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  • I've started using FireFox at home instead of Google.
    "What has the Church gained if it is popular, but there is no conviction, no repentance, no power?" - A.W. Tozer

    "... there are two parties in Washington, the stupid party and the evil party, who occasionally get together and do something both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship." - Everett Dirksen

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
      My own informal test showing a curious discrepancy between Google and other popular search engines:

      [ATTACH=CONFIG]31969[/ATTACH]
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      I got very similar results MM. That is a bit disturbing to say the least.

      The same sort of thing happens with "anti clinton"

      And with the other engines, the completion kicks in after hill or clin whereas even with the entire phrase completed nothing shows on google.

      If you go ahead and hit <CR>, it does bring up some results. I didn't look to see how complete they are.

      Seems like something to toss to a news outlet and see if they run with it. I would expect some back peddling from the guys at google.

      I'm not particularly fond of crow ...


      Jim
      Last edited by oxmixmudd; 10-10-2018, 01:54 PM.
      My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

      If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

      This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

      Comment


      • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
        I got very similar results MM. That is a bit disturbing to say the least.

        The same sort of thing happens with "anti clinton"

        And with the other engines, the completion kicks in after hill or clin whereas even with the entire phrase completed nothing shows on google.

        If you go ahead and hit <CR>, it does bring up some results. I didn't look to see how complete they are.

        Seems like something to toss to a news outlet and see if they run with it. I would expect some back peddling from the guys at google.

        I'm not particularly fond of crow ...

        Jim
        For those of you who did this - MM, Jim, Sparko, etc. - this is AWESOME! This is the kind of objectively true research that is indisputable and SHOULD be the basis of how we form our beliefs. I agree with Jim: this is disturbing. If no one else wants to send this to a news outlet, I'm willing to do so. It would be interesting to send it to Fox, Brietbart, CNN, MSNCB, ABC, and CBS, the NYT, the WSJ, and the WP and see what they do with it respectively. I'm reasonably sure the right-leaning outlets would jump on it. I wonder what the center, center-left, and left-leaning outlets would do?
        The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

        I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

        Comment


        • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
          Seems like something to toss to a news outlet and see if they run with it.
          https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/...heory-its-not/

          Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
          But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
          Than a fool in the eyes of God


          From "Fools Gold" by Petra

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
            My own informal test showing a curious discrepancy between Google and other popular search engines:
            It also seems to depends on what language you are browsing Google in (and possibly also which country). When I type in the same things in google you did I sometimes get different auto-complete suggestions if I use the Swedish version of the website instead of the English language one.

            "anti trump" only gives "anti trump newspaper" when I use the Swedish version. When I use Google in English it gives a similar, but slightly different autocomplete list than the one in the screenshots you posted.

            "anti hillary" doesn't yield anything on either version, but "crooked hi" did give a 2 suggestions involving Hillary when I used the Swedish version.

            "hillary clinton hea" gave the same results when using the English version. When I typed it in on the Swedish version I got a shorter list with only 5 items, but they were all suggestions that appeared in the list I got from the English version of the site.

            I was also using the .fi version of the search engine. Whether using .fi or .com makes any difference I don't know.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
              Prior to the 2008 election Google immediately shut down (as in not allowing them to advertise or appear in searches) a Hillary Clinton parody site saying that they do not allow such things as it may confuse voters. That of course brought forth questions of why they were allowing the same sort of parody sites that were targeting leading Republicans candidates seeking their party's nomination to advertise on Google for nearly two months.

              Then of course there was this on Google just a week before the California primaries where they listed "Nazism" as the ideology of the California Republican party


              [ATTACH=CONFIG]30374[/ATTACH]


              They claim it wasn't their fault but it's hardly the only time


              [ATTACH=CONFIG]30375[/ATTACH]
              Google is at it again.

              This time when you used the search engine to look up the National Federation of Republican Women (the largest Republican women’s group) the "knowledge panel" described them as the "National Federation of Republican Enablers."

              Of course Google blamed Wikipedia but while it is true that back in mid October someone did change "women" to enablers" on the Wikipedia page it was only like that for a couple hours before being fixed. Google, OTOH, put it up and left it there for almost a month, ignoring complaints and only yanking it yesterday as news stories started appearing about it.


              I'm always still in trouble again

              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

              Comment


              • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                Prior to the 2008 election Google immediately shut down (as in not allowing them to advertise or appear in searches) a Hillary Clinton parody site saying that they do not allow such things as it may confuse voters. That of course brought forth questions of why they were allowing the same sort of parody sites that were targeting leading Republicans candidates seeking their party's nomination to advertise on Google for nearly two months.

                Then of course there was this on Google just a week before the California primaries where they listed "Nazism" as the ideology of the California Republican party


                [ATTACH=CONFIG]30374[/ATTACH]


                They claim it wasn't their fault but it's hardly the only time


                [ATTACH=CONFIG]30375[/ATTACH]
                Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                Google is at it again.

                This time when you used the search engine to look up the National Federation of Republican Women (the largest Republican women’s group) the "knowledge panel" described them as the "National Federation of Republican Enablers."

                Of course Google blamed Wikipedia but while it is true that back in mid October someone did change "women" to enablers" on the Wikipedia page it was only like that for a couple hours before being fixed. Google, OTOH, put it up and left it there for almost a month, ignoring complaints and only yanking it yesterday as news stories started appearing about it.

                [ATTACH=CONFIG]32929[/ATTACH]
                And the latest:

                Source: EXCLUSIVE: GOOGLE EMPLOYEES DEBATED BURYING CONSERVATIVE MEDIA IN SEARCH

                • Google employees debated whether to bury The Daily Caller and other conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election
                • “Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years,” one engineer wrote in a thread that included a Google vice president
                • Google employees similarly sought to manipulate search results to combat Trump’s travel ban


                Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.

                The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out as outlets to potentially bury, the communications reveal.

                Trump’s election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.

                Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

                “This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

                Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

                “How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.

                “I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources – because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued.

                “Beyond that, let’s concentrate on teaching critical thinking. A little bit of that would go a long way. Let’s make sure that we reverse things in four years – demographics will be on our side.”

                Some of Byer’s colleagues expressed concern that manipulating search results could backfire and suggested alternative measures.

                One Google engineer, Uri Dekel, identified himself as a Clinton supporter but argued that manipulating search results was the wrong route to take.

                “Thinking that Breitbart, Drudge, etc. are not ‘legitimate news sources’ is contrary to the beliefs of a major portion of our user base is partially what got us to this mess. MSNBC is not more legit than Drudge just because Rachel Maddow may be more educated / less deplorable / closer to our views, than, say Sean Hannity,” Dekel wrote in a reply to Byer.

                “I follow a lot of right wing folks on social networks you could tell something was brewing. We laughed off Drudge’s Instant Polls and all that stuff, but in the end, people go to those sources because they believe that the media doesn’t do it’s job. I’m a Hillary supporter and let’s admit it, the media avoided dealing with the hard questions and issues, which didn’t pay off. By ranking ‘legitimacy’ you’ll just introduce more conspiracy theories,” Dekel added.

                “Too many times, Breitbart is just echoing a demonstrably made up story,” Byer wrote in a reply to his original post. He did not cite any examples.

                “That happens at MSNBC, too. I don’t want a political judgement. The desire is to break the myth feedback loop, the false equivalency, instead of the current amplification of it,” Byer added.

                “What I believe we can do, technically, that avoids the accusations of conspiracy or bias from people who ultimately have a right and obligation to decide what they want to believe, is to get better at displaying the ‘ripples’ and copy-pasta, to trace information to its source, to link to critiques of those sources, and let people decide what sources they believe,” another Google engineer, Mike Brauwerman, suggested.

                “Give people a comprehensive but effectively summarized view of the information, not context-free rage-inducing sound-bytes,” he added.

                “We’re working on providing users with context around stories so that they can know the bigger picture,” chimed in David Besbris, vice president of engineering at Google.

                “We can play a role in providing the full story and educate them about all sides. This doesn’t have to be filtering and can be useful to everyone,” he wrote.

                Other employees similarly advocated providing contextual information about media sources in search results, and the company later did so with a short-lived fact check at the end of 2017.

                Not only did the fact-check feature target conservative outlets almost exclusively, it was also blatantly wrong. Google’s fact check repeatedly attributed false claims to those outlets, even though they demonstrably never made those claims.

                Google pulled the faulty fact-check program in January, crediting The DCNF’s investigation for the decision.



                Source

                © Copyright Original Source


                [*The story continues at the link above*]

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                Comment


                • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                  Google is at it again.

                  This time when you used the search engine to look up the National Federation of Republican Women (the largest Republican women’s group) the "knowledge panel" described them as the "National Federation of Republican Enablers."

                  Of course Google blamed Wikipedia but while it is true that back in mid October someone did change "women" to enablers" on the Wikipedia page it was only like that for a couple hours before being fixed. Google, OTOH, put it up and left it there for almost a month, ignoring complaints and only yanking it yesterday as news stories started appearing about it.

                  [ATTACH=CONFIG]32929[/ATTACH]
                  Your persecution complex is showing again.

                  Comment


                  • Is it still a conspiracy theory when we have proof?
                    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                    Than a fool in the eyes of God


                    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                    Comment


                    • I'm quoting the first post from this thread solely for its irony value, because as we are all well aware by now, Google's search results are, in fact, "rigged".

                      Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                      Google search is 'Rigged' I tell ya, 'Rigged'.

                      What a nutcase.

                      https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/28/tec...ged/index.html

                      So The Conspiracy Theorist in Chief has now come out and said that Google search is rigged because it mostly points to bad news articles about him.

                      This can't be legal he says, and gosh darn it, he's going to do something about it!

                      So now our dictator wanna be doesn't like the fact that a search engine designed around statistical parameters that algorithmically determine what are the most commonly searched for or read hits to a give random search criteria tends to pull up bad news about him. And so it 'must be rigged' and he's going to see if he can force them to 'comply' and not do that.

                      Hmm, discounting the fact he couldn't understand how a google search algorithm works if you gave him 10 years to try to figure it out, there is nothing going on here that relates to google. It's like saying the fact a search on Superhero movies turns up more hits are Marvel Movies than DC movies means google search is rigged.

                      But what IS scary is he wants to try to punish google, to 'make it illegal'. Once again showing his 'Dictator wanna be' motivations and his complete lack of understanding of what are the standards, morals, and driving philosophies that made this nation the great nation it is.
                      Now for the latest twist...

                      Source: ‘THE SMOKING GUN’: Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results for Abortion, Maxine Waters, David Hogg

                      In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”

                      The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg.

                      The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.

                      In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source.

                      “We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”

                      Others were more concerned about the presence of the blacklist. According to the source, the software engineer who started the discussion called the manipulation of search results related to abortion a “smoking gun.”

                      https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...t-smoking-gun/

                      © Copyright Original Source


                      Oh, and it's not just YouTube...

                      Source: LEAK: ‘Huge Teams’ Engaged in Manual Interventions on Google Search Results

                      Google has “huge teams” working on manual interventions in search results, an apparent contradiction of sworn testimony made to Congress by CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an internal post leaked to Breitbart News.

                      “There are subjects that are prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content,” said Daniel Aaronson, a member of Google’s Trust & Safety team.

                      “Now, these words are highly subjective and no one denies that. But we can all agree generally, lines exist in many cultures about what is clearly okay vs. what is not okay.”

                      “In extreme cases where we need to act quickly on something that is so obviously not okay, the reactive/manual approach is sometimes necessary.”

                      The comments came to light in a leaked internal discussion thread, started by a Google employee who noticed that the company had recently changed search results for “abortion” on its YouTube video platform, a change which caused pro-life videos to largely disappear from the top ten results.

                      In addition to the “manual approach,” Aaronson explained that Google also trained automated “classifiers” – algorithms or “scalable solutions” that corrects “problems” in search results.

                      Aaronson listed three areas where either manual interventions or classifier changes might take place: organic search (“The bar for changing classifiers or manual actions on span in organic search is extremely high”), YouTube, Google Home, and Google Assistant.

                      Aaronson’s post also reveals that there is very little transparency around decisions to adjust classifiers or manually correct controversial search results, even internally. Aaronson compared Google’s decision-making process in this regard to a closely-guarded “Pepsi Formula.”

                      These comments, part of a longer post copied below, seem to contradict Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s sworn congressional testimony that his company does not “manually intervene on any particular search result.”

                      According to an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source within the company, a Google employee took issue with Pichai’s remarks, stating that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.”

                      https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...earch-results/

                      © Copyright Original Source


                      "Speaking of conspiracy theories" indeed.
                      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                      Than a fool in the eyes of God


                      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Mountain Man, yesterday
                        Unnamed sources = fake news
                        Originally posted by Mountain Man, today
                        Source: ‘THE SMOKING GUN’: Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results for Abortion, Maxine Waters, David Hogg

                        ...The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous...

                        © Copyright Original Source

                        So this is fake news.
                        Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                        MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                        MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                        seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Roy View Post
                          So this is fake news.
                          Sure, you can go with that angle if you want.

                          Of course there's a lot more to this than just an anonymous source...
                          Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                          But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                          Than a fool in the eyes of God


                          From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Roy View Post
                            So this is fake news.
                            MM cited an article that cited an anonymous source?
                            The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King

                            I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Frederick Douglas

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by carpedm9587 View Post
                              MM cited an article that cited an anonymous source?
                              That's his angle, yes. Of course, unlike the sources MM decries, there's actual evidence presented, not just "anonymous source claims x said y."
                              Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

                              Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
                              sigpic
                              I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

                              Comment


                              • YouTube admits they tampered with search results but insist they only did it because the pro-life videos were deemed "misinformation".

                                https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...isinformation/
                                Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                                But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                                Than a fool in the eyes of God


                                From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                                Comment

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