
| [deleted]
| freeflight wrote:
| _> You 're not being genuine if you are trying to argue
| that the coverage of liberals on Wikipedia is the same as
| conservatives._
|
| And you are injecting a lot of your very uniquely
| American biases and perceptions into something where they
| don't really apply.
|
| Wikipedia has over 140.000 active contributors across
| over 200 languages.
|
| Your notion that all of them have conspired to suppress
| American conservatives in favor of "liberals", across
| dozens of different languages, is frankly quite a bit out
| there and reminiscent of that whole "cultural Marxism"
| narrative.
|
| That's not to say that Wikipedia doesn't have its issues,
| it has them, but jumping from there to something that
| could very well be described as a conspiracy theory, is
| reaching a bit far.
|
| _> There 's a reason why there's a Conservapedia._
|
| There's also a RationalWiki, a PsychonautWiki, a
| GayPedia, there's a Wookieepedia, there's a Wiki for
| pretty much _everything_.
|
| The existence of these is not evidence for a lack of such
| topics on actual Wikipedia, it's merely evidence of more
| specialized communities creating their own specialized
| Wikipedias where they can take things to details and dept
| that would usually be considered inappropriate for a
| general encyclopedia.
| throwaway4china wrote:
| > That's not to say that Wikipedia doesn't have it's
| issues, it has them, but jumping from there to something
| that could very well be described as a conspiracy theory,
| is reaching a bit much.
|
| You jumped to conspiracy theory. You said all. I did not.
| The editors simply have a bias that affects how they
| accept and offer contributions. These biases show
| especially in politically charged topics and you have to
| identify and check them, often they are factually wrong
| or misleading. I did not say all articles have this bias,
| but it is prevalent and makes Wikipedia unusable for any
| political research, unless you scrutinize all sources and
| do additional source finding that Wikipedia omitted on
| purpose because it didn't align with it's viewpoints.
|
| There are niche wikis, but Conservapedia exists to
| counter Wikipedia's bias on certain topics. They have a
| page I linked to which lists a lot of these biases, but
| it's barely an exhaustive list. You can find instances
| like these on nearly every political page.
|
| This is not some unfounded conspiracy theory as you
| suggest, Harvard has done a study on this as well as
| other institutions.
|
| Studies:
|
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Coverage-bias-on-
| Wikip...
|
| https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/17-028_e77887
| 22-...
|
| http://wikipediocracy.com/2018/08/26/wikipedia-sources-
| metho...
|
| http://archive.is/dDr7X
|
| https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/
|
| Another example:
|
| https://medium.com/@MainstreamWatc2/blatant-liberal-bias-
| on-...
| gottagetwnsite wrote:
| Dude you're barking up the wrong tree, Hacker News is
| completely lost. Real hackers with the old spirit of
| questioning authority instead of just believing whatever
| the government (or anonymous people on Wikipedia) tells
| them are not welcome on this site.
|
| Conservative engineers need to start banding together and
| building companies, and we should explicitly exclude Woke
| people and others that insist on bringing politics into
| our profession.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| ? Actually I find it ridiculous to suggest there wouldn't
| be a bias.
|
| Are you suggesting wikipedia editors are typical of the
| population at large? What are you basing that on?
|
| And if you concede there are demographic differences (eg
| education level) why do you think those differences would
| be orthogonal to political bias?
|
| Note I'm not saying that there is a bias, but I would say
| that's the null hypothesis, and a lot easier to defend
| than the position that there is no bias.
| arp242 wrote:
| Larry Sanger hasn't been involved in Wikipedia for almost
| 20 years. He's just a random person on the internet, one
| with some feelings of animosity towards Wikipedia to boot
| - he's hardly neutral.
|
| Wikipedia has its problems, but an article that complains
| "Oh no, Wikipedia calls Trump a liar!" from someone with
| a chip on his shoulder about Wikipedia in general is
| silly.
| afavour wrote:
| I could absolutely believe that there is a "quality" ranking
| that pushes Daily Mail stories down because the domain contains
| such poor quality content, or that the pages are loaded down
| with so much crap that people hit 'back' almost immediately
| after clicking on one of their links.
|
| That said, and as much as it pains me to side with the Daily
| Mail on anything, I think there's an interesting argument to be
| made here that Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque
| and the public should be given better access to them.
| webinvest wrote:
| Here's a Google AMP page of a Daily Mail page that crashes on
| every page load for me on my iPhone's default Safari browser.
| They probably need to hire a front-end developer or web
| performance specialist to diagnose it.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl.
| ..
|
| Slow or failing page loads negatively affect search rankings
| on all search engines & 80% of users abandon your site if it
| takes more than 10 seconds to load.
| toxik wrote:
| WFM
| zackees wrote:
| FYI Google's leaked docs on the subject:
|
| https://www.zachvorhies.com/msm_rankings.html
| barbacoa wrote:
| If you ever want to play censorship scavenger hunt, try to
| get Google to link to breitbart.com without including the
| word breitbart. You can search article titles word for word
| in quotes and the names of the authors but google will not
| return a single breitbart.com link.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I know I'm a sample size of one, but I just searched for
| the string (without any quotes) 'biden doj to investigate
| mpls police joshua caplan' on Google, the story on
| breitbart.com was the 2nd result, the first result was
| the same article on 'newsbreak.com'
| cortesoft wrote:
| The problem with that is if people know the exact formula for
| quality, sites can work to game it. Basically, once the
| formula for quality is known, it no longer is a formula for
| quality.
| munificent wrote:
| This is the key problem. All automated moderation is
| essentially a wicked mix of an iterated prisoner's dilemma
| and Goodhart's Law.
| deelowe wrote:
| There are ways to perform 3rd party assessment without
| directly exposing intellectual property to interested
| parties.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Unless you think it's even in the realm of possibility to
| have a human being do the assessment, at the end of the
| day it's still going to be an algorithm that can be
| gamed.
| tankenmate wrote:
| But the point isn't 3rd part assessments, the issue is
| that people want transparency of the algorithms; i.e. the
| intellectual property is _exactly_ what people want to
| see.
| deelowe wrote:
| Agreed and I'd be willing to bet that a significant
| portion of those people may have conflicting interests
| here.
| arp242 wrote:
| > I think there's an interesting argument to be made here
| that Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the
| public should be given better access to them.
|
| It's a tricky problem, in principle I agree with you, but on
| the other hand more transparency also means more information
| for people who are gaming the system.
|
| And there are many _MANY_ people who (try to) game Google.
| Never underestimate the amount of ridiculous effort some
| people will go to to make a buck. Arguably Google 's largest
| value is that it's actually reasonably good in preventing
| this.
|
| So ... I don't know.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Good? Are you kidding? Google results nowadays are a
| funfest of SEO abusers and quality is VERY LOW.
| mustyoshi wrote:
| Why should the public be given access to that information?
| Google should be under no obligation to provide any of that
| unless we "nationalize" the idea of search engines and
| declare them a human right. Until then, it's a voluntary
| service to be consumed.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Of course google isn't under such a legal obligation. But
| then they should be explicit: "We are ranking results on
| our own quality metric which we won't disclose, you'll just
| have to like them", and let the market react. This position
| can then be taught in schools to kids, and used whenever
| google search results are being evaluated by the public.
| Right now google brands its search results as being driven
| by the public.
|
| It's like when people say google (or fb, etc) has no [first
| amendment] obligation to allow freedom of speech. Fine, but
| then don't constantly describe yourself of defenders of
| free speech, say from the outset you will police speech as
| you see fit, drop the pretense that your policing is
| somehow objective, and let the market digest that.
| detaro wrote:
| > _Right now google brands its search results as being
| driven by the public._
|
| Where does it do that? Google search results being an
| opaque algorithm is not a big secret, given how Google
| clearly refuses to talk about details every time this
| comes up.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| The first example that comes to my (old, as you will see
| in a moment) mind is from the early 2000s, when a search
| for "Jew" went to an anti-semitic site. I recall google's
| position at the time was, it isn't illegal, and
| unfiltered search results is exactly our brand and the
| basis for the public's trust. Wikipedia's entry says of
| google, "They said their results are automatically ranked
| by computer algorithms, and that they do not approve of
| any of the results".
|
| I think the opacity of google's algorithm is well known
| among a certain demographic. I imagine the wider public
| thinks it's nothing but hits or something equally
| objective.
| admax88q wrote:
| > Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the
| public should be given better access to them.
|
| There's only so many top spots in Google search results, I'd
| rather those not be awarded to parties that are the most
| litigious.
| peteretep wrote:
| > [DM] alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if
| they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace
|
| > Google [says] "The Daily Mail's claims are completely
| inaccurate. The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a
| publisher's website ranks in Google search."
|
| Not a fan of either party, but I hope we get to find out who's
| accurate.
| walshemj wrote:
| So its the Daily Mail best known in the industry for their
| ability to rank barely legal pop starlets in revealing outfits
|
| I suspect what happened is the daily mail was considered a low
| quality news site which the majority of the UK population would
| agree its a fair assesment.
|
| And Piers Morgan is pretty much one of the most hated hacks in
| the UK.
| amelius wrote:
| The conflict of interest between Google's Search and
| Advertisement divisions is too problematic and these divisions
| need to be split into separate companies.
| flir wrote:
| Does that not lead to a system where Google Ads Inc buys
| placement on Google Search Inc?
|
| In which case, you're still left with your core problem -
| Google Search Inc can, potentially, manipulate search rankings
| to sell ad space.
| amelius wrote:
| Well, an investigator can follow the money ...
| username90 wrote:
| Ad ranking and search ranking are surprisingly similar
| problems: show what the user is likely to click. Main
| difference is what dataset you draw from. So you'd likely find
| that there is quite a lot of overlap between their search and
| ad divisions and little would change by splitting out the non
| search ads from the search ads.
| amelius wrote:
| They may be similar from a technical standpoint, but as a
| user I think the two (ad and search) are quite different and
| I have almost diametrically opposed feelings about them.
| rovek wrote:
| > That is despite the Daily Mail writing multiple stories a day
| about his comments around that time and employing him as a
| columnist.
|
| Sounds like they take a manual approach to manipulating their
| search ranking; spam is worthy of downranking.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Doesn't part of PageRank involve sites linking back to the dail
| mail? Isn't it possible they just aren't referenced as much as
| others?
| tarkin2 wrote:
| If I had a mental s/Daily Mail/Reputable Newspaper/g I'd be able
| to give this article a little more time. The Daily Mail do seems,
| from my anecdotia, to be gaming the system.
|
| I suspect few would care if Google gave manipulative scientology
| articles a relatively poor search rank. The Daily Mail is
| absolutely no where near that bad. But they are certainly close
| to the definition of dog-whistle manipulation.
|
| Where's the line? This, of course, assumes their poor search rank
| isn't because Google has detected they're doing something shady,
| which due to the Daily Mail's history is not unlikely.
| steve918 wrote:
| Daily Mail can fuck themselves. They published an article a
| complaint I filed with the Oklahoma coroners office in 2012
| because it was taking 12+ months to get results when my 5yo son
| died. They also spun it as parents in "outrage" to get clicks and
| refuse to take the article down even now that there is no way it
| is producing revenue for them.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Yeah that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. What Google
| is doing has larger implications than your personal vendetta
| against Daily Mail.
| steve918 wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
| sunshinekitty wrote:
| Relevant in that the Daily Mail is regularly regarded as bad
| journalism, as other comments also point out.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| It is a personal testament to what most people familiar with
| the paper know, that it is spiteful pabulum. It is relevant
| in that if Google ranks search-items according to a criterion
| of quality, one would expect the Daily Mail to fall lower
| than other news sites covering the same story. Also, it's
| more than a little obnoxious to hand-wave an anecdote about
| personal loss away like this.
| [deleted]
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Stop using Google, it's a bad company with bad practices and it's
| search engine is becoming increasingly worse at providing good
| results. There are other options that are just as good now.
|
| Our worthless government needs to do their job and break them up.
| JPDSm8NTaAYBHd wrote:
| Google Search no longer exists to deliver relevant results
| outside the ads at the top.
|
| They curate it heavily to match with their preferred ideology.
| martimarkov wrote:
| So when I search for code issues or bugs I get the preferred
| ideology on fixes? That's good to know I guess my code has been
| Google ideologic for years.
| skoopie wrote:
| I guess we can only expect searches for technical issues to
| be unbiased. Thanks for the tip!
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| I think the Mail is going to have a real tough time proving
| Google is doing anything nefarious because the algorithm used by
| Google is closed source.
| jb775 wrote:
| Hopefully this makes it to a discovery phase where google is
| forced to reveal the baked in censorship params.
| wnevets wrote:
| The daily mail is trash. I'm glad google is filtering out such
| low quality blog spam.
| [deleted]
| yurielt wrote:
| Google clearly was affecting the actual results seemingly in
| accordance with their agenda seems fair even though having to
| choose between this two companies seems borderline systolic the
| DM is in the right here
| ayushchat wrote:
| Ok, I might get roasted for this, but will still take a shot at
| it.
|
| At what point do we say that Google has a moral responsibility to
| provide unbiased information? I'm not sure we can.
|
| It is a free market after all, and Google is a private
| corporation. Even if the Daily Mail's allegations are true,
| Google is still doing what is in it's best interest, and not
| illegal (afaik its not illegal to modify the algorithm of one's
| core product, happy to be corrected)
| nradov wrote:
| It is literally impossible for a search engine to provide
| unbiased results. There will always be some biases in how the
| ranking algorithm is designed.
|
| If you query Google for the shape of the Earth should it return
| "round" and "flat" pages equally so as to avoid bias?
| SkyBelow wrote:
| We can say they don't have a responsibility once we begin
| holding accountable those who do have a responsibility and yet
| still use Google to help fulfill that responsibility.
|
| For example, I think we can agree that a teacher should have a
| moral responsibility to teach students in an unbiased manner.
| If that is the case and their teaching involves the use of
| google, then is the teacher not at risk for introducing bias
| and should be held responsible? Otherwise why even put the
| standard on the teacher if it can be done away with by
| outsourcing some of the work?
| ck425 wrote:
| The market is only as free as society decides. Regardless of
| current legality if society decides something is immortal
| eventually it'll be regulated.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| You ask about moral responsibility and then give nothing but
| legal reasoning. Those are not synonymous. Google acting within
| the law has nothing to do with whether they are acting morally,
| only legally.
| sub7 wrote:
| Advertising models will be extinct soon enough. If only the get
| rich quick assholes moved elsewhere, actual protocol
| development could do it this decade.
| freeflight wrote:
| Sounds a bit similar to what the WSWS has been dealing with [0].
|
| [0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html
| edbob wrote:
| This is absolutely disgusting. Google has appointed themselves
| the unaccountable police of the Internet, secretly blocking
| websites for unspecified "compliance issues".
|
| > It is highly significant that--after more than three years of
| stonewalling and refusing to answer any questions or respond to
| a single demand--CEO Pichai has admitted that the technology
| firm controlling nearly 90 percent of worldwide search traffic
| has been suppressing WSWS content all along.
|
| Political censorship is equally harmful whether done by the
| government or by a megacorp. When the megacorp becomes more
| powerful than government, it's time to either break them up or
| make them a public utility.
| dannyw wrote:
| Google has been caught doing a lot of seriously anticompetitive
| things, like colluding with Facebook to establish a duopoly, in
| exchange for things like scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded
| to Google Drive. Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP
| ads.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if this claim is true: here's to the
| discovery process to figure it out.
| vergessenmir wrote:
| I believe you're referring to the lawsuit from last year filed
| by the Texas attorney general. It's a complaint where nothing
| has been proved in relation to the scanning of WhatsApp
| backups.
|
| Unless there's something new on this case that I haven't seen?
| hkt wrote:
| I know nothing about the case, but surely "nothing has been
| proved" just means there hasn't been an outcome yet? Attorney
| generals tend not to file cases unless they believe something
| to be true, at the very least on the balance of
| probabilities.
| gran_colombia wrote:
| This is not true in Texas and other red states. The
| Attorney General of Texas files political cases that have
| no basis in law or fact. He filed the election lawsuit
| which was soundly rejected by SCOTUS, for instance.
| claytongulick wrote:
| To be fair, the merits of that case were never decided.
|
| The case was rejected on procedural grounds for lack of
| standing - a decision that has been hotly debated by many
| legal experts.
|
| Did you ever actually read the filing? [1] I recommend
| it, very approachable.
|
| If nothing else, the math and statistics cited should be
| of interest.
|
| [1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/fi
| les/ima...
| Goronmon wrote:
| I've perused that filing in the past. Most of the
| language is about how votes "could" be fraudulent, with
| little to no actual proof that votes were cast or counted
| fraudulently.
|
| I do remember it using that "1 in quadrillion" statistic
| that appeared pretty questionable even on the surface.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > If nothing else, the math and statistics cited should
| be of interest.
|
| This is true, but only because it is such an amazing
| example of bad statistics. It asserts that there is a
| "less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability
| of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four
| Defendant States". It bases this on two things.
|
| First is that Trump had an early lead, so it is
| statistically impossible for Biden to have ended up
| winning. Obviously, it fails to account for the fact that
| votes are not randomly distributed and mail in votes
| heavily favored Biden.
|
| Second, that Biden performed better when compared to
| Clinton in 2016. Obviously, it fails to account for the
| fact that people vote differently at different times and
| for different people. The same differences would be seen
| comparing Kerry/Obama or Dole/Bush.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Attorney generals tend not to file cases unless they
| believe something to be true, at the very least on the
| balance of probabilities.
|
| This is pretty easy to debunk.
|
| https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/e
| l...
| mathisonturing wrote:
| > Or adding an artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP ads
|
| A quick search came up empty. Could you share a source?
| treeman79 wrote:
| Did you happen use google to search for misdeeds by google?
| CompuHacker wrote:
| Are you suggesting that Google would censor Google Search
| search results relating to Google's censorship of Google
| Search search results? If so, could you provide a source?
|
| A quick search I imagined doing (I even imagined that I
| used a VPN) turned up 10,000,000 results, 49 of which were
| news articles from the last 15 years detailing what, but
| not how, Google Search search results were censored. When I
| imagined clicking "Next" to see the rest of these results,
| I imagined that I was presented with a No CAPTCHA, asking
| me to identify which colored block of visual noise most
| closely resembled hell itself.
|
| Edit: Oh, and then I did the search for real, and got 4.95m
| results of similar composition.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I don't think Google search censors anti-Google results.
| Not only it is likely to backfire but it is also hard work,
| there are millions of articles about the misdeeds by
| Google. For effective censorship, one would need to first
| determine that the article indeed is anti-Google and then
| censor it in a way that doesn't damage the results (and ad
| revenue) too much. Google could probably pull it off but
| for what? Google hate drives views, and ironically, these
| are commonly monetized by Google itself.
|
| Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-AMP
| ads" is inconclusive. However, if you quote "non-AMP", you
| get the expected results. Google seems to have a peculiar
| way of handling dashes and the "non" in "non-AMP" seems to
| get lost.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _For effective censorship, one would need to first
| determine that the article indeed is anti-Google_
|
| You might call that "sentiment analysis". Google has
| published papers on it. They've refined it so much that
| they even turned it into a well-documented feature of
| their Natural Language API [0].
|
| > _Google could probably pull it off but for what? Google
| hate drives views, and ironically, these are commonly
| monetized by Google itself._
|
| If you could assign a monetary value to showing someone
| an advertisement (or several), would you? Google has.
|
| If you could assign a monetary value to someone's
| knowledge about government/justice actions against
| yourself, would you?
|
| If you could categorize _sentiment_ into something that
| can generate revenue... or perhaps something that could
| hurt revenue... would you?
|
| There's money in censorship.
|
| > _Anyways, searching "artificial 2 second wait to non-
| AMP ads" is inconclusive_
|
| Let me make it much less inconclusive . The two searches
| [1] [2] both reveal the lawsuit by the Texas AG which has
| explicit allegations [3].
|
| [0]: https://cloud.google.com/natural-
| language/docs/sentiment-tut...
|
| [1]:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Google+AMP+second+delay+lawsuit
|
| [2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+AMP+second+de
| lay+laws...
|
| [3]: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/f
| iles/ima...
| RileyJames wrote:
| One second delay, but yea here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25448718
| tootie wrote:
| That's from a lawsuit by a notoriously corrupt republican
| flak. He also filed a massively frivolous election lawsuit
| and is under indictment for fraud.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I agree. Regardless of the quality of the Daily Mail, the
| following claim of theirs from the article is damning:
|
| > It alleges Google "punishes" publishers in its rankings if
| they don't sell enough advertising space in its marketplace.
|
| Whether that's true or not is another thing...guess we'll have
| to wait and see.
| walshemj wrote:
| So how does the Guardian rank so well for the terms the DM
| was complaining about? I don't see the Guardian buying many
| PPC adds.
| junippor wrote:
| > scanning WhatsApp chat backups uploaded to Google Drive
|
| I've always assumed this was the case, but has this been
| proven?
| permo-w wrote:
| Aren't they heavily encrypted?
| mathisonturing wrote:
| AFAIK, it hasn't been yet
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/8/22319136/whatsapp-cloud-
| ba...
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Silicon Valley is an industry that always relied in anti-
| competitive tactics and they pay billions in legal teams /
| lobbying each year.
|
| Do you think they would spend it if they were on the right side
| of the law ?
| morei wrote:
| Yes, they would spend it even if they were on the right side
| of the law.
|
| This is an interesting example of a prisoners dilemma. If N
| companies are competing without lobbying, their lobbying
| costs are zero.
|
| But if one company 'defects' and start lobbying to tilt the
| regulatory landscape, then every other company must also
| start lobbying to prevent it.
|
| The end result is that every company lobbies against each
| other for no net benefit[1], despite large amounts of money
| spent on lobbying. Good for lobbyists, bad for the companies.
|
| So a company spending money on lobbying doesn't really tell
| us anything. They may be a bad actor, a good actor, or
| anything in between. There are valid reason for every
| position in the spectrum to spent money on lobbying.
|
| [1]. Obv the real world is far more complex than this. The
| lobbying may provide industry wide benefits, or may prevent
| the entry of new competitors, or there may be semi-random
| fluctuations in the regularly landscape, etc, etc, etc.
| waterglassFull wrote:
| The irony of the daily mail talking about manipulation
| viraptor wrote:
| The only way we win is if they both dump many millions into
| lawyers handling the case, then both get a ruling that
| restricts what they're doing. Just like like the Oz / FB /
| Google issue, I'd love all sides to lose.
| mojzu wrote:
| Whilst demanding what could be compared to a participation
| trophy (unearned search rankings)
| varispeed wrote:
| Manipulation 101: If you manipulate, make sure to project that
| you oppose manipulation.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not up on law. I wonder what actual law they've allegedly
| broken. Are there any legal precedents implying you have to rank
| the Daily Mail high in your organic results?
|
| I mean I understand the words "anti-competitive" but not sure how
| that translated to me needing more Piers Morgan in my search
| results or how the judge is supposed to even rule on that.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Fair competition, google sells their rankings position of
| keywords to their clients in form of adsense. It now stands to
| reason that if Google manipulates the ranking, it's also giving
| or returning money. Hiding behind " THE ALGORITHM " is a scam
| that won't last very long.
| tim333 wrote:
| Though say for argument's sake that Google were to rank
| results higher for those who spend more on ads but put a
| disclaimer to say so. What law would that break?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| In the US, it would be the Sherman Antitrust Act.
| Basically, if Google is abusing their market position,
| they're breaking the law. Whether they are or not, I can't
| say.
| jariel wrote:
| 'The Daily Mail' has a case. Go and visit their site right now
| [1] and tell me where the inflammatory or irresponsible headline
| is.
|
| Now try 'The Daily Beast' [2], it's I think a little bit worse,
| and you have this flame-nugget: "White Violence Links Black Lives
| From Emmett Till to Floyd" which is an interesting thesis, but
| kind of racist.
|
| The DM really isn't that bad, and much like the issue of 'Fidel
| Castro' it's a litmus test to see if people are emotionally
| clouded ideologues or not.
|
| DM is a regular tabloid, that's it.
|
| [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html [2]
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/
| varispeed wrote:
| Not particularly liking the DM as they have their fair share of
| shady dealings, but I support anyone going after Google and other
| big companies abusing their position.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy is my friend
| permo-w wrote:
| Not when it's the Daily Mail.
|
| I don't like Google either, but the mail is an absolutely
| drain on society, and in my opinion has done much, much worse
| than Google ever has
|
| Yeah google suppresses competition, and shamelessly sells
| your data, but they aren't deliberately and carefully
| peddling hate and dog-whistle racism. Their business model
| isn't literally to corrupt people's minds, addict them to
| controversy and clastic words and profit from that. They
| don't directly benefit from a less-educated society
|
| Google was around in the 1930s, I find it hard to believe
| they would have come out in full support of the Nazis
| yostrovs wrote:
| What about organizations like CNN, that spend months and
| sometimes years on conspiracy theories, only to move on to
| the next one when the previous turns out to be false?
| Here's for reference an example:
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-
| repeatedly-a...
| onedognight wrote:
| The article you refer to exaggerates its first claim so
| disingenuously that I won't bother to read the rest. It
| claims:
|
| > The New York Times on January 8 published an
| emotionally gut-wrenching but complete fiction that never
| had any evidence -- that Officer Sicknick's skull was
| savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-
| Trump mob until he died
|
| While the referenced (archived) NYT article says:
|
| > At some point in the chaos [...] he was struck with a
| fire extinguisher
|
| and
|
| > He returned to his division office and collapsed,
|
| There is no cause of death claimed by the NYT. No
| "bashing until he died" claimed.
|
| For background, that at least one rioter (Sanford) threw
| a fire extinguisher and hit three cops in the head (two
| wearing helmets) is alleged by the FBI based video
| evidence[1].
|
| [1] https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/
| Robert%...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Was the NYT article edited after the fact? That happens
| fairly often. I remember having to calm my gf down after
| she was so upset by the news that someone had their head
| bashed in with a fire extinguisher. It was definitely
| reported, and definitely false.
| onedognight wrote:
| Unlikely. The article linked to, and I read, the web
| archive copy of the NYT article and not the NYT directly.
| epakai wrote:
| Here's the quote I see from articles alleging the NY
| Times reported and spread a false story: "Mr. Sicknick,
| 42, an officer for the Capitol Police, died on Thursday
| from brain injuries he sustained after Trump loyalists
| who overtook the complex struck him in the head with a
| fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement
| officials."
|
| It appears to have come from this article:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/flag-
| lowering...
|
| As best as I can tell the fire extinguisher was a
| different event in which officers were struck by a thrown
| extinguisher. Sicknick did suffer brain injuries (a
| stroke). The medical examiner hasn't attributed fault to
| possible exposure to bear spray that some protestors
| might have used, so his stroke is determined to be from
| natural causes. I think we have to wait for the accused
| protestor's trials to determine finally whether they
| assaulted Sicknick.
| yostrovs wrote:
| They started this rumor, the rumor went around all the
| television stations on repeat for weeks, and then when it
| turned out this was based on nothing, that it was some
| kind of fabrication, the NYT doesn't do a front page
| retraction with a humble apology for stirring up the
| country.
| treeman79 wrote:
| It's been getting harder to find references like these
| online. Stories I've read about can not be found anymore.
|
| It's like someone is messing with the search results to
| only give one political viewpoint.
|
| On the plus side it's fun learning about what your not
| supposed to know by seeing the fact checkers disprove a
| story I hadn't yet heard about. So convenient that the
| refutation ranks higher.
| varispeed wrote:
| > Google was around in the 1930s, I find it hard to believe
| they would have come out in full support of the Nazis
|
| Google supports China though, and that's not too far
| removed. You know people back then didn't believe that
| Germans ran camps despite all the evidence. It seems like
| the same thing is happening now - there is evidence of
| camps in China, but people happily buy products because it
| is cheap and companies wipe their faces and continue to do
| business there. You know in the 30s IBM has provided the
| infrastructure to run those camps. So you are making a bold
| claim here.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Curious, how does "Google support China?"
| varispeed wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Not seeing anything about support in there, what are you
| seeing?
| jpttsn wrote:
| You're looking for words, not actions?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think they're looking for actual indications of
| _support_ , not "they launched in China and got blocked
| by the government".
| rchaud wrote:
| > Their business model isn't literally to corrupt people's
| minds, addict them to controversy and clastic words and
| profit from that.
|
| Ever heard of the Youtube alt-right rabbit hole? Google
| absolutely profits from hateful, extremist content.
| permo-w wrote:
| They profit from it, sure, but it's not them creating the
| content. Google are the people selling printing presses.
|
| The Daily Mail, Prager U, that little Speedy Gonzalez
| Jewish prick, and Alex Jones are the ones making the
| content.
|
| That's the difference
| bagacrap wrote:
| yet any attempt to counteract that (natural human)
| perversion of the platform they provide, and an angry mob
| forms and yells "censorship" and "anti trust"
| simonh wrote:
| "Hurrah for the Blackshirts". Not a headline that aged
| well, even in the relatively short term.
| arethuza wrote:
| _" "At this next vital election Britain's survival as a
| Great Power will depend on the existence of a well-
| organised Party of the Right, ready to take over
| responsibility for national affairs with the same
| directness of purpose and energy of method as Mussolini
| and Hitler have displayed.... That is why I say Hurrah
| for the Blackshirts! ... Hundreds of thousands of young
| British men and women would like to see their own country
| develop that spirit of patriotic pride and service which
| has transformed Germany and Italy. They cannot do better
| than seek out the nearest branch of the Blackshirts and
| make themselves acquainted with their aims and plans."_
|
| 1st Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (15th January, 1934)
|
| https://spartacus-educational.com/Jmail.htm
| janeroe wrote:
| You can find numerous quotes by British and American
| politicians of the time approving Hitler or Stalin. E.g.
| Churchill praises Hitler in his 1935 book (after the
| purge of up to 1000 people in 1934). Roosevelt and his
| wife's enchantment with Stalin is another example.
| vidarh wrote:
| That's hardly justification. Plenty also condemned them.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| As long as the enemy has an actual valid claim.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The core doctrine of US foreign policy.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| The Daily Mail can definitely simmer down.
|
| If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit "journalism"
| you can't complain when your main source of traffic decides to
| squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous money pit.
|
| Cry me a river.
| rbut wrote:
| All online "journalism" which uses advertising as its main
| source of revenue does exactly this. For example in Australia
| we have news.com.au who uses the exact same tactics. In fact
| their headlines and blurbs are even shorter than Daily Mails,
| forcing you to click to learn what the carefully worded (yet
| extremely manipulative) headline is talking about. This is not
| exclusive to Daily Mail.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I'd argue the DM was one of the pioneers of this approach.
| Ad-supported and not-garbage online news sites _do_ exist,
| although they are a dying breed.
| Spivak wrote:
| Bad things happening to bad people is still bad if it's done
| unjustifiably so. There's nothing really about this story that
| prevents it from happening to a site you like.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| The DM are worse than clickbait. They actively attempt to
| manufacture rage for clicks
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Sounds like YouTube and Facebook.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Kind of sounds like the New York Times.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The NYT and most other mainstream news outlets go out of
| their way to avoid making people angry -- often too much
| so, IMO.
|
| Many truths are infuriating. Reporting them does not in
| itself imply a lack of ethics.
| corporateshil1 wrote:
| You and the MSM will have to repeat that for quite a long
| time if you want it to eventually be true.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I would not consider anything that is written in the
| Daily Mail "truth" by any reasonable understanding of the
| word. They write op-ed pieces at best, and more often
| than not just make things up or deliberately twist things
| out of proportion or context.
| tootie wrote:
| It enrages me to see this kind of hot take on HN. People
| here used to be rational.
| MikeUt wrote:
| The GP's comment is not baseless - swap White and Black,
| and the following title could be right out of the Mail:
|
| A _Black_ Virginia Girl Says _White_ Classmates Cut Her
| Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/
| 20190927202007/https://www.nytim...
| tootie wrote:
| That's not equivalent at all. The dreadlocks story is a
| legitimately outrageous and racist attack. It's not
| journalistic ethics to write stories like a robot. The
| context is important. The NY Times headline includes
| relevant details to inform the reader. "Kids Cut Another
| Kid's Hair" just sounds like juvenile hijinks and isn't
| doing justice to the story.
|
| The Daily Mail will actively gin up uninteresting or
| patently false stories with the hottest headlines they
| can possibly get away with. They'll skip coverage of
| important news if they can find a story about a prominent
| person misspeaking about something inconsequential. Look
| at the lawsuit. They were upset that publishing multiple
| stories a day about Piers Morgan weren't all getting top
| search ranking. The world doesn't need multiple stories
| per day about Piers Morgan any more than it needs
| multiple stories about celebrity bikini bodies like
| what's on their front page right now. DM is fluff, it's
| pandering, it has no redeeming value.
| roenxi wrote:
| > "Kids Cut Another Kid's Hair" just sounds like juvenile
| hijinks and isn't doing justice to the story.
|
| The alternative take is that story pretty much is just
| juvenile hijinks, and the NYT is pretty much ginning up a
| story. A lot of the kids I knew in school were horrible
| to each other and nobody wrote an article about them.
|
| Most print journalism has gone to the gutter these days,
| the NYT isn't a respectable institution. There is a bunch
| of stuff on the internet that is more reliable.
| MikeUt wrote:
| But it _is_ juvenile hijinks, and _did_ turn out to be
| patently false.
|
| > The NY Times headline includes relevant details to
| inform the reader.
|
| Lets see which details were no longer relevant once the
| story turned out to be false, and the Times (to their
| credit, unlike the Mail) changed the headline to reflect
| that:
|
| Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and
| Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/201910010
| 03852/https://www.nytim...
| sofixa wrote:
| Seriously, what is wrong with people? How can anyone look
| at the Guardian and Daily Fail, and conclude they are of
| the same quality.
| beaner wrote:
| The only difference is that the Guardian/NYT's lies are
| accepted enough to be dangerous.
|
| See: russiagate; russian bounties for american soldiers;
| the lack of representation of blacks and minorities in
| initial Covid coverage, leading many to assume it did not
| affect them; etc.
| sofixa wrote:
| You're going to have to do better than that. Please
| provide articles from The Guardian that were stating
| incorrect facts (not reporting allegations or personal
| opinions) that weren't recanted later when new evidence
| came to light.
|
| Edit to clarify: you're making a statement, you should be
| able to provide direct proof.
|
| Most sources claim the Guardian is mostly factually
| correct:
|
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/ ( which is
| American-centric, so ignore the bullshit liberal and
| conservative arguments) says they're mostly factual with
| the `Failed Fact Checks` section including opinion pieces
| and reporting as per X (e.g.
| https://fullfact.org/education/barnardos-foster-care-
| coronav...) , and the fact check saying X's report is
| wrong, not that the Guardian are misrepresenting facts.
|
| https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-guardian-bias-and-
| reliabil... says they're very reliable.
| beaner wrote:
| Yeah... I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole for you.
| You have to have been paying attention. These things
| turned out to be false but were continuously reported on
| at length as if they were true, even though plenty of
| sound skepticism existed at the time and a basic,
| continuous, genuine application of journalistic standards
| would have compelled then to ask, what is this based on?
| And discovered it was nothing or made-up.
|
| When it comes to your links, consider that media ranking
| the media is perhaps not the least-biased judgment.
| Outlets branding themselves as fact-checkers are often
| particularly egregious. Snopes, for example, can't even
| dispassionately and accurately rate stories that do not
| fit a woke worldview.
|
| I once read a NYT "fact check" that was checking a trump
| quote. One of the quotes was "we've been fighting in the
| middle east for 17 years." They rated this statement
| False, flat-out. Why? The correction stated, "We've been
| fighting in afghanistan for 17 years, but afghanistan is
| not the middle east. We've been fighting in the middle
| east for 16 years."
|
| It completely ignored the point of the statement to issue
| a False rating on a technicality. Any reasonable
| interpretation would not have done so.
|
| This is an example of the accuracy of modern-day "fact-
| checking." It's basically made up.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| To me, this is just a tired hot take. The Daily Mail regularly
| covers stories that others don't, and they do so with
| perspectives and plain speak that others don't provide. I feel
| like everyone here attacking the Daily Mail doesn't actually
| read them, but are blindly repeating an opinion they've been
| told to hold, because the Daily Mail's existence is
| inconvenient for other newspapers and for certain ideologies.
| It's tactically easier to attack the source rather than
| individual pieces of content. We see the same thing with the
| N.Y. Post.
|
| During these polarized times when censorship is rampant and
| diverse perspectives are hard to come by, I'm glad to have
| someone like the Daily Mail around. A recent example of a great
| article is their story on COVID vaccines potentially affecting
| menstruation
| (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9446907/Some-
| wome...), which they wrote about before any other major news
| media. Read for yourself and decide how you feel about the
| content.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| When you engage in chumbox journalism don't be surprised that
| all your content gets treated with suspicion.
| tootie wrote:
| Their business so thoroughly dependent on SEO it's probably
| worth their while to sue. Even if they lose, getting Google to
| loosen up a tiny bit out of caution is worth the price.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > If you build your business on clickbait and bullshit
| "journalism" you can't complain when your main source of
| traffic decides to squeeze a bit more cash out of your enormous
| money pit.
|
| Is that a legal argument?
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Absolutely not. I'm not a lawyer, just a citizen of the UK
| who has to live in a society that the DM has poisoned over
| decades.
|
| I have no sympathy whatsoever, but as for the legal case I
| have no idea how this plays out.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I'm pointing out you're not really adding anything to the
| discussion. Saying you morally disapprove of the Daily Mail
| without substantiating it with facts isn't for HN.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The facts are easy to check.
|
| The DM regularly loses libel cases for publishing fake
| smears about various victims. But apparently it considers
| these losses a cost of doing business.
|
| It has been called out for its racism on numerous
| occasions.
|
| It's notorious for wildly exaggerated tabloid abuse of
| legitimate refugees and immigrants.
|
| It called judges who forced proper constitutional
| proceedings during Brexit "enemies of the people" -
| sparking a record number of complaints to the Independent
| Press Standards Organisation.
|
| Its comments section is a cesspit of race hate and petty
| ignorance.
|
| It literally supported Hitler before war was declared.
|
| There isn't a rational case to be made for _not_
| disapproving of it morally.
| ben_w wrote:
| > There isn't a rational case to be made for not
| disapproving of it morally.
|
| That, and I say this with sadness, doesn't follow from
| your other points.
|
| It just means they have different morals from you and I.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| No, that's a both sides false equivalence kind of
| argument.
|
| In context - and especially in light of yesterday's
| verdict - it's really rather unconvincing.
| gadders wrote:
| >> It literally supported Hitler before war was declared.
|
| So did the Daily Mirror. And the Guardian was a big
| supporter of eugenics. All irrelevant to the current
| papers.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unlike the rest, the Mail continues to be owned by the
| same family.
|
| Interestingly, the writer of the article in The Mirror
| that supported Hitler was one Lord Harmsworth - great
| grandfather of the current owner of the Mail.
|
| Harmsworth also used to own the Mirror before it was sold
| and changed its political orientation.
| cesaref wrote:
| The nicknames for the Daily Mail are quite illuminating:
|
| The Daily Lie, The Daily Hate-Mail, The Daily Heil
|
| Of course these could all have been generated by the left
| wing liberal elites who have an issue with straight
| forward honest reporting. Best you have a bit of a
| google/search engine of choice to determine which is more
| likely to be true. You could of course try visiting their
| website and seeing for yourself.
| [deleted]
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| God help us all if people like you become judges; "I don't like
| the plaintiff so this case is automatically invalidated"
| maxehmookau wrote:
| That's fine, I have no plans to become one. I'm not legally
| trained, nor do I pretend to be.
|
| The Daily Mail, however, has spent the last few years
| describing the UK judiciary as "Enemies of the People", so
| they can continue to cry me a river.
| hrktb wrote:
| Arguably shouldn't judges follow their judgement on the cases
| they work on ? Throwing out baseless cases happen every day,
| a company abusing the system having their ridiculous
| complaints thrown out would be reasonable.
|
| To me that is the basic reason for having humans in the
| process.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I think the point was the case should not be thrown out
| because the judge doesn't like the plaintiff but only if
| the case is baseless. You can't judge the validity of a
| case just because preconceived notions about the plaintiff.
| hrktb wrote:
| Wether a case is deemed baseless is not cold and dry
| facts, there is a judgement of merit and intention of the
| filing side.
|
| Also taking into account the surroundings of a case,
| including who's involved and their history is not
| preconception (or then everything becomes preconception).
|
| It's not the same if you're a CEO filing a suit against a
| grandma who shouted insanities at you when you fired
| their son, and if you're a worker subject to verbal abuse
| from your boss.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| So, you support doing this to every major media outlet on the
| planet? Because they operate on sensationalism just like DM.
| I'm guessing there's particular outlets you don't want this to
| happen to because you agree with their bs more than opposing
| outlets.
|
| Your argument can be summed up by just saying you only want
| information that supports your preconceived notions available.
| Which, is obviously bad for a variety of reasons....
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The Daily Fail is a hate-filled stain on the name of good
| journalism. It ran the headlline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts"
| in the 1930s and it hasn't changed much since. It bears no
| small part in the UK's currently catastrophic situation. I hope
| Google takes every penny they have.
| comboy wrote:
| I have no idea if The Daily Mail claims have any merit, but you
| do not want to live in a country where thief cannot report
| burglary.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| This is exactly the completely deregulated free-market
| economy that op-eds in the daily mail have been asking for
| for decades.
|
| They don't like it when it comes back to bite them.
| rchaud wrote:
| This is a level of gotcha akin to "NYTimes shows ads, so
| they have no authority to criticize Google" that we see on
| HN.
| sldksk wrote:
| No, it's not. Participating in capitalism is not
| equivalent to advocating for it.
| vixen99 wrote:
| A completely deregulated free-market economy would have no
| recourse to the courts. Such does not exist. I have no idea
| regarding the merits of the case but so far we don't know
| who's to get bitten.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Courts are integral to a free market. Without them all
| sorts of markets evaporate completely.
|
| More generally, having a market does not mean having a
| government that supplies no public goods -- that is,
| having a government, since supplying public goods is all
| a government does.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The confusion may be a linguistic one -- conflation of
| the terms "competitive" and "unregulated", and of "a"
| market with "the" market.
|
| The existence of _some_ free markets does not imply that
| _every_ market is free. Excepting failed states, nowhere
| is every market free -- the markets for grenades, ivory,
| medical licenses, political appointments, assassinations,
| etc. are all things most of us want either tightly
| controlled or entirely suppressed.
|
| And even in an extremely competitive market, like the
| ones for lettuce or generic drugs, there are still
| important roles for government to play. Of course
| regulation can be and often is grossly wasteful, even
| corrupt. But it's also critical to our safety.
| comboy wrote:
| s/burglary/theft then
| roenxi wrote:
| Being pro-free-market is against the interests of
| incumbents, and if in fact an incumbent was pro-free-market
| regardless then that is laudable. Incumbents are protected
| by regulations.
|
| There is a lot to dislike about the Daily Mail I'm sure (I
| don't read it). But you aren't catching them in a moment of
| hypocrisy here. Everyone hates losing, doesn't mean they
| are wrong about what the rules of the game should be.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| "No capitalist ever saw a market and wished it free."
| treeman79 wrote:
| Of course people don't want to compete. Too bad.
|
| Capitalism is about increasing efficiency / resources
| through brutal competition.
|
| Just don't let them make laws giving one group special
| treatment. Like banning the competition.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Who don't want to compete with who? This is between a
| news publisher and a search engine; they're not exactly
| in the same business.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Sure they are: they both make money from selling ads
| don't they?
| bagacrap wrote:
| If they're equals does it make sense to ask when's the
| last time the DM sent traffic to Google?
| treeman79 wrote:
| Google news
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The article says the DM is accusing Google of burying the
| DM's results in favor of other news outlets'. The dispute
| is not about Google favoring its own news, as if there
| were such a thing, over the DM's.
| jhgb wrote:
| > you do not want to live in a country where thief cannot
| report burglary
|
| There was a Daily Mail article about a thief who was unable
| to report a burglary? Or what exactly did you mean by that?
| RKearney wrote:
| It appears to be an idiom for a party in the wrong (Daily
| Mail for clickbait article) from being allowed to report
| that they were wronged (manipulated search results by
| Google) since the parent poster seemed to suggest that
| Daily Mail somehow deserved that treatment and two wrongs
| make a right.
| jhgb wrote:
| That's a weird idiom, then, considering that Daily Mail
| is in the UK and Google is in the US. And considering
| that Daily Mail is not a search engine, so they're not
| comparable entities to begin with. And that I'm not even
| sure that Google was in the wrong here in the first
| place. So I was confused on multiple levels, apparently.
| scatters wrote:
| Per Wikipedia, 70% of the Daily Mail's web traffic is
| from outside the UK, mostly from the US.
| jhgb wrote:
| Not quite sure what this has to do with the idiom's
| inapplicability, unless "country" in it meant "world".
| But clearly the reason for what you point out is that the
| English-speaking world is way larger than the UK.
| sshagent wrote:
| I agree with what your saying, but have no sympathy for the
| rag that is the Daily Mail
| 0898 wrote:
| I used to be very much of the same opinion. But
| increasingly I find the Daily Mail to be the only place to
| turn for a sensible reaction to woke hysteria - like the
| supposed "rape culture" in schools, and the recent walkouts
| over the flying of the Union Jack at the Pimlico Academy.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Wait.. what? You find the DM a home for "sensible
| reaction" to cultural issues? That's horrifying.
| sldksk wrote:
| Try r/stupidpol
| treeman79 wrote:
| Why not? The poor thief is just trying to support his 20
| orphan kids. People should feel honored when they are robbed
| and left for dead.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > _where thief cannot report burglary_
|
| Written from the perspective that the most straightforward
| explanation is true:
|
| Bad analogy. Nobody entered anyone else's business.
|
| The defendant prefers that its users get good quality
| information, and the plaintiff's reputation for low quality
| information runs afoul of that practice.
|
| Also, why would a thief report his own crime?
| blackshaw wrote:
| > The defendant prefers that its users get information that
| a) maximises the defendant's ad revenue and b) advances the
| defendant's preferred narratives.
|
| FTFY
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I don't think it's meant as an analogy, it's an idiom.
|
| > Also, why would a thief report his own crime?
|
| The thief isn't reporting their own crime, they are
| reporting that they have been robbed by someone else.
| deelowe wrote:
| It's an idiom. It basically means that someone who
| committed a lesser, but similar crime wouldn't be able to
| report a crime themselves.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Right but if true the Daily Mail probably aren't the only
| people they're doing this to.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Has DM tried hacking their voicemails? Seems to be a Rupert
| Murdoch go to.
| ben_w wrote:
| For anyone who is unfamiliar with the reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Ah, yes, the paper that supported Hitler and lies about
| immigrants. The same one that supports Fox in holding a duopoly
| on British newspapers.
|
| Excuse me while I find a different hill with more believability
| and less racists...
| viraptor wrote:
| Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause cancer
| https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-give-c...
| pydry wrote:
| Many of those actually do cause cancer :/
|
| I'm surprised Corbyn wasn't on the list.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Be sure to check the list of things they say will cause
| cancer https://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/06/15/list-daily-mail-
| give-c...
|
| That list is more than a little misleading; it's outright
| lying in some cases:
|
| The list says that DM said being left-handed causes cancer.
| The link to the DM article is simply reporting the peer-
| reviewed and published medical research that found a higher
| risk of _breast_ cancer in a study of 12000 women.
|
| Honestly, that list is more fake-news than "the russians did
| it!"
| viraptor wrote:
| It's a list poking fun at their repeated reporting of
| things related to cancer - you don't have to take "causes"
| literally. It's very tongue in the cheek.
|
| Also, as mentioned on top: "However, it is worth noting
| that some of the entries are backed up by scientific fact.
| It's just a shame that the vast majority are fear-stoking
| exaggerations and lies."
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Not nearly as long as California's list.
|
| And, to be fair, many of those things do cause cancer.
| dghf wrote:
| Also the Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project -- "A blog
| following the Daily Mail's ongoing mission to divide all the
| inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure
| cancer."
|
| https://thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com.
| ..
|
| (Now defunct, apparently: last updated in 2008.)
| ben_w wrote:
| It is my opinion that the Daily Mail is a work of fiction
| loosely inspired by the real world, but ultimately as
| disconnected from reality as Stross's _Laundry Files_ series.
|
| I have no idea if their claims against Google have any merit.
|
| Nevertheless, I want a society with rules that will protect
| even the worst amongst us from misbehaviour by others: pre-
| judging based on reputation alone leads to in-groups with
| power, power corrupts and attracts the corrupt, and it would
| all end badly.
| vixen99 wrote:
| This is the Pavlovian-style trained response every time the
| _popular tabloid_ , the Daily Mail is mentioned here. It's
| what it is. Get over it. Of course it's pleasant to feel a
| cut above the six million who buy the print copy and the
| thirty million plus who read it online but please bear in
| mind it's not aimed at your level of readership. Good however
| that you manage to scan it most days so that you can be
| assured it's a work of fiction. Personally I'd give it a miss
| and keep to the more subtle works of fiction in the upmarket
| section of the press.
| ben_w wrote:
| > it's not aimed at your level of readership
|
| The reading level is no problem. My concern _isn't_ the
| press ELI5-ing 3D printers as being "like Star Trek style
| replicators". Make everything as easy to read and
| understand as possible!
|
| My first concern is when things are invented whole-cloth,
| or misrepresented badly enough they might as well be, and
| when corrections are either not forthcoming or only happen
| after legal action:
| https://listverse.com/2015/06/23/10-egregiously-false-
| storie...
|
| My second concern is when the publication contradicts
| itself, which DM is famous for with regard to what causes
| and cures cancer: https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
|
| I am far from the only one to feel justified in being so
| dismissive of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti
| tle=Wikipedia:Reliabl...
|
| > Personally I'd give it a miss and keep to the more subtle
| works of fiction in the upmarket section of the press.
|
| Thinking of Trek-tech and upmarket publications, I have had
| a similar attitude towards New Scientist ever since the EM
| drive was on the front cover.
|
| This problem isn't just a Daily Mail problem, but the story
| this thread is attached to is about the DM, so they're the
| ones I'm focusing my criticism on.
| cung wrote:
| I feel like I am going crazy that this fact is not discussed at
| all.
|
| I recall google from a decade ago being able to answer all my
| questions, where as now all I get is mediocre, politically-safe,
| canned answers with a ridiculous amount of ads.
|
| It is enough to look at recipe websites to see that Daily Mail's
| claim is clearly true. Recipe sites providing a user hostile ad-
| filled experience gain the top place, where as simple recipes
| without stories and tons of ads are nowhere to be found.
|
| Why would Google do anything else? Website owners are paying
| Google to be ranked higher by essentially buying ads from Google.
| The difference between the ppc of a competitor and Google is the
| price the website owners pay. In return, Google will rank the
| website higher.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Over the last few years, Google has prioritized blogspam that
| also happens to be filled to the brim with AdSense ads.
| nicbou wrote:
| What strikes me the most is that simple queries ("how much sun
| does [plant] need") only return 5 page keyword soups that
| barely answer your question. Google works reasonably well for
| more specific technical questions, but really struggles with
| the basic ones.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Google works reasonably well for more specific technical
| questions, but really struggles with the basic ones._
|
| In the past it did, but when I try to search a line of
| logging output, or a line from a stack trace, Google decides
| to omit much of my search terms, and even goes as far as
| replacing some of my search terms with other terms that do
| not fit the context of my queries at all.
| admax88q wrote:
| I'd wager there's vastly different quantity of spam sites for
| things like gardening than more technical topics.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| What plants are you having trouble finding that number for? I
| just tried corn, strawberries, rhubarb, and beans and got the
| answer in the first or second link.
| nicbou wrote:
| I just remembered this because of the latest plant I
| bought, but I forgot which one it was. It's just an
| example. I felt similar frustrations with other simple
| questions, for example related to cooking.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=how.
| ..
|
| The top promoted answer leads to what looks like a reasonable
| site.
|
| I think the greatest problem here is individual user bubbles.
| My take is that this would all go away as a problem if Google
| did away with behavioural tracking - thus the same query
| would lead to same answers globally.
|
| The question is, how much would that degrade search quality?
|
| The most obvious is location - 'show me chinese takeaways' is
| a different query depending on where you are and your past
| ordering profile. But its a solvable problem
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| it is hard to talk about an issue for which no solid data is
| available. To make a comparison, a decade ago, one would have
| needed to have started recording searches. Unfortunately, and
| this is why algorithms can be so insidous, collecting data to
| prove the decline of google is almost impossible.
|
| So despite being blindingly obvious, it is difficult to make a
| mature discussion based on 'feelings', vague as they are.
|
| A research that _would_ work would be to show how irrelevant
| current results are. Certainly, that wouldn 't be hard to
| prove, even without comparing it to external data.
| casi wrote:
| I agree, it seems like results are getting worse, a few years
| back I could ask a question and get an answer. Now I don't even
| bother and go straight to sites to search, be it wikipedia/
| github/ stackoverflow/ ebay. Googling for it is just a waste of
| time.
| kingTug wrote:
| It's gotten especially bad in the past few years. I had a minor
| health scare recently and found it incredibly difficult to find
| relevant search results given hundreds of different queries
| describing my condition.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The amount of health-related blogspam on Google is criminal,
| IMO. I've come across dozens of sites soliciting health
| advice, treatments, and "cures" that were not only not
| approved by the FDA, but weren't written, approved or edited
| by medical doctors at all.
|
| There are going to be sick or desperate people who follow
| that advice, or attempt to use those "cures", and some of
| them will be harmed because of it.
| Aicy wrote:
| Did you try using a different search engine?
| __david__ wrote:
| I believe you've got the cause and effect completely backwards.
| Someone that has a recipe site with no ads and no stories isn't
| in it for the money. In contrast, recipe sites with a ton of
| ads _solely exist_ for the ad revenue--the recipes are just
| there as bait.
|
| The difference is that the ad-laden sites spend 90% of their
| time getting their rankings up in google, the recipes are
| usually taken/copied from elsewhere and the big long stories
| are there to make the site look unique to Google, to fool it
| into thinking there's legitimate content there.
|
| In the end, _of course_ the person who spends all their time
| gaming Google is going to rank higher than someone who actually
| cares about their recipes and spends 90% of their time
| curating, experimenting, etc.
|
| It's a sad state of affairs, but spammers have ruined Google.
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