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nova22033

Caveat: The author is not a technologists

Robert Epstein (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today,

He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#cite_note-15

His research is based entirely on his own experience

“It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any Clinton-related suggestions when one types a negative search term,” writes Dr. Robert Epstein, Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

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The comments he made are not just questionable, they're outright wrong (and a great example of the problem with cherry-picking data):

https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl...

https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jun/23...

(Disclosure: I work at Google, but this opinion is my own)

Speaking of cherry picking, I wouldn't use vox as reliable source for bipartisan data.

Or politifact...

tomweingarten can't see past the tip of his ideological nose. It's gonna be such a shocker to him when his megacorp gets shattered into a million little pieces.

https://www.politifactbias.com/

I've seen plenty of politifact and snopes fact-checks that go against the conspiracies that you guys seem to think are underway in those types of organizations.

Do you have an example of Vox being dishonest?

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/

I'm not sure this answers the question. Clearly Vox has a progressive (maybe originally neo-liberal?) editorial bias, but that may or may not mean that they have dishonestly distorted facts. There is a big difference between editorial bias and dishonest reporting!

>Overall, we rate Vox Left Biased due to wording and story selection that favors the left and High for factual reporting based on only one failed fact check and appropriately issuing a correction to a second. (5/15/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 5/30/2019)

speaking of cherry picking, I wouldn't use autocomplete suggestions as a source for bias. Has anyone on this thread claimed bias in the search results?

Google's claim that the algorithm is generic is demonstrably false. Type in "hillary clinton e" and there is no suggestion for "email", type "donald trump e" and email is the first suggestion. Given the news content that we know is out there, that can only be the result of adjusting the results for clinton specifically (if anything, we would not expect "email" to be autocompleted for trump). This is not research that tells us what exactly Google is doing, but you cannot deny the example.

This is not the most scientific test, since previous searches are generally taken into account. Was this test conducted from a system that mostly searches for / clicks on pro-trump or anti-trump content?

Well, that's kind of the point: it's not scientific, but it's relevant. I believe this was also the example that was recently used in a Project Veritas video, with the same results.

I searched from a Firefox private window over a VPN from the Netherlands. But since the results are the same (regarding presence/absence of "email" as an autocomplete term) I don't think it matters much.

This is not "research" period. Using one arbitrary search comparison to draw conclusions about the nature of a system that processes billions of queries a day is pretty weak. Additionally, I don't get the same results you do. "hillary clinton e" does not bring up emails, nor does "donald trump e" bring up emails (the first results I see are election, education, england visit, ex wife).

I'm not ruling out the possibility that google actually is manipulating search results, but this is not proof of that.

Try "hillary clinton emai". From a fresh chrome session in NYC I get nothing, not a single autocomplete result. On the other hand "donald trump emai" gets:

* donald trump email * donald trump email address * donald trump email list * donald trump email newsletter * donald trump email list signup

And just to drive the point home I tried "root_axis emai" and got "root_axis email". Try anyone else and you get similar results, 'barack obama emai', 'george bush emai', etc etc. So yes, this is proof that the results are scrubbed for Clinton email.

Seems to go both ways though as I'm not getting any auto completion results for "donald trump stormy daniels" either. I'm guessing they scrub things that are highly sensationalized in the news.

"stormy daniels" doesn't get any autocomplete results for me even without trump, my guess is this is more about adult search terms getting blacklisted rather than political. For example "donald trump e j" gets "donald trump e jean carroll", E Jean Carroll recently accused Trump of a serious sexual assault and this is autocompleting.

I got curious and tried the names of a bunch of public figures. Some of "<first and last name> e" yielded "email" as the suggestion. But these did not: elizabeth holmes, tom jones, tom cruise, brad pitt, gwyneth paltrow, roger federer, will smith, jimmy carter.

Since Hillary Clinton is not unique, then it's not proof that her results are treated differently.

They all work fine for me, e.g., 'tom jones emai' -> 'tom jones email', only Clinton didn't.

None of those other people were involved in major stories with email in the headline. If you look at the actual results, you'll see that it doesn't make any sense to not get suggestions for "Hillary Clinton email".

Compare these results:

* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hillary%20clinton%20em...

* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=will%20smith%20email

Why would you expect “brad Pitt email” to be something that auto completes? You would, on the other hand expect “Hillary Clinton email” to auto complete because there was a huge controversy about it.

I’m not saying google is manipulating auto complete intentionally (though they might be), I’m just saying your counter examples are irrelevant.

It would be like “Donald trump Russia” NOT auto completing then someone saying “but neither does Taylor swift Russia, so we’re good.”

The poster claimed Hillary Clinton was unique, meaning the only person that applied to. For me, she was not. Since she's not unique, then her being unique can't be used as evidence.

Claiming that she's unusual, since you expect it to work for her based on stories written about her is a different claim.

You're misrepresenting my claim.

1. I said "only for Clinton" in the contect of Trump vs Clinton. Then I compared to other U.S. politicians, where the example still holds. The intended meaning is perfectly clear.

2. Obviously the fact that Clinton was the topic of a scandal involving email is the assumed context here. That's why I said "if anything, we would not expect "email" to be autocompleted for trump" (implied: but for Clinton, email is a more relevant search term based on published news, etc.).

When I type "Donald Trump R" (or Ru or Russ etc) no autocomplete results contain the word Russia despite plenty of news coverage. When I type "Donald Trump Epstein" no autocomplete results. Must be a conspiracy by google to protect the president... or drawing conclusions based on individually cherry-picked autocomplete results is like drawing conclusions from numerology.

The same thing happens with Russia for "barack obama rus" "hillary clinton rus", "george bush rus", etc. - none autocomplete for me despite the fact that there was lots of news items relating those politicians and russia during their careers. However Clinton is the only one that doesn't appear to autocomplete for email, suggesting that it is specific to her. When I type "donald trump epstei" I get "theo epstein donald trump" (for some reason the word order is flipped), which would suggest to me that epstein is not blocked in the way you suggest, and it's just that not enough people are searching that term, or that the autocomplete algorithm hasn't caught up to the latest news on epstein and trump yet. However "donald trump e j" does autocomplete to "donald trump e jean carroll", which is relating to a serious scandal for the president. This isn't cherry picked I'm afraid, it really does look like intentional blocking of "hillary clinton email" from autocomplete.

None of those people had a gigantic Russia scandal though, Trump did, so you must still account for this unexplained aberration. If anything, the Trump/Russia scandal had more coverage than the Hillary e-mail scandal, so it's an even more difficult aberration to explain.

Also, if I type "hillary e" I get "Hillary Emails PDF" as an autocomplete suggestion. If I type "clinton e" I get several email suggestions "clinton email PDF" ,"clinton email film", "clinton email FOIA", "clinton email download".

Please include these confounding results in your analysis

Actually both Obama and Clinton had major stories relating to Russia including the failed 'reset', the annexation of Crimea during the Obama administration, obama's "red line" of using chemical weapons in syria which was circumvented by russia, and Obama telling Mitt Romney that Russia was not a threat in the 2012 presidential debates. So yes, they have huge stories relating to russia. And your autocomplete results just bolster the evidence that 'hillary clinton email' has been made a special case and is not organic!

Those stories barely saw a fraction of media coverage compared to Trump/Russia. The Obama/redline thing was primarily reported as a story about Syria, not Russia. If you type "obama red line" you get plenty of Syria suggestions which makes sense.

This is the problem with search query anecdotes, it ultimately produces a subjective and pointless debate about how one should interpret search suggestions for arbitrarily selected one-off queries. There is no methodology here, and we don't even know how widespread any particular suggestion results are. Any person with an agenda will be able to cherry-pick search queries that confirm their narrative.

I can believe Google is attempting to de-emphasize scandals on both sides. As an aside, I do get "russia investigation" as autosuggestion for trump.

I think the bigger problem is that these adjustment appear to be done manually. We know that's what they're doing to avoid racist autocomplete phrases (and reasonably so, I think most people would agree). Having such judgments made on specific political topics/events/scandals will inevitably result in political bias, especially in an organization whose workforce is so politically skewed to one side.

My only point is that autocomplete results for arbitrary one-off queries isn't instructive, especially because many people see different autocomplete suggestions. As I've already pointed out, its possible to find strange results for anything if you look hard enough.

If you type "Donald Trump Ru" into an incognito search you will not get the Russian Investigation. To GP's point, it's numerology to keep focusing on this and drawing conclusions of political bias.

For me "donald trump ru" autosuggests "russia investigation" (4th place). Compared with absence of "email" even for "hillary clinton emai".

Try news.google.com. It works there.

"hillary clinton emails" is a topic that is widely published around the web. Autocomplete should pick up on this and recommend it. I even went to the trouble of typing "hillary clinton emai" and no autocomplete suggestions were brought up.

It is a rather suspicious result. Suspicious enough that it is hard not to imagine a deliberate act is behind it. I admit that I don't have any proof.

That's the point: this is not research, but whatever is going on at Google, the explanation has to account for examples like these. It's simply one observation that you cannot discount.

I just tried searching again a few times with new private windows, and "email" alternates between first and fourth suggestion for trump. But the more important point is the absence of the suggestion for clinton: we know it's been in the news extensively, we know people searched for this phrase a lot, and now "email" has been removed from the suggestions only for Clinton. I tried searching a few more U.S. politicians, and for all of them "e" autosuggests "email" somewhere between first and fourth place. So the complete absence for Clinton does not look like a generic algorithm change.

When I type "Donald Trump R" I don't see any autocomplete for "Donald Trump Russia" despite plenty of news coverage on this topic. So what? This isn't proof of anything. I can indeed discount "one observation" because it is literally a single search query used to draw a conclusion about an insanely complex system that processes billions of queries a day. I am open to the possibility that google is manipulating search results, but to demonstrate this you need to account for many other possible search queries that produce seemingly unexpected results. Dissecting one politically charged query and claiming it is proof of google's malfeasance doesn't make sense. Anyone can string together a couple strange query results to support their own subjective narrative about what should appear and the supposed sinister machinations behind the query results.

Right, and further observations show that it's not unique to Hillary Clinton. This means you can discount the claim since it uses cherry picked data.

But we still haven't answered the actual question: Why doesn't "email" come up in autocomplete for Hillary Clinton, when it clearly should?

Yes we have. Further observation shows Google removes autocomplete for controversial items, like "Russian Investigation" for Donald Trump. If that example doesn't answer your question then you have confirmation bias.

The question doesn't need answering any more than any other arbitrarily selected individual query needs an answer. Why does "trump helsinki" have zero suggestions? Why does "bill oreilly sex" have zero suggestions? Why does "alex jones sandyhook" have zero suggestions? I used right-wing examples because I presume any celebrity or left-wing examples will be considered evidence in favor of your position, but there are plenty of examples all over the place.

How is autocomplete a sign of bias...Take an average voter...not very plugged in..he types in "hillary clinton e" and gets no autocomplete suggestions...he thinks Hillary Clinton didn't do anything wrong with her e-mail server? Do you seriously believe this?

Curious....Did you get any results for "hillary clinton e-mails"?

do an image search for "european people art"

what's up with that

Here is the trend data where google autocompletes two results while not autocompleting other two. The trend data groups the results pretty clearly, however the autocomplete engine does not agree.

If the trend data is not being used for the autocomplete results, what is? And why?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=hillary%20...

Just FYI the completion results in the omnibox have little to do with the search engine results. Clearly the search engine produces millions of hits for “Hillary Clinton emails”. The completions are a completely separate system based on what people type in the box, not what’s in the index, and it’s laser-focused on producing interactive results.

> It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton

Would be nice to know whether it was because of the search history bubble he lived in or not.

Someone mentioned you can't get any suggestion for Hillary Clinton Email.

If I type "Hillary Clinton Emai" I don't even get a suggestion for email :/

He does raise some good points in his findings:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201609121045214398-google-clinton...

I know Sputnik isn't a good source, but according to him, they were the only ones who would publish the findings without edits.

Thats a pretty strong indication that his claims are BS. Sputnik is a literal propaganda arm.

It's certainly grounds for more scrutiny, but not outright dismissal before even looking at it.

I usually find expert consensus to be pretty good grounds.

Sputnik has twisted my actual research from grad school into garbage propaganda. I've seen first hand how "accurate" their reporting is. I'm likely to believe that something adjacent to their claims is true but I believe that slapping their name on something makes it less likely to be true.

they were the only ones who would publish the findings without edits.

They only let him do that because it fits with their agenda. The real test is if they would let him publish an article on Putin's corruption...without edits..

> He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton.

Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? Is their data proving those claims wrong? Because with all the Google political controversies over the past few years, and given the political donation history of Google employees, it’s highly plausible that search results are manipulated to favor certain politics over others.

If the “questionable claims” have been disproven or are inaccurate, then it would seem that you’d provide some proof. Essentially, it you are to claim the search engine was not biased towards Clinton, certainly there would be some proof of that? It’s more reasonable to suspect Google manipulating search engines than not, given the political environment at Google.

The real “questionable claim” is that Google is neutral in any way — which is kind of the entire premise of the article. If Google were completely neutral, then why would their monopoly on search need to be broken?

>Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable?

the claims are questionable because his methodology is questionable. If he claims google is biased, he should have a good peer reviewable study that proves this..not google is biased because google didn't auto prompt me with "created AIDS" when I typed in hillary Clinton....

And he's the one making the claim that google is biased...The burden of proof is on HIM.

This is a forum for people in the tech world, right? Shouldn't we question N=1 "studies"?

What about Project Veritas? People claim the statements by Google employed were taken out of context, but I've gone back, listened to them, looked at the videos, and it's hard to think in what context anything they said is acceptable.

Even if the specific engineers and managers in the video clips don't have the level of authority to make the changes they're talking about, it's still chilling that their attitude could be common in Google and they see political ends of their great power as being some kind of great responsibility; instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.

* instead of respecting the idea of equal/diversity of opinion.*

Going to go out on a limb and say I don't respect "Hitler was a bad man" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" equally. Individual employees are allowed to have opinions...even opinions I don't agree with.

Project Veritas has historically operated by guiding people into saying something ridiculous, either by themselves acting ridiculous (and convincing the person they're talking to that they're crazy) or just driving the conversation to ridiculous areas.

Maybe this Google 'expose' is the first time they're not guilty of that, but anyone who still finds them credible after their last several blatant mischaracterizations is far more forgiving than I would be.

The jester's job is to criticise the tyrant in his own court. Just enjoy the show.

Jen Gennai had this to say in her article https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo... :

" ... Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation. The video then goes on to stitch together a series of debunked conspiracy theories about our search results, and our other products. ... "

The "Manipulating instant search results in favor of Hillary Clinton" claim has been independently debunked and anyone still standing behind it are only signalling their technical illiteracy and/or political agenda for playing a victim card. [1][2][3]

That's not really off-topic - The fact that the author still supports the claim calls into question their ability to make further claims about the subject.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/google-manipulate-hillary-...

[2] https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl...

[3] https://mashable.com/2016/06/10/clinton-google-search/

None of those blog posts debunk the idea that Google manipulates search results to favor particular political parties. Mashable has a statement from Google (the other two don't), saying that they don't but why would they say if they were?

None of these debunk the claims made by Google employees in the Project Veritas videos.

Except you're wrong in that you can't logically prove something doesn't exist. You can't prove that pink unicorns don't exist, just as much as you can't prove that political bias in the search results don't exist.

All you can do is disprove the claims of their existence. Someone tries to claim there's a pink unicorn in the garage, and you can check the garage and say that the it is pink unicorn free. Someone tries to claim political bias exist for hillary clinton in instant search results, and these articles disprove that claim as using cherry picked evidence.

Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence - preferrably without cherry picking evidence to fit an agenda yourself. Otherwise it's just hand waving and click bait.

> Now, if you suspect that the instant search results are politically biased, then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of that existence

The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence you can see for yourself as a user. In addition to that I know many people who work at Google and the vast majority of them have extreme political bias.

This is precisely the hand-waving I was talking about. An employee rambling in a bar does not constitute evidence of search result manipulation, especially when the person recording it is known for stretching information, inciting people to commit voter fraud, and crossing the U.S. Mexico border dressed as deceased Osama Bin Laden to prove some point.

Likewise, the handful of people you know having political views, in an organization of 85,000 people, is not evidence that that organization's search results being biased.

If there is so much anecdotal evidence then it should be easy for you to prove, right? Or are you afraid of being disproven?

You asked for proof and I gave it to you. I'm sorry you don't like the source, but unless you want to address what Jen Gennai said, I don't think you have much of a point.

Jen Gennai herself points out how Veritas is lying about what she said: https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo...

James Okeefe is publicly known for selectively editing video to make false representations, and this duck is no different.

You specifically claimed that there's plenty of anecdotal evidence. Where is it?

There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence you can see for yourself as a user. In addition to that I know

> anecdotal evidence > I know

So much hard data here...real hacker news material...

You conveniently leave off:

"The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video."

https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo...

>Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016. Google has been very public about the work that our teams have done since 2016 on this, so it’s hardly a revelation.

The "proof" is extremely shaky. Veritas has a record of creating these types of videos where they draw conclusions out of thin air. Here's what the person in particular has to say:

https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo...

Disclaimer: Googler.

I'm going to retread a comment I made when I first learned about Epstein a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167084

In short, and ignoring my ad hominem attack on his motivations, I encourage you to read/skim his two "studies" [1][2] and see how absurd they are. You might dismiss my claims and summaries as biased, but I think I was pretty open-minded towards his conclusions until I read them.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with...

[2] https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Metho...

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