Google Medic Algorithm change

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

You choose to frame it in terms of honesty. I'd suggest it comes down to commercial business policy.

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

I don't think so, or I wouldn't have made the suggestion!

I don't think so, or I wouldn't have made the suggestion!

Are you saying that honesty wouldn’t be a problem? If so, I think that’s a rather naive POV.

You choose to frame it in terms of honesty. I'd suggest it comes down to commercial business policy.

Honesty surely comes into play, whatever it comes down to?

Are you saying that honesty wouldn’t be a problem? If so, I think that’s a rather naive POV.

No - I am really not implying any more than I have said explicitly.

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.


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

If you think this is just about google then you are seriously misinformed. LEgistalion is slowly being put forward with pieces that include things to regulate what is officially allowed to be considered true. Firstly with California's attempted but ultimately discarded "anti fake news" bill and more recently with teh FBI's call to label "conspiracy theoriessst" as domestic terrorists for reasons that boil down to "well someone with that knowledge maybe, might do something illegalwhich maybe, might have been influenced by their belief in such material and this illegal thing maybe might be violent." Something you could equally and verifiably say about Beatles music because there of course was that one time...

They also bury in their document that another reason they want to push for that idea is because people might actually uncover real government conspiracies.

In other words, yes right jow you cn go use alternative search engines and all that right now. And maybe it might be true that the information never fully goes away. But for government to actually be putting forward the idea of what amount to outright thought crime is a clear and obvious demonstration of what I stated above. Eventually it would be the are that all search engines, if alternatives are even legally allowed to exist, would be forced to only list "government approved facts". Or perhaps traditional search engines will fall away entirely for the more convenient single answers of future Alexa's and other AI assistants. All that groundwork is happening now.

Ironically back when I was still in university I got the chance to participate in a research study about what could be improved in the curriculum. The thing I noticed the absolute most about what was missing was critical thinking. The courses were incredibly feed and regurgitate style classes where you weren't being tested so much on if you were learning but rather if you agreed with what you were being told. A problem that has been noticed even by some professors which has lead in some cases to the founding of schools that promote more critical thinking in how they teach such as Quest university which tries to get students to rebuild things like Keplers equations themselves from observations of astronomy rather than just feeding it to them.

On top of that I caught out the researchers for not listing their credentials, like that their study had actually been commissioned from the university they claimed it had been and asked them to email me the information later so I could verify that they were an actual, real research group actually doing real research like they claimed. They thanked me for pointing that out to them.

It's pretty hypocritical to be annoyed at how lazy laymen are yet also be okay with making alternative information harder to find. It shows that what you value is authoritarianism and people just believing what you say without question rather than people having the opportunity to look at the primary sources of bad information themselves, compare to other sources, and make up their own mind. Thus improving their critical thinking skills. If you treat people like they're too stupid to figure it out themselves, then that's what they'll become. It's also a very typical and expected attitude from a highly mainstream university educated person given their similar focus. And something that Etzel Cardena pointed out as the toxicity of academics and their tendency to see themselves as better and smarter than others, especially non academics.

If you think this is just about google then you are seriously misinformed. LEgistalion is slowly being put forward with pieces that include things to regulate what is officially allowed to be considered true. Firstly with California's attempted but ultimately discarded "anti fake news" bill and more recently with teh FBI's call to label "conspiracy theoriessst" as domestic terrorists for reasons that boil down to "well someone with that knowledge maybe, might do something illegalwhich maybe, might have been influenced by their belief in such material and this illegal thing maybe might be violent." Something you could equally and verifiably say about Beatles music because there of course was that one time...

They also bury in their document that another reason they want to push for that idea is because people might actually uncover real government conspiracies.

You've turned it into a dichotomy which shouldn't be valid. That is, the ability to uncover unpleasant/hidden truths shouldn't depend upon whether or not the spread of false information is unrestricted/encouraged. I'm not suggesting that valid and reliable information be suppressed, and that would include laws which would demonstrably catch up that kind of information. However, that isn't what has been demonstrated here.

It's pretty hypocritical to be annoyed at how lazy laymen are yet also be okay with making alternative information harder to find. It shows that what you value is authoritarianism and people just believing what you say without question rather than people having the opportunity to look at the primary sources of bad information themselves, compare to other sources, and make up their own mind. Thus improving their critical thinking skills. If you treat people like they're too stupid to figure it out themselves, then that's what they'll become. It's also a very typical and expected attitude from a highly mainstream university educated person given their similar focus. And something that Etzel Cardena pointed out as the toxicity of academics and their tendency to see themselves as better and smarter than others, especially non academics.

I never said it was okay to make alternative information harder to find. I said that it was okay to make false information harder to find, relative to valid and reliable information (unless by "alternative information" you mean "false information"?). And I've said about a bazillion times that people should read the primary sources of information, rather than depending upon authority. 

Right now, it seems easier to find and spread false information, relative to valid and reliable information (although that's probably because I'm feeling cynical at the moment). As I stated on the first page, my ideal would be lay-people who have learned how to distinguish between decent and poor information - that is, improved critical thinking skills. I doubt that people need to be exposed to a flood of false information in order to practice those skills. Given that the application of critical thinking skills would eliminate those low quality websites from consideration anyways, what exactly do you think people are supposedly missing out on when those same websites are moved a couple of pages back on a Google search?

Linda

Well said Mediochre.

I see worrying things in this arena happening all around. Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are all very corrupted imo. 

I really don’t know about man made CO2 or the barrier reef but I think this video says a lot about the academic mindset.

A new article has come out with some more details on this new attempt to censor and throttle the alternative health and supplement industry: "Google’s Medic Update Devastates the Alternative Health Industry".

Some excerpts:

"

Only medical doctors or their representatives are now apparently deemed to have enough expertise to produce the main content for medical information pages–or are at least required to review that content. This is a very curious decision since medical doctors have very limited expertise when it comes to supplements, alternative health protocols, and chiropractic treatments, for example. Consider that the average doctor spends a total of eight hours studying nutrition in medical school–not eight hours a week for a semester, but eight hours in total. Anyone who reads two good books on nutrition knows more about the subject than 95% of all doctors. And yet doctors are now deemed by Google to be the only ones with the expertise to produce and/or edit the main content on alternative health subjects.

Likewise, only doctors are now deemed to have the authoritativeness to comment on alternative health issues, despite the fact they frequently know nothing about the subject–and have a financial incentive to disapprove of it. That’s right. Patients who find relief using alternative health methods don’t need to pay those same doctors for their more expensive drugs and protocols. They are no longer paying patients. This presents a clear-cut conflict of interest. Yet Google now supports that conflict of interest.
A medical doctor with not the slightest expertise in chiropractic, for example–merely an opinion–is now deemed more trustworthy by the Google algorithm to comment on chiropractic treatments than a fully trained, certified, and licensed chiropractor with years of experience in her field.

The net result is the censorship of true alternative health information for those who do not already know where to look for that information. And it puts people with little knowledge of–or sympathy for–that information in charge of it."

"What Google’s Censorship Means to You:

Yes, you can still come to sites like jonbarron.org whenever you want to read our articles for information about health topics that interest you–if you already know who we are, that is, and where to find us. But what if you aren’t familiar with the better alternative sites and you’re searching for information about a health topic from ground zero? The odds of your finding anything other than the medically endorsed point of view by searching for the condition on Google are now close to non-existent. In other words, for those who don’t already know about the major alternative health sites, they’re just plain out of luck. They will be stuck with the medical POV and no alternative. Curiously–and I use that term with great sarcasm–Google has decided that the anonymous writers on Wikipedia check all the right boxes on the E-A-T scale. Wikipedia still comes up high on the list when you search for medical issues." 

 Concerning Wiki, no surprise there considering its biased and censored nature when it comes to subjects like the paranormal.

A new article has come out with some more details on this new attempt to censor and throttle the alternative health and supplement industry: "Google’s Medic Update Devastates the Alternative Health Industry".

Some excerpts:

"


 Concerning Wiki, no surprise there considering its biased and censored nature when it comes to subjects like the paranormal.

Again, it doesn’t help your case if you depend upon misinformation to support your point. For example, doctors don’t receive a total of 8 hours in nutrition training (utter bollocks).

And surely the “conflict of interest” is even more obvious with respect to alt med practitioners, isn’t it? Even physicians who receive no difference in remuneration regardless of which treatments they recommend continue to advise evidence-based practices. If it were about money, physicians would be just as glad to get in on the “colon cleansing” scam as anyone else.