Google Medic Algorithm change

I suspect that Google is bad news.

https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/08/1...f-my-soul/

There’s the problem. 
Who decides what is or isn’t decent information?

Agreed. I've been perusing Google's rater guidelines. It looks like raters are trained lay-people who represent the ordinary user in their locale. So in a way, it looks like people who represent the ideal I referred to earlier - people who are well-informed about how to identify decent information. I don't see any description of how the raters are validated. One way is to look at the outcomes in your area of expertise (if you happen to have one) - which websites are rated high and which are rated low on a Google search vs. how you would rate them.

My area of expertise happens to be medicine, alt. med., and evaluating evidence, and the outcome described in the article in the OP pretty much describes what results a valid Google algorithm should produce - putting Mayo Clinic and WebMD higher than Jon Barron or Dr. Mercola, when googling "colon detox".

Linda

Agreed. I've been perusing Google's rater guidelines. It looks like raters are trained lay-people who represent the ordinary user in their locale. So in a way, it looks like people who represent the ideal I referred to earlier - people who are well-informed about how to identify decent information. I don't see any description of how the raters are validated. One way is to look at the outcomes in your area of expertise (if you happen to have one) - which websites are rated high and which are rated low on a Google search vs. how you would rate them.

My area of expertise happens to be medicine, alt. med., and evaluating evidence, and the outcome described in the article in the OP pretty much describes what results a valid Google algorithm should produce - putting Mayo Clinic and WebMD higher than Jon Barron or Dr. Mercola, when googling "colon detox".

Linda

From a purely tactical perspective this is dangerous. Removing the ability to look at the raw sources of the other side of an argument and only getting the mainstream rebuttal can eventually be weaponized into suppression or misrepresentation of real information while also making it impossible for the average person to fact check that.

Tactically the way you get people to accept this idea is to first use it legitimately, such as in this case, then slowly but surely include more and more "inconveniently true" sources into the censorship. And since google has long admitted that it giving you thousands of results in a search query is a bug, not a feature, and that really you should only get a single result when you ask a question you should be able to see how easily this can go wrong. You already see hints of this with things like Alexa and Siri where you do to a degree get single answers when you ask questions.

Once you've made a website or idea hard enough to find and have sufficient censorship and demonization of its supporters it becomes easy to justify taking it down entirely to others as any opposition to that can be similarly suppressed, censored and mocked. Totalitarianism and authoritarian fetishism quickly become the acceptable mainstream ideas in such an environment. Or really, a form of neo-feudalism as technocracy pretty much will be if it gets entrenched enough.

I think there's a fairly simple answer to this problem - offer the user a choice of how the results are ordered, giving clear information about how the different options work. Allow the user the freedom to choose whether to use a system for rating quality or not to use one (in the same way that the user can choose whether to use Google's "Safe Search" filter). Ideally, offer a choice of different systems for rating quality.

I think there's a fairly simple answer to this problem - offer the user a choice of how the results are ordered, giving clear information about how the different options work. Allow the user the freedom to choose whether to use a system for rating quality or not to use one (in the same way that the user can choose whether to use Google's "Safe Search" filter). Ideally, offer a choice of different systems for rating quality.

That’s assuming that all the choices are made available by Google, I suspect that that wouldn’t be acceptable to them. The thing is, you can’t easily prove that they’re holding articles back. It’s already gone too far, the whistleblower video I posted about (project veritas) I think reveals this. 

You’re assuming that google is basically ‘honest’, I don’t think they are even trying any longer, if they ever were.

That’s assuming that all the choices are made available by Google, I suspect that that wouldn’t be acceptable to them. The thing is, you can’t easily prove that they’re holding articles back. It’s already gone too far, the whistleblower video I posted about (project veritas) I think reveals this. 

You’re assuming that google is basically ‘honest’, I don’t think they are even trying any longer, if they ever were.

I meant that if Google did that (in an honest way) it would be the best solution to the problem of who decides which pages are good quality. I'm not assuming they're actually going to do it.

I meant that if Google did that (in an honest way) it would be the best solution to the problem of who decides which pages are good quality. I'm not assuming they're actually going to do it.

Do you think they’re honest enough?

What are your reason(s) for saying “I'm not assuming they're actually going to do it.“

Do you think they’re honest enough?

What are your reason(s) for saying “I'm not assuming they're actually going to do it.“

Only because I wasn't making any assumption about whether Google would be willing to do it. It was just a suggestion about a simple way to solve the problem of authority, by giving people a choice about how their search results were ordered.

Only because I wasn't making any assumption about whether Google would be willing to do it. It was just a suggestion about a simple way to solve the problem of authority, by giving people a choice about how their search results were ordered.

The point is that it would require a certain honesty. If this were not possible your suggestion becomes rather pointless, don’t you think?

From a purely tactical perspective this is dangerous. Removing the ability to look at the raw sources of the other side of an argument and only getting the mainstream rebuttal can eventually be weaponized into suppression or misrepresentation of real information while also making it impossible for the average person to fact check that.

What an odd way to characterize it. They aren't removing the ability to look at anything. The websites are all there and freely available regardless of Google's algorithms attempting to offer the "high quality" websites early in the search. And using a web search, never mind using only a single search engine, is only one way of obtaining information. There are dozens of other ways people get information using the internet, and dozens of ways to get information which don't even use the internet. None of what this particular private company does makes it impossible or difficult for the average person to get information in order to fact check something. The only thing it makes very slightly difficult is to offer factually incorrect or misrepresented information to a broader, lazier audience. I'm not sure why this should be regarded as a bad thing. The speed with which nonsense gets shared on Facebook and other social media tells you that there is no way that "the other side of the argument" (i.e. not the real information) has been suppressed or made difficult to find. If anything, this exercise has demonstrated that overall the hardest information to find is valid and reliable information.

Tactically the way you get people to accept this idea is to first use it legitimately, such as in this case, then slowly but surely include more and more "inconveniently true" sources into the censorship. And since google has long admitted that it giving you thousands of results in a search query is a bug, not a feature, and that really you should only get a single result when you ask a question you should be able to see how easily this can go wrong. You already see hints of this with things like Alexa and Siri where you do to a degree get single answers when you ask questions.

Once you've made a website or idea hard enough to find and have sufficient censorship and demonization of its supporters it becomes easy to justify taking it down entirely to others as any opposition to that can be similarly suppressed, censored and mocked. Totalitarianism and authoritarian fetishism quickly become the acceptable mainstream ideas in such an environment. Or really, a form of neo-feudalism as technocracy pretty much will be if it gets entrenched enough.

Dude, it's a single search engine (of which there are many) affecting a single way, out of dozens (if not hundreds) of ways to get information. If you (the general "you") don't like it, don't use it. If there's a market for "alternative facts" then somebody else will come up with a way to offer them to you (as has already been amply demonstrated).

Linda