Google is not just a platform – It frames, shapes and distorts how we see
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Instead, they will more likely type "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", "what is holocaust", or simply "holocaust". Each of these queries brings up a "clean" result page.
On the other hand, it is those people who already think/suspect Holocaust isn't real that disproportionately type in "did the holocaust happen", they find the stormfront website, and they click on it because it matches their preconception. Google learns that users typing this particular query likes this result, and acts accordingly.
To Google's algorithm, this is exactly like learning that people typing "introduction to algorithms" love to go to the Amazon page selling the venerable CLRS. Nothing inherently nefarious.
In other words, I think it's not StormFront that's "gaming" the system. The system is made of people, some of whom really really like StormFront, and Google's results (for better or worse) just reflect that reality.
This is a horrifying way of deciding users "like" something and if they are actually doing that it would very rapidly lead to the rise of click bait in all search terms.
Apple once noted that sorting iOS apps by number and speed of installs was a big problem because it encouraged apps that looked and sounded too good to be true but often were horrible to use, so a while back they switched to a model of "how long do users leave this app installed on their devices" or something like similar (it might have been an "engagement" model, which has the much less bad but still existent well-known flaw of "it encourages people to make their app a little slower and require a few more steps to slightly increase the metrics of how long people use it").
There's also an interesting trend wherein Wikipedia editors tend to drift to the political center: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/25/somet...
This seems to make a big assumption about what defines "people who are genuinely curious". I think your queries of "holocaust statistics", "holocaust wikipedia", etc would instead describe someone who genuinely knows how to critically think and search for information, as opposed to someone who is simply "curious". You or I would search for info in that way, but a curious person could be anyone (e.g. a child or a teenager who has just been told by a peer that the holocaust was a hoax). Their first instinct might not be to search for specific sources or statistics, but rather to type "did the holocaust happen".
It's all about statistics. That particular query somehow invites a larger number of Holocaust deniers than other similar queries. It's unfortunate that someone who are just curious might end up learning bogus history, and most people would agree that Google could do better here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone's actively gaming the system.
Also, something that I think is relevant: searching "yes the holocaust happened" turns up an assortment of news articles talking about "hey, look who finally acknowledged that the holocaust happened!" There's no one out there furiously insisting that the holocaust happened, because most people (I hope) take that for granted - it's the people devoted to spinning wild conspiracy theories that run websites and blogs devoted to pushing their theory. No one's devoted to proving what everyone already agrees with.
I think the scary thing about this query, though, is that for better or worse people DO search Google for factual answers. Sure, someone searching "Did the holocaust happen?" is likely to already be doubting the Holocaust actually occurred, but given that I think it's a very bad thing that the top answer from Google confirms their false beliefs. It turns from "Some crazy bullshit white supremacist website told me the Holocaust didn't happen" to "Google told me the Holocaust didn't happen."
PS.
It was hard time for Jews. My grandmother was Jew and her husband was in Soviet Army, so she was valuable target, however she was hided by neighbors, so she escaped. Some of her relatives was not so lucky (I know no details, except that one of them ended dead in Poland), but none of them were executed in Babi Yar.
I think that the search result is fine because obviously if someone queried that entire phrase, it means that they are looking for a counter-argument to the mainstream consensus (which I think is fine - People should be allowed to explore alternative theories... Even if there is a chance that the information is false).
I think that the main problem is that Google is going one step further and suggesting this query when you start typing "Did the" - And by doing so, Google is giving the topic more exposure (and more credibility) than it deserves.
Yet they are getting conspiracy theories rather than counter-arguments and critical assessments. This seems like a consequence of relying too much on user feedback in assigning authority to a page. That emphasis lends itself to gaming in a similar way to the link farms that Google attempts to undermine: users engage with pages that confirm their preconceptions rather than with a genuine authority.
For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo's more "naïve" results have that StormFront page as the eleventh result[1].
Yes, there are optimizations Google has since made that would probably benefit people to know about to make them understand the manner in which information is being delivered to them, and it's not at all unreasonable for people to be unaware of these already. But part of me is skeptical that this will have any non-trivial effect on how people consume information on the Internet. i.e., it's not an ignorance problem, it's a "fundamental common sense" problem.
This needs to be more widely recognized. Google autocomplete results, fake news on Facebook, etc. are they way they are because a significant number of people lack critical thinking skills or seek affirmation of their current beliefs. People want to read those things -- if they didn't click on them, they would not end up being so visible.
This means that tweaking Google's algorithm, or filtering fake news from Facebook, will backfire and appear to be censorship. It will drive the people who are interested in reading fake news to work harder to find it, and it will erode their trust in mainstream media. In other words, such a solution would worsen the problem it intends to solve.
This isn't really a technical problem. It's a consequence of human nature, and I'm pessimistic about the viability of the technological solutions that have been proposed so far.
This also reinforces my view that most people don't have good critical thinking skills. I've taught college students who would believe pretty much anything they read online. Nobody ever taught them that they should verify what they read before they believe it. I really wish school curricula would include better education in this area. But some of my Facebook friends who "like" the fake news stories are teachers, so I'm pessimistic about this as well.
Good. Make it hard to find. Make people have to dig into the vile corners of the internet to find it.
Google isn't a public utility that is obligated to serve these hate groups. Stormfront doesn't have to be blocked from having their packets routed. Google just doesn't have to take any part in helping them surface their beliefs.
If somebody is looking for hate speech, they should find hate speech. I understand that search engines should avoid promoting hate speech when it is not needed, but like the parent comment showed that is currently the case for Google.
Trying to work out what are lies/truth gets super super murky when it comes to religion.
Not to mention people actually want to search for what people believe, I want to know what holocaust deniers think, I want to know what climate deniers think, that shouldn't be filtered from me.
But, it exposes a bigger problem about the problem of consuming information, how we, as humans, determine what to believe when exposed to everyones beliefs. Especially for people who are young and can latch onto ideas very quickly.
Who would have the authority to do this, and why should they be trusted? How could we get rid of them when they start hiding true things they don't want people to know about? What would their job title be? Minister of Truth? (I suppose you'd need to get permission from Orwell's estate to use that title, which is probably a sign that you should think twice about what you're doing.)
People who believe different things think that people with opposing beliefs are lies or delusion or lack enlightenment. I think it's better that everything is laid bare to the world so it's not hidden. But it requires a certain set of skills when consuming information.
I think Wikipedia is more like what you are wanting. It's curated, it attempts to convey accurate information without emotional language, etc. Of course, that's super difficult and it has it's own problem in trying to do that.
I find it odd that so many people who believe the government should not do such things are fine with corporations doing it.
There's an ideological divide in our society. People who deny climate change support GMO foods and nuclear power. People who oppose GMO foods and nuclear power believe we should do more about climate change.
Accepting that Google should do more to suppress "bad" results on global warming also means that it should do more to suppress "bad" results on anti-vaccinations, anti-GMO foods and other areas where the majority scientific opinion is clear.
And then, of course, there's religion. What stance should Google take on that?
No-one's going to be happy with that situation. There is no course of action that Google can follow that will make everyone happy here.
So my answer is yes to all the topics you mentioned, if the opposition can prove vaccination is worse than not, then don't flag as spam, but until then, please bump them down the search results page some.
The government has to prosecute religious cons already. Suppose you say, "Come to my church. Start praying and donating, the lord will take care of your cancer" Lies like these are misleading and dangerous. People can die from them. You can be prosecuted for making them. So, we ought not allow them to be promoted to our citizenry. If a religion wants to make that statement, make them prove their claim with a study that meets the standard.
really? there isn't a religion on the planet that can prove this. There's no evidence for everlasting damnation, how can there be proof that accepting Jesus as your personal saviour prevents you from being damned?
Again, no-one's going to be happy with any of this. And I don't mean "happy" as in "overjoyed", I mean "happy" as in "not going to sue Google".
The instant that Google actually start modifying their results for subjective truth they become liable for a gajillion lawsuits.
So the answer to the question, "am i at risk of everlasting damnation?" would be at the top of the page: No we haven't seen any evidence to support everlasting damnation. Don't censor anything, just push it out of view to the degree it's damaging. Cancer claims made by religions go on page 2. You should have to work to get bad information, not the other way around.
Let them sue to have their story at the top, their argument is not going to hold up. You've used evidence (or lack thereof) to come to your conclusion. And what have they got, an appeal to emotion?
The truth is out their for people to see. Was I robbing the liquor store? No, work has me on camera at the time the robbery took place. Slam dunk. Will god cure my cancer? Not that we know of, but here is some medications you ought to take or you're likely to die. And here is our study showing that. And you've used these study standards before to great benefit when you've flown, used your cellphone and ate your food.
It clearly and obviously is not all of these things.
A body of scientists have just recently complained about commercial organisations releasing papers in order to sow doubt. How would Google handle that?
It's judgement calls and subjective decisions all the way down. Any of which can be challenged. I understand why they don't want to do this.
Your truth is not and has never been the same as someone else's truth. The very idea of objective truth is debatable in some of these areas (e.g. "has any nation tried true communism?")
Google is not and should not be the judge of everyone's truths
Hopefully we can both agree that we are having this conversation. :) If so, we believe that truth is real and shared between individuals. Other common facts are sports, world events and books - at times we all look through the same lens. Science is like this too. Science happily ask for you to see for yourself.
Now look at another truth, cigarettes cause cancer. The tobacco industry denied these findings. But now we censor them and their advertising based on this truth. If we didn't censor the tobacco industry, we'd get cancer more often and die.
When we have a clear argument and damages, at least bump them down the page.
If you allow the disinformation campaign to continue, you corrupt the integrity of the system. This can manifest itself in a very ugly and damaging ways, cancer or worse.
My favourite recent example of this was some bullshit article being shared on Facebook, making the claim that "this December has 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays, something that only happens every 823 years" and going on to make some numeralogical claims on this basis.
OK, so the "every 823 years" bit false, but I can see that you might need more than the average amount of mathematical intuition to see that right away - but the claim that this December has 5 Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays is easily disproved by glancing at a calendar! Yet this was repeatedly re-shared by people who didn't even do this tiny amount of fact-checking that they were easily equipped to do (the device that they were reading Facebook with certainly had a calendar function!).
The US and EU Governments expect us to believe things that are obviously untrue. The biggest current example, I think is the Syrian proxy war. Obvious reality is that the US caused the war, and the EU and US and Saudi Arabia are supporting it, and specifically supporting the rebel side that is committing ethnic and religious cleansing. And Obama is supporting it, and so is the EU. Meanwhile Russia based tv channels put out videos of rebels with suicide vests, and American equipment ... what conclusion are we supposed to draw ? The message of both US and EU and even Saudi Arabia's government is that they simply want to protect the local population. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the middle east know that if there is one thing the rebels will not do, it's protect the local population. I call bullshit.
The economy is another. I find the state of the US economy as reported by the US government, especially where it comes to employment, to be very hard to believe. It just does not seem to match what is obvious when visiting relatives. But employment is one thing. Inflation is very much not what it is claimed to be (and Obamacare is a big factor in that - which seems convenient), but it's not just that. Rent, fuel, public transport, ... all of it just doesn't match what my eyes see, inflation-wise. I see about 6% inflation in a big middle-American city in my expenses. And some numbers themselves are equally in "how can that possibly be true ?" territory. Goods transferred, energy usage, building activity, all of these numbers are supposed to represent core parts of the economy. They're all significantly down, in some cases very significantly, and yet ... the economy grows pretty much exactly at the rate the government predicted it would ... A bit less, but not much. The EU ... same thing. France's economy is growing at 0.5% per year ? I call bullshit. 5% per year drop ... now that might be true. But anyone higher than a 2% per year drop just isn't a realistic figure for France. Marseille definitely has it worse than that, and even Paris is stagnant or slightly better than stagnant at best. Nobody is happy.
Hell, even the numbers out of China on the economy are highly suspect. Exports are way down, obviously, by the measurement of what is being shipped out of China. Given that this has had zero effect on production, which has in fact gone up, one of two things has happened : either the internal market transformation has already happened (hah !), or they ... are ... bullshit. Judging by what I hear from Chinese people who have visited relatives but live in Australia it is very much the bullshit situation.
The state of the refugee problem in the EU is another one. You have the public news flow about nothing being wrong, about the EU just peacefully absorbing some refugees, no problem. And then you have the reality leaks through moments, which are in fact being repressed by the press, and sadly here I know that for a fact. Cars, hundreds every weekend, are being torched in every large French city. Entire neighborhoods are no-go zones. There are "demonstrations" on a monthly basis in pretty much every large city in Holland, Belgium, France and Germany. I've seen 5 of them. 5 ! I am not really there that often. The amount of looting during those demonstrations is absurd (ie. walking through the shopping street on the day after has them looking like a warzone). The security measures shops are taking in response are also very, very visible. And yet in the newspapers ... nothing. You have to look on fora to find these events. On occasion glimpses of reality break through, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_S8eKMDlJk, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3rNkkCAJY, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbKS7tt6g-4 (note how Syrian they look by the way. Reality is there is no Syrian refugee problem. There is a Middle African refugee problem, but "somehow" this has escaped the attention of newspapers). Another detail to escape the attention of everyone : at least 75% are very dark to black males aged 15-25 (likely not from Northern Africa as they use scarves and thick jackets even in 20-25 degree temperatures). There are almost no families among the refugees. Almost none at all. Given the composition of the refugee flow, they won't peacefully settle and join socity. They can't, if they wanted to, build families, as that requires a roughly 50-50 gender split. They certainly don't appear to want to)
Thirdly, this whole Russia spying thing. The thing under investigation are wikileaks releases, or at least, that's a big part of it. So it comes down simply to ... do I believe Julien Assange, or do I believe Hillary Clinton ? Well sorry to put it like this, but there's no contest here. Julien Assange has built up a far higher level of trust, and for instance proven that Hillary is a warmonger, in direct contradiction to what she's saying publicly. So sorry to point this out, but again I'll be believing Assange here.
Really? In Holland? I'm from Holland, and I live near Amsterdam which I think qualifies for "pretty much every large city". Where exactly in Amsterdam are these demonstrations with looting you're talking about? How do you even define "demonstration"? Also, have you considered the news isn't newsworthy on a national or international level, but is on a local level? News from Amsterdam can be found on at5.nl, tho personally I hardly ever read that. Rotterdam has their own local newspapers and news website as well. Etc.
> There is a Middle African refugee problem, but "somehow" this has escaped the attention of newspapers).
This is plain bullshit. The African refugee problem (whom were mainly arriving in Italy) was well documented in Dutch media. It is just that such is not being reported much anymore because the other refugee problem is newer and supposedly much larger.
> Julien Assange
Julian Assange
As for the refugee problem, I was last in Paris, and let me tell you, it's an African and pretty much all male refugee problem there. I've seen the same people in Brussels, though in better circumstances.
It also includes 'negative searching' which is my term for when I look for things or click on links out of a morbid fascination or sense of pity. Sometims I use 'open in incognito mode' but often I forget.
This in particular applies to odd GooglePlus and Facebook links that I do my best to counter (via links to Wikipedia or Snopes or whatever I see most effective)
Maybe you are actually looking for did the holocaust happen or some such because the skinhead in your class said the holocaust didn't really happen. And then Google shows you the first search result that asserts the holocaust didn't happen, not the first search result that tells you about holocaust denialism.
So sure some people are looking for stormfront but maybe some people are also just looking, and unlucky enough to use google for their search.
"Did the Holocaust really happen? No. The Holocaust did not really happen. Six million Jews did not die. It is a Jewish conspiracy theory spread by vested interests to obscure the truth. The truth is that there is no evidence any people were gassed in any camp. The Holocaust did not happen."
What Google sees with this paragraph is a highly ranked page asking a legitimate question. This woman seems to be reputable, so let's just take her word for it.
Pretty ironic -- last time I checked sentiment analysis wasn't even close to figuring out what sarcasm is. Her joking actually exacerbates any problem she thinks there is. And honestly, me quoting her is just making the problem a tiny bit worse!
I think web search is still flawed, like it was 15 years ago when Google came along. The problem is that now the flaws are more subtle, hence more dangerous since search (and feed) ordering, interactions and suggestions are capable of influencing people in an almost subconscious level. It will take years to understand its implications.
Stormfront ("White Pride World Wide") has been around for years, and kind of a joke. Post-Trump, they're more mainstream. Stormfront gets a high ranking because they've been saying this for decades and they're now getting traffic from the alt-right. So they have both popularity and stability, which Google's algorithm likes. They're not gaming the algorithm. They just lucked out on a political trend.
If you want to see gaming of Google's algorithm, search "binary option". Binary options are basically a scam.[1] There are a vast number of binary option web sites and companies, mostly affiliates of two back-end companies in Tel Aviv. They plug binary options and each other endlessly, disseminate recent financial news to get traffic, and appear as an entire ecosystem of bogus info. That's gaming the algorithm. Wikipedia is in the top position at the moment, with a rather negative article on binary options. (This despite massive efforts by the binary option industry to get favorable Wikipedia coverage, including offers of $10,000 for anyone who could "fix" certain articles.)
[1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-...
Its disgusting to say that if Google is leading people to believe that the Holocaust didn't happen, the people who profit from it happening should just invest in better SEO.
I don't have an opinion on whether or not it's acceptable to say here, but thought it might be relevant context given that I didn't know what precisely the term implied.
EDIT: Whoops it looks like the parent commenter himself provided the context in between me starting and finishing this comment.
I heard than name before. Isn't related to something called "The Aussie method" , or "The Irish method" which are well-known scams.
Often, the house cheats. Something like 97% of people who "invest" in binary options lose all their money. The ones who win usually can't collect.
The SEC and CFTC have booted most of these guys out of the US and clawed back money from some of them. But they're active in Europe. Cyprus is willing to let them operate, and that passports them into the rest of the European Union. Israel doesn't let them scam Israelis, but is OK with them scamming the rest of the world. This has become politically embarrassing to Israel and there's a bill in the Knesset to shut down the whole industry. The industry is preparing to switch to FOREX.
Long multi-part expose in the Times of Israel: "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] This is an Internet scam. It's so brazen that they have a convention. A reporter went to it.[2] SpotOption is the platform behind most of the industry. ClickSure's ad network ropes in new customers. Quotes from the convention:
“SpotOption is a technology company, okay? Everyone is responsible for checking regulation in the jurisdiction where they want to work. I am here to tell you what options you have technologically.” - Tammy Levy, SpotOption’s director of marketing.
“We’ve worked very closely with the forex and binary industry over the last, I would say, six months. We saw great results with a few of the advertisers, and it’s really a growing industry for us.” - Liset van Oosterhout, Twitter account exec.
Google and Facebook also gave presentations at that convention.
For large-scale gaming of Google, the binary option industry leads the way.
[1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-... [2] http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-o...
Besides, this kind of debate is one step away from lyssenkism where only google-friendly opinions will be displayed. If you fight for freedom of speech only in the case of opinions that you like, then it's not freedom of speech.
The fact that the Holocaust happened is not an opinion.
When I type 5 + 6 into Google search, are people being oppressed when the top result is 11? Would this be similar to murdering ideological opponents if my page declaring the answer to be 13 wasn't at or near the top of the results?
If you arrive at stormfront.org and you're greeted with white power signs, of course you don't think "this seems like a really unbiased website". If you are attracted to this shit already it's already too late. For Google, your parents.
IMO "truth engine"s of various forms are the future of search. Think e.g. Wolfram Alpha or any of the newfangled chat bots. Or even, increasingly, Google itself.
I don't want a link to some guy's page; I want a definitive answer. Maybe the answer I want is the truth (probably more often than not). Maybe the answer I want is my truth (probably more often than not for political topics). But in any case, this sort of curation is going to happen, so at some point search engines are going to have to wrestle with this reality -- will you be the truth engine people want, or will you be the truth engine the people need? ;-)
Like you can look up "why it's ok to kill a citizen" and you'll almost certainly find something that agrees with you and seems reputable.
But hey, I guess we can't blame the gun because of the people that decide use it.
For questions where there's any sort of controversy, this broad a solution is by definition unsolvable. It requires taking an explicit side on _literally every controversial issue the human race is talking about_, which means they'd spend roughly 100% of their time fending off mobs demanding to know why they said X.
Since we're on the topic, let's use history as an example. There are TONS of things in history that "everyone knew" where the "cranks" turned out to be right and overturned our entire understanding of a given time and part of the world. The scientific and academic methods are messy and iterative and (for the soft sciences) often subjective, attempting to provide a "best guess" for what the human race knows. To ask one entity to explicitly answer questions, stamp out unsupported theories but somehow magically spare contrarian theories that ultimately end up being correct is simply insane.
IMO, what must be addressed is our and our children ability to discern, analyse and put in doubt everything that we read, and this kind of results does more good than bad on this sense.
Even knowing this specific case is very clear to all of us, cherry picking which side is true and which one is false on ideological matters can be tricky. The line between truth and censorship is very thin.
Why don't just all of us learn to put everything in doubt? We've passed from "this is true because it's written on a book" to "this is truth because some jerk wrote it on Facebook"
You should be skeptical of people who questions widely agreed historical facts as well.
We all might have been saying things like "it's a good thing we killed all of those fucking jews, it definitely saved humanity from being tainted" without anyone flinching.
This is the kind of stuff you still hear in neo-nazi circles. But imagine -- if we all thought that.
It sure is poetic how little of a choice we have in our opinions and world views, yet how passionate we are about them. Most people reading this right now would never think themselves capable of thinking such a thing.
If things turned out differently, the accepted world-view might be that certain lineages are tainted and that they reduce the pureness of people -- it may have been punishable to even dispute this.
Anyways, perspective.
Algorithms like PageRank are indiscriminate and if the Atl-right network of sites is as big as the author claims then it should be pretty obvious why those results appear.
Right or wrong, good or bad, there isn't any foul play or exploitation occurring. These sites are playing by the rules Google established.
I think the problem is that groups that would challenge the Atl-right could do so using their own network of sites but instead want to just change the rules to shut them down instead.
The thing that's really disturbing is that rather than combat this problem on a level playing field, people are proposing changing the rules because they can't be bothered to play the game the way the rules are setup.
Once we have a system in place where we can shut down any disagreeable idea, who decides when and how to use it?
Correct and it is our job as a parent, brother, sister, uncle, aunt etc... to teach critical thinking to the younger generation.
It seems like Machine Learning automation of anything "intelligent" (giving the "best" answer to a question as in Google's results, or creating a humanlike bot personality), needs metrics for some kind of quality, or feedback loops of accountability, according to some kind of set of ethical limits. Otherwise your algorithm is just a slave or a mirror to your data set and your business interests.
Company's really need ethical motivations defined, especially company's with automation and no accountable human to point the finger at if things get out of hand.
If the algorithm was completely transparent, it would give a home-field advantage to spammy SEOs, who could operate at the absolute limit of what is permissible. Legitimate sites that lack the resources to aggressively manipulate their SEO would be at a substantial disadvantage.
To give a real-world analogy, imagine a department store that decides not to prosecute shoplifters caught with less than $20 worth of stolen goods. If the rule is kept secret, then it's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff between security and the cost of enforcement. If the rule is publicly known, then shoplifters can spend all day stealing $19.99 products with total impunity.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-de... (The HN comments on this story became political, so it was flagged.)
Perhaps a better approach would be to register didtheholocausthappen.com and put a big sign that says "Yes" on it. Then put a link to that in your article, and get others to link to it.
H.R. 5181, which passed Congress and awaits the President, gives the USGOV $20 million to allocate to companies, NGO's and other institutions to correct anything it deems misinformation on the internet.
H.R. 6393, not yet passed will Give the USGOV additional authorities to choose which news it deems to be misinformation and to take action.
I can't recommend enough Richard Rosenfeld's "American Aurora", or because its over 900 pages long this mixed review: http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
Striking is the similarity in vitriol, personal smears and false allegations among papers in the 1790's and the internet today. We're doomed to repeat past mistakes and learn over again past lessons. This manufactured crisis will be no different.
You may think of it of phase 2 of search engine role. Now that it's almost perfect at finding things you're looking for, it could start showing things that you should be looking for ?
Similarly, if you ask "Is the Earth flat?" you will see some results from the flat Earth conspiracy theorists.
One other aspect of this problem is that Google absolutely can and it does manipulate the results. At least a lot of work is done to eliminate spam, SEO abuse, or what Google thinks is spam and abuse. They are not a media outlet and are totally free to tweak their algorithms in any way they want or in any way that makes sense within their business model. So if they do deliberately lower StormFront's ranking, nobody can blame them for that.
it's interesting to think about why, possibilities that come to mind are
1. bing's system just naturally doesn't favor the stormfront link as much?
2. there's a deliberate effort on the part of microsoft/bing to specifically suppress stormfront or some class of sites it's in?
3. stormfront is at the top of the google results due to a deliberate effort by some group to game this and they just haven't put the effort into gaming bing?
Apparently Google is listening, since some of these results have been changed. Was it a manual fix? So, Google's results are the output of an algorithm, except when they're not? Who decides which results will be manually fixed? And fixed how?
I think many, if not most, Internet users do treat search results as authoritative, even though the cognoscendi know they're not intended to be.
The real question is, can this situation ever be fixed in the general case? Reporting what is "true," and not just popular. I doubt it. Some things are clearly not true, but what is true? That's the biggest AI problem ever.
The idea isn't that regulators should do a better job and be closer to the truth, but rather that regulators want full control.
The narrative is that there are "bad search results" and it is also assumed that there are Good(TM) search results that only a select group of Good(TM) individuals appointed by the True Power can ensure you get them.
The "False news" narrative is another example of this direction, where the narrative also assumes that there are "True news" and that a select group of prie...aum, Good(TM) people can guarantee that you get the Truth and nothing but the Truth.
So now "The right" means racist?
Just because these horrible people fall into the general category of the right, I don't think it's fair to paint this as typical of people who also fall on the right. Some of us just want small government and have conservative social views. But are just as revolted by the Holocaust deniers as any one else.