[HN Gopher] Wired has removed "How Google alters search queries"...
___________________________________________________________________
Wired has removed "How Google alters search queries" story
Author : r721
Score : 427 points
Date : 2023-10-07 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| haunter wrote:
| Labeling anti-bigtech leftists with conspiracy theory is not a
| good outlook either. I bet the HN liebling Cory Doctorow will
| write another tweet-eassay about this [0]
|
| 0, https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1709221318284173443?s=46
| thinkingemote wrote:
| archive from when it was up: https://archive.ph/kmhqs
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| If you find that blocked, the Internet Archive also took a
| snapshot:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231002123815/https://www.wired...
| workingdog wrote:
| [flagged]
| bushbaba wrote:
| I think many googlers will also confirm that google can and
| does edit and filter the search results returned. Heck just see
| DMCA takedown requests amongst other areas.
|
| This is nothing more than google legal taking action to shore
| up their defense.
| brookst wrote:
| If you're accusing them of lying, it would be nice if you
| brought evidence.
| gmerc wrote:
| Meta says they remove 95% of hatespeech and neglects the "of
| the 5% percent of hatespeech found" part in their public
| communication
|
| I thinks it's adequate to not accept anything at face value
| here.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Seems really strange to me to reject the notion of 'reading
| between the lines' when we know the motives of the company's
| leadership. We know they work with Google, we know they are
| interested in driving views and profits. Any interpretation
| that is consistent with their known motivations is worth
| considering.
|
| Some things just aren't feasible to collect evidence for. You
| would need access to their private communications to find
| evidence. So your basically giving a pass to any maleficence
| done in the dark.
| blowski wrote:
| Anyone can make "truthy" statements that sound plausible,
| and feed into an anti-business conspiracy. Without
| evidence, such comments are mostly noise.
| brookst wrote:
| Are you saying that the very lack of evidence for a
| conspiracy theory means it's probably true?
|
| People are free to believe what they choose to believe, but
| that doesn't seem like an especially well grounded
| worldview.
| rcstank wrote:
| It reads as more of an opinion than accusation. What's wrong
| with an opinion?
| ubertaco wrote:
| "It is my opinion that Wired is not a good source of news"
| -- opinion, expression of subjective epreference
|
| "It is my opinion that Wired is intentionally concealing a
| conspiracy behind closed doors for their own gain and the
| harm of the public" -- baseless conjecture about objective
| reality and conspiracy theory-spinning, that just happens
| to start with "it's my opinion that..."
|
| Conspiracy-mindedness (leading to viral spread of
| disinformation, and even to acts of violence and terrorism)
| has taken too much root in the modern psyche, hiding behind
| the stolen shield of "all opinions are valid", when in fact
| they are not statements of subjective opinion, but instead
| baseless assertions about objective reality.
| shkkmo wrote:
| There are zero wiggle words to indicate doubt or to frame
| the statement as an opinion.
| rcstank wrote:
| It's a comment on an Internet forum with the name of
| company written with a typo. Clearly an opinion comment.
| brookst wrote:
| Ah, so when I tell you the Chicago Beers defeated the
| Miami Saints 37-12 in last year's Super Bowl, it's not
| lying or even incorrect, it's obviously just an opinion?
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The default position when commenting something on the
| internet is that it is opinion (this comment included). I
| don't think it has to be stated explicitly.
| darklycan51 wrote:
| THEY are the ones that say that google has provided them
| "proof" I want to see that proof, else I have every right to
| call them liars.
| signatoremo wrote:
| What you are saying is that you are biased against Google.
| I doubt that you demand proof every time you see
| retraction, and that you consider the publisher liars if
| they don't show the proof. Right?
|
| Also, Wired didn't say the "proof" came from Google
| darklycan51 wrote:
| Yes if there is a retraction I want to see the source of
| it, else I will assume there was an ulterior motive for
| it.
| brookst wrote:
| And yet you'll happily accept the original article that
| did not have sourcing, because it aligns with your
| biases?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Would certainly have been smart to say why it got retracted
| instead of highlighting non-existent editorial standards back
| when it got published. "This article has been retracted because
| it was full of inaccuracies, with the author misunderstanding the
| very basics of ad matching".
| kevinh wrote:
| This tweet apparently shows the slide in question:
| https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| Isn't this the keyword rewrite that had existed for decades? I
| remember they showing us similar slides during orientation back
| when I first interned more than a decade ago. The
| transformation from "kids" to "children" or "clothing" to
| "apparel/outfit" improves search results by adding more
| potential hits.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I am willing to believe that, in this particular instance,
| there is no evil intent behind the rewrite of search terms.
|
| Having said that, the fact that Google goes back and forth on
| whether they respect the use of quotes to search for literal
| results doesn't make them any favors.
|
| If I wanted to do what the article claims Google did, I would
| do precisely what Google is doing. So no surprises there.
| cj wrote:
| > there is no evil intent
|
| I think the only way to know this is to understand whether
| google's rewrites also impact what ads are eligible to
| show.
|
| E.g. if 50 advertisers are bidding on "children apparel"
| and only 10 advertisers are bidding on "kids clothes", then
| rewriting to the query with more eligible ad impressions is
| misleading to both the user and the advertiser.
|
| Certain keywords are more profitable than others. Google
| knows this. One sure-fire guaranteed way to increase
| revenue is to reduce the % of long tail searches (since
| long tail searches typically have no ads at all) by
| modifying queries and swapping words around.
|
| If I were a desperate exec at Google, that's the first
| place I would look if I was in a crunch to boost revenue
| short-term.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Rewriting makes sense if they do the same thing to the
| material being searched. It has been obvious to me that
| the ads do more generic matching than the search results
| but I do not consider that to be evil.
|
| I just wish they would leave alone the modifiers we can
| apply to actual search results. (And, for Google
| Translate, allow specifying that adult results are
| acceptable. Normally, with a term that can be adult or
| not you only get non-adult results but it's easy enough
| to throw in an explicitly adult term to fix that.
| Throwing in extra terms doesn't work so well with
| translate--that means it's basically impossible to get
| the adult result for an ambiguous word. What's the dirty
| word for the male reproductive organ? English has no
| unambiguous word for this, thus the translation is
| impossible.)
| Qwertious wrote:
| >> there is no evil intent
|
| >I think the only way to know this is to understand
| whether google's rewrites also impact what ads are
| eligible to show.
|
| The other way to know is to ask Google directly (i.e. ask
| the company, not the search engine) and for them to
| explain what they're doing and why, in the name of
| transparency. Google could do that. They won't, but they
| could.
| gretch wrote:
| > for them to explain what they're doing and why, in the
| name of transparency. Google could do that. They won't,
| but they could.
|
| Isn't their entire slide deck doing just that? Explaining
| what happens and why?
|
| Sounds like they didn't give the answer you are looking
| for, so you choose to ignore it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's become more and more aggressive and dumber - it'll take
| "bicycle" and happily return results about motorcycles, for
| example - which is fucking useless. If I'm searching for
| "metal bicycle fender", I don't fucking want results about
| motorcycles.
|
| At some point they went even further and started doing it
| even when the words were quoted.
| gniv wrote:
| Make sure you turn on the Verbatim option from the Tools
| menu.
| dasil003 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| The submitted URL was
| https://twitter.com/maldr0id/status/1710625763534201117 but I
| suppose we might as well change it to the page it's pointing to.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but it sure seems like this
| is for ad retrieval, if anything- not search results.
|
| I've never seen a set of search results that felt like a
| different search.
|
| My issue with Google results stems from them being low quality.
| Like all the stack overflow and GitHub issue clone sites before
| the real results.
|
| I don't think this is wired getting bought or bullied- I think
| the author was mistaken and they retracted the story.
|
| Google serving specific ads and optimizing that algorithm to
| maximize profit is expected imo
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| > I've never seen a set of search results that felt like a
| different search.
|
| They'll certainly ignore search terms, modifiers like quotation
| marks, and so on. If the result looks like what you meant to
| search for, that means they're doing their job right I suppose,
| but they are definitely only using your literal query as a
| suggestion.
|
| (I did not get to read the original article, I have no idea if
| this comment of mine is off the mark with respect to the claims
| of that article)
| Thorrez wrote:
| Can you give an example of Google ignoring quotation marks?
| I've seen this claim many times on HN but I've never seen a
| link showing it happening.
|
| Disclosure: I work at Google but not on Search.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You may be right!
|
| Since I don't use Google search much anymore, and have my
| search history turned off anyway, I can't recall any
| specific examples from my own life. So, I searched and
| found internet threads like this one:
|
| https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/144207/google-
| fo...
|
| Where the complaint is that searching for "map accuracy"
| (in quotes) results in pages without that literal string in
| them, implying that Google is ignoring the quotes to give
| the user what it thinks is a better list of results.
|
| But, when I try to duplicate this three year old problem, I
| can't replicate it, at least not on the first page of
| results.
|
| And when I try to contrive my own example, searching for a
| literal phrase that would not exist in any web document (an
| example: "He beheld nonlinear radish-scented vestments")
| there are 0 results, which is exactly what I'd expect if
| Google was obeying the quotation marks.
|
| So, this is probably not true anymore, and you've got me
| doubting my memory now, but I am still fairly certain that
| it has happened to many on multiple occasions. /shrug
| 93po wrote:
| Google behaves differently for different users and trying
| to replicate a single user's issue is probably never
| going to be fruitful
| Thorrez wrote:
| I believe it's always been the case that quotes work.
| Here are 3 possible explanations for what you remember:
|
| Google search will return results that match the quoted
| query only through invisible text. So you you might get a
| result that seems to not contain your text, but if you
| check the source code or the DOM, the text will be there,
| hidden.
|
| When checking for equality, search will ignore certain
| punctuation and HTML. So your text might not be there
| exactly, but once punctuation is stripped, it's there.
|
| In the time between Google crawling the page and you
| viewing it, the page may have been edited.
|
| That SO example may be a case of the 2nd reason. For
| example a page saying <title>Map
| Accuracy</title> <p>Map accuracy is a measure
| of...
|
| technically contains the text "accuracy map" once you
| strip out HTML and normalize whitespace and case.
| rockskon wrote:
| So why did they take the article down as opposed to only
| appending the note at the end of the article like they've done
| elsewhere?
|
| It's long been rumored that Google coerces news outlets to
| publish (or not publish) certain topics lest they find
| themselves downranked or missing from search queries for a
| while or get penalized with adsense.
|
| With the _removal_ of an article besmearching Google, I begin
| to wonder if there 's any truth to those rumors.
| mst wrote:
| The article seemed very strange to me, so I'm not surprised
| it's been pulled.
|
| (my overriding thought as I read it being "I'm sure google
| does assorted morally dubious things in this area but this
| really doesn't seem like their style of evil, and I suspect
| the article is either a misrepresentation or mistaken")
| rockskon wrote:
| My point is that it's highly unusual for a news outlet to
| outright remove an article as opposed to editing it and
| giving a note explaining why. Or a note saying the article
| is not accurate but leaving it up for historical purposes.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Because in this case, the _entire premise_ of the article was
| wrong. You're welcome to wonder all you like, but in this
| case the obvious answer is the correct one. The author (Megan
| Gray) wrote a bad piece because she misunderstood how a
| technology worked, leaving Wired no choice but to take it
| down. Read the article, come to your own conclusion.
|
| https://archive.ph/3a0wY#selection-715.112-715.649
|
| When I read that I was floored - not because I expected even
| remotely that it might be true, but because I couldn't
| believe just how far Wired's quality bar had fallen. It
| doesn't read like a piece written by someone who's familiar
| with how the internet works.
| sowbug wrote:
| The most likely explanation for the original article's false
| premise is that the author had a sketchy extension installed,
| similar to the ones that inject an affiliate code into every
| Amazon link.
| abxytg wrote:
| The article was obviously horseshit -- and I hate google. But if
| your search for "running clothes" was getting replaced with
| "addidas running clothes" you would see clearly in the results.
| Degraded as it is, I still get results that include the specific
| words I searched in most situations. That type of replacement
| would be immediately and obviously apparent.
| [deleted]
| spankalee wrote:
| The author read the slide wrong.
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| Havoc wrote:
| Google's rebuttal [0] seems incredibly weak.
|
| >replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't.
|
| How is injecting names of brands (that likely advertise) like "tj
| maxx" not monetizing better?
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061
| eli wrote:
| That story is extremely thinly sourced and shouldn't have been
| published. But once published I really disagree with the decision
| to delete it.
|
| If you publish an article you have an obligation to archive it.
| Put a huge flashing disclaimer on the top of you must, but people
| should be able to read it on your site.
|
| Removal is going to needlessly fuel conspiracy theories. It
| increases the power of the original story. You'd think wired
| would understand that.
| thrillgore wrote:
| Nah, this is totally a normal retraction.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's an article that summarizes the issue:
|
| https://www.seroundtable.com/google-deletes-queries-replace-...
|
| Personally, I dislike this approach by Google (from their
| response):
|
| > "It's no secret that Google Search looks beyond the specific
| words in a query to better understand their meaning, in order to
| show relevant organic results. This is a helpful process that
| we've written about many times."
|
| This is patronizing, manipulative, and condescending - and
| 'organic'? They've also been boosting low-quality corporate media
| outlets to the top of their search rankings for some years now
| (Youtube search is far, far worse incidentally), as well - part
| of this 'daddy knows best' mentality, I'm sure.
|
| Google does provide a 'verbatim' option under its tools heading
| but this is incompatible with time-restricted searching, although
| perhaps not on the advanced search page. Practically I find that
| to get what I want from Google (search results from a broad range
| of sources) you have to jump through many hoops and write
| complicated queries for no reason other than to avoid their
| enshittification defaults, and that's a time-consuming process.
|
| It makes Kagi look more and more attractive, certainly - the
| time-saving alone might be worth the monthly fee.
| r721 wrote:
| >EDITOR'S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How
| Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant
| material provided to us following its publication, WIRED
| editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet
| our editorial standards. It has been removed.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-...
|
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740425 (4
| days ago, 119 comments)
| buran77 wrote:
| > relevant material provided to us
|
| Sure would be nice if the material was provided to us too. Or
| write an article explaining clearly how the original info was
| misconstrued. Simply deleting it (edit: instead of replacing it
| with a clarification so anyone who goes to read the wrong info
| gets the corrected one) really sends a wrong message, both
| about Wired and Google.
| pierat wrote:
| [flagged]
| ludwik wrote:
| Or maybe simply "the information is demonstrably untrue and
| we can prove it"?
| pierat wrote:
| That's the nice way to cheat with AI. It takes a
| probabilistic set of inquiries to discern the truth.
|
| And right now, I'm in my states capitol, looking for a
| restaurant... Using Google maps. And when I searched for
| restaurants, was given an advertised 'optimized' curated
| set of restaurants. And within walking distance, they're
| missing easily half of the restaurants.
|
| Now, which half are they missing? The small one-off
| places just aren't here on a search. HOWEVER, if you zoom
| in all the way, then those less-indexed restaurants
| FINALLY show up.
|
| I'm sitting in 1 of those deindexed eateries right now.
| So yeah, the article's true and has been for a while now.
| granzymes wrote:
| The relevant material was almost certainly the slide that the
| article was mischaracterizing:
| https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061
|
| I wish WIRED had included this context in their retraction
| statement...
| r721 wrote:
| Maybe they meant a longer version of this tweet:
|
| https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802302)
| tyingq wrote:
| _" The organic (IE: non-sponsored) results you see in
| Search are not affected by our ads systems."_
|
| Uh, other than being pushed off the visible page, I guess?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Yep. It's obvious that they design for you to click ads,
| but it was fairly rocky suggesting that the backend
| reaches out to the ad system. This wouldn't just destroy
| results, but also run afoul of FCC Ad disclosure
| requirements.
| zo1 wrote:
| So is no one questioning that maybe the search subsystem
| talks to the "website score" (or whatever it's called in
| Google-speak), to determine if it's relevant? And perhaps
| that score is influenced by how many valid ads there are.
|
| Maybe the score is simply highly-correlated with a site
| that shows many google ads? Think about it, someone that
| shows Google ads happens to also be very very keen on
| optimizing everything that affects their rankings in
| Google searches.
|
| Hey Google, perhaps "displaying many Google ads" should
| be a negative on page-rank?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Regardless, the Wired piece had no evidence and didn't
| make a claim on the same basis as what you're suggesting.
| The opinion author mistook this feature by thinking it
| applied to organic results:
| https://support.google.com/google-
| ads/answer/10286719?hl=en
| jppittma wrote:
| People don't click on or look at anything past the top 5
| results anymore. They just refine the query.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's a very fair point, and I've complained about that
| degradation on Google many, many times over the years on
| HN, but I also don't think that's what Google was
| responding to. The Wired article has been taken down, but
| I'm assuming it was arguing that Google would change
| organic results to get more ad clicks. Google is saying
| here that ad results and organic results are 2
| independent, orthogonal systems.
|
| Again, your point is one I strongly agree with, but it's
| also taken out-of-context with respect to the article
| Google was responding to.
| tyingq wrote:
| I think there's also a case for neglecting the quality of
| organics, while investing highly in the quality of ad
| targeting. So it's not quite as twirling-mustachio
| villain feeling, it has roughly the same effect.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The 'visible page' isn't a finite length.
| matt74827289 wrote:
| It's not fixed, but it is finite. No infinite sized
| screen exists
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If they mean it's forced off the screen, not the page,
| that makes sense.
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm not sure what point you're making. Is it just that I
| didn't say _" currently visible portion of the page, the
| part you see without deliberate scrolling"_?
|
| Or, I guess _" below the fold"_
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The relevant information: Google's legal team
| [deleted]
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| For context, the WIRED op-ed was written by a DuckDuckGo
| executive. I can certainly imagine the incentive there for DDG
| to misrepresent Google's behavior (and as I was reading the
| article, most of it struck me as speculation more than
| anything).
|
| ETA: Okay, weird. The op-ed itself made it sound like she was a
| current DDG executive, but her LinkedIn profile states that she
| no longer works there (and is more or less self-employed now).
| No idea how to interpret that.
|
| In any case, she was DDG's legal counsel and VP of policy for
| three years.
| [deleted]
| Rastonbury wrote:
| In the article, it stated she was an ex-DDG employee
| yegg wrote:
| This person is not employed by DuckDuckGo. They formerly
| worked there, and not for a couple of years. We had nothing
| to do with this op-ed.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Mere employment does not negate that the person might still
| have financial incentives tied to DDG. If anything, they
| might be concealed better and are MORE likely they can
| publish with conflict of interest, without legal risk.
| whycome wrote:
| You're right. And on the other hand, someone with passion
| and knowledge about the domain will likely be working for
| one of its major players at some point.
| Angostura wrote:
| Are claiming that the author still _does_ have financial
| links to DDG? That 's quite an accusation.
| frde wrote:
| Is it such a ridiculous idea that a former executive
| might have stock options or some kind of lingering
| financial stake? Worth at least investigating.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| With laser precise specificity, what - exactly - are you
| inferring she did?
| labster wrote:
| Beware isolated demands for rigor
| lazide wrote:
| Including this one?
|
| We don't know, but it does seem like a reasonable
| suspicion?
|
| Little DDG would necessarily have to do with it either.
| [deleted]
| xnx wrote:
| Kudos to everyone in the original thread on this article who
| immediately pointed out how confused and wrong this article was.
| It heartens me to that Wired recognized this and retracted the
| article.
| justinclift wrote:
| https://nitter.net/maldr0id/status/1710625763534201117
| steve-atx-7600 wrote:
| Wired who?
| curiousObject wrote:
| Here's a quick summary of the main points, I copied from the
| deleted Wired article [0].
|
| Something important about it is this article, by Megan Gray was
| in Wired's _Opinion_ section which usually means the writer has
| more freedom to express their own opinions, and Wired does not
| claim this it is accurate reporting. But still it was removed.
|
| _How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet_
|
| Testimony during Google's antitrust case revealed that the
| company may be altering billions of queries a day to generate
| results that will get you to buy more stuff.
|
| RECENTLY, A STARTLING piece of information came to light in the
| ongoing antitrust case against Google. During one employee's
| testimony, a key exhibit momentarily flashed on a projector ...
| [1]
|
| This onscreen Google slide had to do with a "semantic matching"
| overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you enter a query, you might
| expect a search engine to incorporate synonyms into the algorithm
| as well as text phrase pairings in natural language processing.
| But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to
| generate more commercial results ...
|
| The "10 blue links," or organic results, which Google has always
| claimed to be sacrosanct, are just another vector for Google
| greediness ...
|
| Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions
| of different variations. Here's how it works. Say you search for
| "children's clothing." Google converts it, without your
| knowledge, to a search for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear," making a
| behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a
| different query that just happens to generate more money for the
| company, and will generate results you weren't searching for at
| all ...
|
| [0] Complete article here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802265
|
| [1] A link to the actual slide, that she saw. This image was
| supplied later by Google apparently -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802302
|
| Edit: my opinion is Google should respond to the accusations.
| Removal of the article without a detailed explanation looks real
| bad for Google and also for Wired
| tqi wrote:
| They did respond:
| https://x.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297?s=46&...
|
| Google doesn't get to decide what Wired does with content on
| its site.
| xvector wrote:
| X as a website needs to go. It's wild that readers can "add
| context" that's patently false or misinformative, and then X
| will portray this as meaningful. If I was Google, I'd just
| delete all index links to X: _" Did you mean 'Threads'?"_
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| Holy shit, this article is such garbage.
|
| And not only is it incorrect, it is _obviously_ incorrect. The
| website owners do not pay Google for clicks on the "10 blue
| [organic] links"; so it gives Google no business advantage to
| make them more commercial.
| cma wrote:
| Since they have an ad monopoly they have incentive to link
| you to stuff that shows ads, which will in all likelihood be
| their's. Spammy medical sites with google-run pill ads vs the
| wikipedia page for the thing you searched for (often not even
| on the first page anymore for medical terms).
| 93po wrote:
| The author is not saying that. They're saying google
| manipulates what those 10 links are to generate more money
| (bc of reasons like those sites serve more google ads).
| blowski wrote:
| I don't understand how Google makes more money if I click on
| the organic links.
| lozenge wrote:
| I think they're implying that the sites get higher ranking if
| they are commercial- ie they display ads from Google. It
| still makes no sense though.
| curiousObject wrote:
| The implication is that you're being unwittingly _directly_
| channeled to certain sellers sites, instead of to sites that
| link to various sellers, I guess.
|
| So the path to a potential sale is shorter and you're more
| likely to buy (less time to get decision fatigue), and
| certain vendors might be prioritized.
|
| I think that's what she is implying
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| That sounds like an accurate summary of what she's
| implying, but her implication makes no sense. Levi's
| doesn't pay Google for directing people to their site
| (unless it's through an ad, of course).
| 93po wrote:
| I am positive Levi's pays for ads on google and google
| has incentives to show increased sales for Levi's as a
| result of that advertising
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| (1) Why? Ads are charged per click/impression, not per
| sale.
|
| (2) How would you feasibly create a link between every
| brand who advertises with you and every brand whose site
| you're trying to uprank? What happens when two different
| brands who advertise with you appear in the same results?
|
| (3) Most importantly, is there any proof at _all_ that
| Google is upranking organic links on behalf of brands who
| advertise with them? (I don 't think there is.)
| thayne wrote:
| Because google is also a broker for ads on many other sites.
| So there is an incentive to prefer sites that use google's
| ads products.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Good. I was immediately skeptical[0] of such a huge claim. A lot
| of you were not, and I hope you use this opportunity to adjust
| your BS metres.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740425
| lubujackson wrote:
| Not a great optics.
|
| Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a
| decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job.
| The main vector I look at is how much control does the user have
| over the results they see? That has been in decline at least
| since Google+ took away the + operator.
|
| Remember "did you mean" results? Now we get "let's assume you
| meant" with fewer and fewer ways to force "actually I did
| mean..." This is the obvious trajectory for any corp that needs
| to show quarter over quarter growth for 20+ years, at some point
| you hollow out from the middle until the whole thing collapses.
| mahkoh wrote:
| >Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a
| decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job.
|
| Everyone knows this? GOOG stock is near an all time high with
| search being more than 50% of its revenue.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The stock price is a number representing the recent bets on
| its future price. It really doesn't tell much more than that.
| philistine wrote:
| A stock price does not mean that everything the company is
| doing is perfect. It can reasonably mean << their search is
| getting worse but they've found very good ways to make more
| money from worse search so I'm very happy and will buy more
| stock>>.
| dubcanada wrote:
| A few things.
|
| 1. GOOGL is the voting share stock ticker, not GOOG. GOOG is
| nothing more than class c shares.
|
| 2. Search as a line item is more than 50%, but search is not
| searching, searching itself provides not much value, ads are
| where Google makes its money.
|
| 3. A stock being near all time high has no indication that
| it's a company that is "swirling the tank". Often a stock
| does not decrease until after a series of bad
| earnings/negative outlook. But with that said, there is no
| evidence at the moment that Google is not doing great.
| billjings wrote:
| This discussion is partly about how Google alters search
| results to increase revenue. It would stand to reason that
| they might also improve their stock price and search revenue
| by doing this, while also degrading search quality.
|
| As for why their market share has not degraded as a result,
| it is likely that the folks currently prosecuting Google for
| antitrust violations have the best argument for why this
| might be so.
| failbuffer wrote:
| I remember when you could query Google for x and it would
| simply say it didn't have any results for x. It was such a
| great feeling to get a frank, honest reply instead of being
| bullshitted with results that didn't have x in then.
| mynameishere wrote:
| My favorite is when you fight and fight and fight, looking
| for something and then you _finally_ manage to narrow the
| results down to what you wanted, and it says (right above the
| correct result):
|
| "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your
| search"
|
| Good job, Goog!
|
| I remember when it was new, and one of the killer features
| was the dead-simple "innovation" of having AND searches
| instead of OR. To this day, I think that any search engine
| that _queried based upon the exact provided search terms_
| would eat their lunch. Probably not, but I would like it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Google search is optimized to deliver more ads. Providing
| the result you want quickly is against this.
| justinclift wrote:
| > I think that any search engine that queried based upon
| the exact provided search terms would eat their lunch.
|
| Kagi is probably what you're looking for then. :)
|
| https://kagi.com
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm not sure how the search engine you suggest would filter
| out noise. There is just an ocean of generated content that
| exists out there filled with just about every string you
| could imagine that attempts to get you to click on a link
| so they can show an ad.
|
| The modern internet is full of hot garbage.
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| Any page with ads, remove it from the results. I'm not
| saying this would in any way be in Google's interest, but
| I'd love to see a search engine that did this.
| cgriswald wrote:
| > I'm not sure how the search engine you suggest would
| filter out noise.
|
| This seems orthogonal to the suggestion. Presumably the
| search engine would still filter out noise.
|
| However, even if the other poster means they want the raw
| internet as well, there's no technical limitations
| preventing search engines from offering a 'filtered' or
| 'raw' option. They already offer filters based on what
| you're looking for (books, news) or to exclude explicit
| results.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What do you mean, you remember?
|
| It still does that now if you put your search terms in
| quotes.
| 0xdada wrote:
| This happened to me yesterday, I don't remember the query but
| I remember I was quite surprised because it never happens.
| Turns out I misspelled a brand/product name by one letter -
| Funny enough, I would have wanted them to correct my query in
| this case.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Would you rather have "There are no results for Hurricane
| Karina" than "Here are results for Hurricane Katrina"?
| Honestly..
| flutas wrote:
| I'd rather have "no results for 'hurricane Karina' did you
| mean 'Hurricane Katrina'?"
|
| If you assume something ("oh they meant X not Y", then when
| your assumption is wrong you (Google) just look stupid.
| vkou wrote:
| You would. I, and most other people using the Internet on
| a crappy mobile keyboard wouldn't.
|
| Fortunately, for you, there's a link you can click on
| that will force the query using your precise search
| terms, on every auto-corrected search page.
|
| You still get what you want, it's just not the default.
| And it shouldn't be the default.
| salawat wrote:
| >I, and most other people using the Internet on a crappy
| mobile keyboard wouldn't.
|
| Sounds like your problem is crappy UI enforced through
| attempts to minimize production cost at the expense of
| enabling the use of the human processing medium to
| effectively integrate with an electronic device.
|
| My error rate typing on mobile skyrocketed with the loss
| of haptic feedback.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| The current behavior shows results for hurricane katrina,
| with a reasonably prominent link to search hurricane
| karina. Given (I'm assuming) is empirical evidence that
| the former was the intent a huge majority of the time,
| what's unreasonable about this?
| xnx wrote:
| It's also a fair perspective to have "If Google knew what
| I meant, why didn't they just show me those results and
| save me the click?"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Because Google doesn't know that I think, it's an an
| unfair perspective to pretend/assume it does.
|
| When it acts as if I'm wrong, it's wrong.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Are you open to the idea that most people disagree with
| you and prefer a system that _does_ do these things?
| soraminazuki wrote:
| That's what the "did you mean" links were for.
|
| Though Google PR is brings up "relevant ads" every time
| they're criticized for cyberstalking, they seem to care
| less about relevant search results. They insist on
| showing me pages upon pages of links that completely
| disregards my search queries.
| dotcoma wrote:
| Or in bad faith.
| Wertulen wrote:
| Yes, if I earnestly meant to search for Hurricane Karina.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Absolutely. Without question.
|
| It's a computer, that's what they're supposed to do.
| Precision and determinism is what makes them great.
|
| This is like saying if you had say, a pocket calculator but
| hit a key at an incidental angle and the calculator then
| presumed you meant the next number over and gave you that
| answer instead. It's incorrect - that's not what computers
| are supposed to do.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _that 's not what computers are supposed to do._
|
| Not that I disagree with your calculator example, but
| "what computers are supposed to do" changed radically
| when AlphaGo hit the scene, changed some more with
| ChatGPT, and will rapidly become a meaningless notion
| going forward.
|
| We don't have to like it, but we do have to accept it.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > _It 's a computer, that's what they're supposed to do.
| Precision and determinism is what makes them great._
|
| > _This is like saying if you had say, a pocket
| calculator but hit a key at an incidental angle and the
| calculator then presumed you meant the next number over
| and gave you that answer instead. It 's incorrect -
| that's not what computers are supposed to do._
|
| This deserves wide consideration. (Replying because
| hidden upvotes can't convey that.)
| 0ct4via wrote:
| Yes and no -- yes, theoretically the output should only
| be based on the input - if you input 1+3 instead of 1+2,
| the answer given should be 4, not 3.
|
| Optimization exists though, and an interface and search
| algorithm isn't a simple calculator. Suggesting the
| correct term when you misspell or mistype something _is_
| precision -- it 's both identifying the lack of results
| for your erroneous input, and suggesting the correct
| input to get the result you're most likely searching for.
|
| That's literally the point of optimization. If Search was
| still the same as it was in the late 90's, Google
| wouldn't be able to do half the things it does.
|
| Are you going to make similar gripes about autocomplete,
| or GPS that reroutes when you fail to make the
| planned/"correct" turn?
|
| Comparing an intelligent and contextual search interface
| and result, with simple arithmetic, is a patently false
| analogy.
| kristopolous wrote:
| > That's literally the point of optimization. If Search
| was still the same as it was in the late 90's, Google
| wouldn't be able to do half the things it does.
|
| That'd be great. The newer half of it is terrible.
|
| > Are you going to make similar gripes about
| autocomplete, or GPS that reroutes when you fail to make
| the planned/"correct" turn?
|
| Absolutely valid. I never use autocomplete as it is vapid
| and incorrect. Also I don't use gps routing because it
| does this. This is not how I want to engage with the
| machine.
|
| I'll use the maps and I will see the suggestion but I
| don't have it turn on to the guidance mode where it
| "smart" rotates and "smart" zooms around the screen
| ignoring my input and I have the voice disabled entirely.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'd rather get "there are 10 results for bicycle clowns
| NYC" than a bunch of hits for clowns on motorcycles in NYC.
|
| Google has been steadily increasing its "fuziness" to the
| point that it considers words like "motorcycle" and
| "bicycle" synonyms. It's made it more and more difficult to
| get the results you're looking for.
|
| They even do it to search terms you put in quotes.
| techdragon wrote:
| This fuzziness is slowly getting worse in my opinion. I
| notice it seems like Google had gotten more and more
| willing to assume unrelated words/concepts are
| sufficiently interchangeable that it can happily return
| both in a search query for either ... and I'll be honest
| here... single behaviour is the number one reason I'm on
| the edge of leaving google search forever... doing a
| takeout export of my gmail and fucking the hell off to
| only using iCloud for personal and Microsoft 365 for work
| and professional...
|
| Google's continued erosion of their core user facing
| product "search" (the real core product is advertising
| but that's not the majority of people interacting with
| google are interacting with google for... and an argument
| could be made that googles only real product customers
| care about anymore is YouTube but the quality of that
| experience fluctuates wildly depending on how stupid they
| are being any particular day due to asinine policies and
| abusive relationships where they seem to desperately want
| to destroy the goodwill of the creators that upload
| content like it's some kind of fetish and they just have
| to know the creators hate them otherwise the job of
| working at YouTube isn't satisfying...) is indicative of
| a complete failure to care about the core competency of
| the company... and companies that fail to care about
| their core competency are rotting hulks doomed to die...
| noqc wrote:
| >AI will likely finish the job
|
| The SEO attack surface is functionally infinite for AI, and I'm
| not sure how any search engine is supposed to be good and also
| have revenue. The only way to make money is to get people to
| give it to you, and it's hard to imagine a world in which
| either a) people will pay for the right to use a search engine
| or b) companies will pay you to rank them fairly.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The main vector I look at is how much control does the user
| have over the results they see?
|
| This has been the trend in so much technology and I think
| that's why there's such a slow, grinding, complete distrust of
| Silicon Valley going on. When all this stuff was new and
| interesting, you did a Google search to _find stuff._
| Sometimes, by law of probability, that stuff was indeed
| something you wanted to buy. Now, all queries are subject to
| change so they can put a product that paid them for exposure in
| front of you, completely irrespective to if that product is
| relevant to your search or will solve a problem for you. Social
| media feeds used to be a chronological timeline of things your
| friends posted; now they are a selection, made by an algorithm
| you cannot interrogate, of the "most interesting" (judged on
| metrics you do not set and have no control over) things your
| friends have posted. Some of them today, some six weeks ago.
| And, between nearly all of them... is a product that paid for
| exposure, that is probably at least tangentially related to
| things you're interested in, but could not be, and more
| importantly, _was not requested._
|
| And, if you make the terrible, awful mistake of browsing any of
| these sites without an account, prepare for an absolute
| _FIREHOSE_ of the worst, crummiest, most exploitative, total
| and complete bottom-of-the-barrel content, the widest possible
| net designed to ensnare anyone who passes by to watch a
| marketing grad in his 30 's give 500 people in the developing
| world dental care, or whatever the fuck, set to copyright free
| music with as many ad placements as they can stuff into the
| thing.
|
| Increasingly the Internet is not _for us,_ it is certainly not
| _by us,_ it is simply where you go when you are bored, the only
| remaining third place that people reliably have access to, and
| in true free market fashion, it is wall-to-wall exploitation.
| People selling their bodies because they can 't get access to
| enough money to live, people desperately trying to sell things
| they've made because time cannot be utilized anymore without a
| financial benefit if you want to remain solvent, and of course,
| massive corporations posting billboards large enough to cover
| the sky, in every direction, every place. A new spot springs
| up, a new gathering spot that promises to be better, and it
| gains traction because everyone is so sick of the rest of it,
| and then in short order once enough people frequent it, the ads
| go up, the beggars appear, your friends are hidden behind a
| cylinder of recommended bullshit that surrounds you, and it
| joins the cavalcade of endless irrelevant nonsense that makes
| up the spaces you fled, just in time for the next one to pop up
| nextdoor promising it won't do the same.
|
| God I am sick of the Internet.
|
| Also apologies for the tangent.
| wslh wrote:
| > Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a
| decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job
|
| I think that's their hypothesis either. I don't think it is a
| coincidence that we are seeing more lines of ads in search
| results than ever. They are squeezing the cash cow. I don't
| think this observation is subjective but could depend on your
| location, do you observe the same?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i see this as a failure of the marketing machine worrying too
| much about what people think rather than how to make money
| cma wrote:
| + was simply replace with "". A very minor syntax change. The
| other stuff about wildly assuming you meant some unrelated,
| usually commercial, stuff though I agree with.
| MightyBuzzard wrote:
| [dead]
| postmodest wrote:
| [flagged]
| whb101 wrote:
| Three words: the Streisand effect
| johnasmith wrote:
| The article conflated ad selection and search query results.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Well, why not - Google intends the user to conflate ads with
| search query results.
| johnasmith wrote:
| That's a fine argument to make, but the article didn't.
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| That is their business model
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Ad impression can be dependent on search query, if they modify
| query to show ads, they make money they otherwise wouldn't have
| and worsen results
| nickphx wrote:
| google is an advertising company, not a search engine provider. i
| would expect them to behave in a manner to increase advertising
| revenue.
| 99_00 wrote:
| When you print a magazine or newspaper space is limited. Lower
| quality content is cut.
|
| With web publishing there is no cap on space. You can throw up
| garbage that wouldn't have made it as a letter to the editor.
|
| And if it gets clicks the temptation to give it a higher and
| higher profile on the landing page is likely too great to resist.
| lozenge wrote:
| Any way to make this stay up as long as the original?
| granzymes wrote:
| For context, here is the slide from the trial that the article
| was referencing:
| https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061
|
| The author appears to have gotten the slide exactly backwards.
| She said the slide showed a query of "children's clothing" that
| Google rewrites to be a "Nikolia kidswear" query so that it can
| sell more ads. But in reality, the slide is describing a fuzzy
| keyword matching system that takes a query of "Nikolia kidswear"
| and allows it to match ads with "children's clothing" keywords.
|
| I'm surprised WIRED allowed such an obviously incorrect article
| to be published in the first place, particularly when it was by a
| known partisan (the article discloses that the author is a former
| Duck Duck Go executive with an obvious bias).
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Wired has been a dumpster for quite some time. A low quality
| article like this getting published is entirely on brand.
| listmaking wrote:
| More precisely, the slide shows, for an advertiser who is
| bidding on the keywords "+kids +clothing" and has this sort of
| broad match enabled, three columns of examples of searches that
| would also match:
|
| 1. (because of [kids - children]) ads with keywords "+kids
| +clothing" would also match searches like "clothing for young
| child" and "newborn children's clothing"
|
| 2. (because of [kids clothing - kidswear]) ads with keywords
| "+kids +clothing" would also match searches like "nikolai
| kidswear" and "kidswear outlet"
|
| 3. (because of [clothing - apparel / outlet]) ads with keywords
| "+kids +clothing" would also match searches like "creative
| apparel for kids" and "kids outfits"
|
| That is what the slide's title ("Advertisers benefit via
| closing recall gaps") refers to: the gaps in recall (matching)
| are being closed, by being broader.
|
| The WIRED article misunderstood the slide, and was entirely
| based on the premise that if you searched for "children's
| clothing" you'd get results for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" which
| is not true (and would indeed have been "startling", not to
| mention obvious, if it were true). In fact, the organic (non-
| ads) part of the search results in Google are always completely
| independent of anything in ads, something that the Search team
| in Google have maintained for several decades as a fundamental
| principle.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| > In fact, the organic (non-ads) part of the search results
| in Google are always completely independent of anything in
| ads, something that the Search team in Google have maintained
| for several decades as a fundamental principle.
|
| Are you sure? There's an email from the ads team proposing
| multiple measures to increase the number of search queries so
| they can reach their target revenue. One of the mentioned
| measures include "ranking tweaks."
|
| https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416646.pdf
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| Jesus. Wow just wow.
|
| Yours should be the top comment
|
| Why are people not talking about this document more?
|
| "I also don't want the message to be we're doing this
| because the Ads team needs more revenue...but what is the
| best for Google overall?"
|
| Clearly, the ads team has influence over search to the
| point of saying more-or-less screw culture and team morale,
| let's do what's best for Google overall which is hitting
| our quarterly targets.
| listmaking wrote:
| Well, it's a line I've heard a few times over the years,
| and it's also being stated externally (https://twitter.com/
| searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297 says "The organic
| (IE: non-sponsored) results you see in Search are not
| affected by our ads systems.") so I'm fairly sure it's
| still true.
|
| That email thread you linked is between the Ads and Chrome
| (not Search) teams, is about the _number_ of search queries
| (not the _results_ of search queries), and "ranking tweaks"
| there refers to the ranking that Chrome uses to show the
| suggestions in the omnibox (address bar). (To get a sense
| of these "ranking tweaks", try this experiment in a (new?)
| Chrome profile with default settings: type "flowers" in
| the Chrome address bar and don't hit Enter, and look at the
| suggestions: what mix of search suggestions, entities, and
| bookmarks/history do you see? Try again with other
| commercial queries like "insurance" and "mortgage", and
| also some less commercial queries like, I don't know,
| "Minnesota" or "economics".)
|
| (And FWIW, I think that whole email thread actually shows
| Google in a "good" light relative to the popular impression
| here on HN as a company whose every action is some
| Machiavellian scheme to increase ads revenue: it shows that
| Chrome actually launched something to production before its
| negative impact on revenue became a concern, that Ads leads
| had to work hard to persuade them to either roll back or
| find some other way to undo the decrease in search query
| volume, that starting to include search query volume as a
| launch criterion would be a "cultural shift" for Chrome,
| etc: that Ads having an influence on Chrome is a rare
| occurrence.)
| antiterra wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| Was this piece marked as opinion or an editorial? Allowing 3rd
| party writers to publish isn't new, but back when we pretended
| we had standards, they were placed in an obvious part of the
| publication that it wasn't staff writers working within the
| normal flow of editorial process. i must be old, because a lot
| of my comments are now "used to be", "back when", "remember
| back when" type stories
| cma wrote:
| Yes it was marked editorial/opinion and said something like
| not the opinion of wired staff at the bottom.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Honestly, it just seems like something where somebody looked at
| it too quickly, got excited, and then didn't look a second
| time. They are probably an experienced writer so everyone
| approving it went "sounds great." Honest mistake, but a bad
| one, and very unprofessional.
|
| They retracted it so _shrug_
| spankalee wrote:
| It's not that either. Each column in the slide is independent,
| and it's only showing the rewritten queries.
|
| So it's showing "Nikolai kids clothing" being rewritten to
| "Nikolai kidswear".
| stathibus wrote:
| Unfortunately par for the course these days. At least they did
| remove the article. Citing "editorial standards" is weak sauce
| though, the point of having editorial standards is so they can
| be applied by the editor _before_ publication...
| omoikane wrote:
| > having editorial standards is so they can be applied by the
| editor before publication
|
| Maybe there were lots of articles that were never published
| due to editorial standards, but we only see the ones that
| slipped through.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > the point of having editorial standards is so they can be
| applied by the editor before publication...
|
| "Ain't nobody got time for that".
|
| The role of journalists is to provide facts, but the business
| model of media in the internet age is about "creating
| content" and "engagement" and they don't work well together
| ...
| vkou wrote:
| Even providing facts is a subjective, opinionated process.
| Which facts are provided, which are left out, which are
| contextualized, whether or not active or passive voice is
| used[1] and which are not can completely invert the meaning
| of a story.
|
| [1] 'The gun went off and the shot hit Mr. Smith's head'
| versus 'Officer Sloan shot Mr. Smith in the head.' [2]
|
| [2] Both of these are 'just the facts', but one of them
| blames the gun for going off, the other blames the person
| who made the gun go off. Passive voice versus active voice,
| very different presentation of the same facts, both are
| correct, and both are biased.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Even providing facts is a subjective, opinionated
| process.
|
| Yes, that's why you need press freedom with multiple
| point of views. But it is orthogonal to the point I was
| making.
| jrockway wrote:
| I have always found this to be a weird take from a forum
| largely populated by software people. Every piece of software
| I have ever used has been riddled with bugs and security
| defects. This despite the fact that we have dedicated sub-
| fields for both (security engineering / test engineering). So
| when a journalist notices a bug in their article and has to
| "retract a release", how is that not what we do every single
| day?
|
| I think you might just be disappointed in humanity, rather
| than any particular agency or person. Humans come together to
| get the right answer eventually; not multiple times a day,
| every day, without fail. Sometimes the software doesn't do
| what you want. Sometimes that article has a factual error.
| Eventually we figure it out. It's not the end of the world.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Retracting an article due to "editorial standards" is, to
| extend your analogy, like attributing the need for an
| emergency hotfix to "QA practices".
|
| Editorial standards should stop bad stories from being
| published. Saying "we retracted this story because it
| doesn't meet our editorial standards" begs the question
| "why are you publishing things that don't meet your
| editorial standards in the first place?"
|
| It doesn't take responsibility for or explain the mistakes
| in the article. It doesn't state that the article had
| factual errors. It's a frustrating cop-out. I sincerely
| hope this is a temporary measure while Wired gets a more
| comprehensive retraction put together.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| It's also an understandable mistake. The slide the GP
| mentioned doesn't provide a clear explanation and can be
| interpreted the way the original article did. It's no
| wonder multiple people didn't catch the mistake.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Isn't one of the key elements of ethical journalism that
| you need to ask the subject of your article for comments? I
| have a hard time believing they asked Google to comment on
| this piece and didn't get "that is categorically false and
| if you publish it you will be hearing from out attorney" as
| an answer. So I don't really see how this one got through
| unless they didn't ask for comments.
|
| This would be like the SWE equivalent of pushing to
| production without code review. It's not an excusable
| mistake like when a bug gets through.
| ankit219 wrote:
| In this case, it's probably justified to have gripes with
| the editors.
|
| They got an opinion piece with an extraordinary claim about
| something the writer saw in a slide presented at a trial.
| She wrote the entire article about it creating theories and
| then how it needs to be stopped. Not to mention, she had
| previously worked with a competitive search engine. The
| central piece of fact checking was seeing that slide, that
| would have been the second question after "Are you sure you
| saw something like that?". The entire article hinges on
| that one slide she saw and what she understood from it.
|
| This is not a case of missing a boundary condition. This is
| missing the central premise. At any level, it would be
| inexcusable.
|
| PS: In a sense, as the artifacts are becoming public, i
| think more such confusions would surface in the coming
| weeks where merely misunderstanding what is on the slide
| would lead to a lot of rumors. Probably best we have an
| initial case and some intuition that this can happen.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| I don't think you should derive a universal QA standard
| from specific release practices borne out of a specific
| risk/reward situation that depends on things like your
| particular business model or lack thereof.
|
| There's a wide spectrum of how fucked your software can be
| when you release it without it being a huge deal, like if I
| push a broken release for my hypothetical build system that
| jumbles the error messages a little that's probably fine,
| if I push a broken build of the google dot com landing page
| that's raising a few more sirens and I really shouldn't
| make a habit of it, if I deploy critically broken firmware
| to your pacemaker or your crewed rocket ship I should
| probably be exiled from the field. I imagine there's a
| similar spectrum for journalists and we can't really figure
| out where on the spectrum to the article from the OP should
| be with just analogies to a different field. Complaining
| about a trend of publications slipping towards the yolo'ier
| end of the spectrum doesn't seem on its face hypocritical.
| zo1 wrote:
| The same way we expect "QA" to pick up those bugs before
| release?
|
| Think about the opposite. Imagine we pickup a bug in a live
| application and update it citing "our QA standards". This
| magical word does not absolve us of the fact that we let a
| bug through to production. And it's implied that we'll do
| better next time to pick up this kind of bug.
| embik wrote:
| The post you are responding to is making the point that
| even though we have QA, dedicated jobs or even
| departments for these things ... We, as a profession,
| still fail in releasing bug-free software. And that's
| 100% correct.
|
| Is that really something you are challenging? Which
| pieces of popular software you can think of are bug-free?
| And are you thinking of more than a handful?
| zo1 wrote:
| They said "So when a journalist notices a bug in their
| article and has to "retract a release", how is that not
| what we do every single day?"
|
| And they themselves were responding to someone
| criticizing media for using "editorial standards" as an
| excuse when they "retract a release".
|
| And I explained how we are the same and supposedly strive
| to not release bad content/software, we just don't get to
| magically absolve fault with an excuse that "it doesn't
| meet our QA standards" as an analogy to "editorial
| standards".
|
| Anywho, the whole thing breaks down when we have to beat
| it with a stick. It's a discussion, assume a charitable
| interpretation.
| xvector wrote:
| Journalists suck. They pretend to be bearers of the truth,
| and yet go forth with horribly biased and inaccurate
| claims. Nothing like software which does not wield anywhere
| close to the same cultural power to control narratives as
| the news media.
| Exoristos wrote:
| A difference being software engineering is a laughingstock
| no one expects much of, while worldclass publishing has a
| past excellence against which it's still frequently judged.
| fallingknife wrote:
| People expect their software to work perfectly nearly all
| of the time. And for the most part, it does. So not
| really sure who you think these people are who think it's
| a laughingstock.
| balls187 wrote:
| I also misunderstood the point--but if I now read
| correctly--it's that to err is human, and something that
| we do as software developers _constantly_
| pdpi wrote:
| We also have the notion that fixing bugs at design time is
| easier than in dev, which is in turn easier than in prod.
|
| Publications can simultaneously be praised for "rolling
| back a bad build" while being criticised for letting that
| build roll out to prod in the first place.
| [deleted]
| diggan wrote:
| > At least they did remove the article
|
| Wouldn't it be better to add a correction at the top of the
| article instead of deleting it?
|
| Deleting it I'd think would just fuel (current or budding)
| conspiracy theorists, as they can point to something that
| existed but got removed, rather than something that got
| corrected.
|
| But in the end, it's probably a loosing battle anyway...
| Operyl wrote:
| Adding a correction at the top would just fuel (current or
| budding) conspiracy theorists, as they can point to
| something that was, in their eyes, forcibly corrected
| against WIRED's will.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| So instead they prove the conspiracy folks right that the
| media is willing to scrub proof of inaccurate reporting.
| Operyl wrote:
| The point I'm making is that no matter what you do, a
| conspiracy theorist is going to twist the narrative to
| fit their world view.
| generalizations wrote:
| Well, the world view in this case is 'the media lies' -
| and that's correct in this case (though it wasn't
| intentional).
| vkou wrote:
| Whereas the sources spoon-feeding them this attitude are,
| of course, unimpeachable. (They don't redact, or admit
| fault.)
|
| I generally find that anyone expecting error-free
| perfection in any subjective field from an entire
| industry can be safely dismissed as a complete idiot.
| Intelligent people look at the processes that produce
| outcomes, not the outcomes.
|
| (In this case, the process that produced the outcome was
| a former DDG employee mailing in an oped of incredibly
| questionable quality that criticized a DDG competitor,
| that was eventually pulled. Wired should look into
| reading op-eds before publishing them.)
| 0ct4via wrote:
| If they admit it's "inaccurate" / "does not meet [their]
| editorial standards" then it's hardly "scrubbing
| proof"...
|
| Admitting it was trash is proof of inaccurate reporting,
| whether they remove TFA or not
|
| As for the conspiracy folks, they'll think what they
| want, regardless of evidence presented to them. That's
| the whole point.
| zo1 wrote:
| Because journalism is not the way to solve this, and we
| all think that it will.
|
| The way to solve it is for "investigators" to get access
| to said source code and give us an honest assessment. Get
| someone neutral, get NDAs in place, have them look at the
| source in an air-gapped clean room, anonymize DB access,
| etc etc.
|
| Instead we go around in circles. Journalism at the end of
| the day then becomes "we got some info that points to X,
| but we have no proof, and we won't look for it. We'll
| just wait till someone, somewhere, at some point, who
| knows when, finds some proof and puts it out in the
| public, only then will we say it's conclusive. Until
| then, you all go nuts, especially the conspiracy
| theorists. Don't worry, we'll ride this gravy train and
| report on those nut jobs too!".
|
| It's a mess, and I'm not at all surprised that
| conspiracy-theorists have a field day with it.
|
| Hey, let's get a bounty up so that a whistle-blower from
| Google comes forward. Maybe Mozilla foundation can take
| some of that sweet sweet endowment they use for "Social
| Justice" and pony up to fund this investigative effort.
| After all they claim to be fighting for a free internet.
| I'd say this is a much better use of money than paying
| random DEI consultancies huge speaking fees.
| granzymes wrote:
| Whether they removed the article or not, I think it's
| ridiculous that WIRED didn't explain _why_ the article was
| retracted.
|
| They should have mentioned 1) what the article got wrong
| and 2) that the article was written by a former Duck Duck
| Go executive who should know better.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Ya, I'd prefer if they just corrected the article, made a
| note at the top of the article about what was corrected,
| and have a disclaimer that it was written by Google's
| competitor.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I don't know if you've ever had the misfortune of
| interacting much with conspiracy theorists, but literally
| whatever happens it _always_ proves their beliefs are
| correct.
| brookst wrote:
| Evidence for the claim: proves the claim
|
| No evidence: obviously the evidence is being suppressed,
| proves the claim
|
| Evidence against the claim: shills obviously trying to
| control the narrative, proves the claim
| philipov wrote:
| I recall an anecdote by a mathematician about his
| approach to peer-reviewing proofs of theorems. He said he
| glosses over most of it, but very thoroughly checks
| anything the author claims to be "obvious" because it's
| the things that seem obvious that screw people up.
| borski wrote:
| This. It doesn't matter what you do, conspiracy theorists
| can and will justify it as a conspiracy.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Had a discussion about Assange the other day (contentious
| I know but bear with me). I brought up how he had a show
| on RT, the Russian state media channel, mentioning that
| it's pretty bad optics regardless of what one thinks of
| the dude. They immediately went "no they didn't that's
| got to be a CIA myth." Hand to god that's what they said.
|
| I showed him the IMDb and Wikipedia pages for it and a
| clip. Without missing a beat - remember they literally
| had never heard this before and have already decided it's
| misinformation planted by the CIA - he said "Well it's an
| independent show he put on that happened to be shown on
| RT."
|
| I mean what can you say to that?
| anjel wrote:
| 'Happens to be' is doing alot of work in that sentence
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Seriously! Like I said, I get it's a very contentious
| issue and I'm sure people have varied feelings on this,
| but to walk into a conversation literally knowing nothing
| about the topic at hand and then hand waving it away so
| quickly...I mean there's no point in even continuing the
| conversation at that point.
| wruza wrote:
| But that's what any decent conspiracy would do!
| SllX wrote:
| That would be showing too much respect for or deference to
| conspiracy theorists, who aren't really worth the trouble.
| Copies probably exist in the Internet Archive, archive.is
| and in PDFs people could have saved when the article was up
| so it's not like it truly disappeared. WIRED just took down
| a bad article that shouldn't have been published.
| autoexec wrote:
| Transparency is the key to trust and journalistic
| integrity. Even an article that was mostly wrong/written
| from a failed premise should remain accessible with a
| timestamped correction statement explaining the problem.
|
| Making your mistakes suddenly disappear as if they never
| happened is tempting, but it's going to leave users feeling
| gaslit, distrustful, or even just misinformed.
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