Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias 133
Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ — each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports at Cnet that along comes Blekko, whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' Categorization lists are applied by appending a 'slashtag.' The query, 'climate change /conservative' will give you politically slanted results, for example. 'Climate change /science' will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept — that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed — gets some traction, writes Needleman. But 'Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.'"
Kittens (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking of versus [left-right.us]...
"sea kittens" (Score:2)
Priceless! In both searches I found mention of a PETA project to rename fish as "sea kittens" so people would feel guilty about fishing...
Hey, that gives me an idea! How about using a line and hook to catch kittens? One could use live mice as bait.
Re: (Score:2)
I sense arguments being made on slashdot based on which side has more results as an end tag.
"Google has more results for 'its cool' than 'it's cool' so that's clearly correct" etc
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Obvious question given your final example, but prior to 9/11/2001, we should have been strip searching all the white american christian males and letting those of arab descent pass through unmolested, right? Since prior to 9/11/2001, the largest terrorist act performed against the US was done so by a white american christian male, specifically timothy mcveigh, correct?
Seems to me like the logical extension of "search all the brown people, let everyone else through."
Re: (Score:2)
Screenings need to be geared towards the most likely threat at the time, and not just be a reaction to something that's already happened. Prior to 9/11 we knew for certain that Al Qaeda was a problem, since they'd already attacked the WTC once and Osama made quite a show of promising to continue his attacks on the US. Whereas Timmy - despite his ties to fundamentalist right-wing fanatics - was a one-off freak occurrence; the kind of shit that has happened plenty of times in US history (eg. Wall Street Bom
Re: (Score:2)
So you think Timothy McVey was acting alone and it was an isolated incident?
Whare about the white American [go.com] terrorists? Sorting by color only serves bolster the point that Americans are zionists out to get rid of anybody that makes them uncomfortable.
Sorry, but the country of origin doesn't matter. When you play political games and arm warlords expect reprisal from everywhere including our own backyard. [nytimes.com] If you're scanning for likely threats at the time, their likelihood is going to be determined by the las
Re: (Score:2)
So you think Timothy McVey was acting alone and it was an isolated incident?
No, he was supported by the Free Mars coalition in their quest to overthrow the shackles of Earth.
Whare about the white American [go.com] terrorists? Sorting by color only serves bolster the point that Americans are zionists out to get rid of anybody that makes them uncomfortable.
Whare about paying attention to what I wrote, instead of what you wish I'd written?
Sorry, but the country of origin doesn't matter.
Of course. A country that's 95% mulslim is just as likely to spawn terrorists, as, say, Switzerland. Sure. That's why Kosovo and Chechnya have been so peaceful in recent history, right?
When you piss off radical fanatics and fight for increased recognition of human rights on a global level expect reprisal from everywhere including our own backyard.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
A flight boards in the US going to another target in the US. How do you prioritize who gets "extra" attention?
Next thing you know, you'll tell me that in practice the Arizona law wasn't going to be preferentially enforced against those of Mexican descent, especially given that they went out of their way to refer to something that sounds an awful lot like probable cause without saying probable cause because that phrase has some underlying legal baggage.
Needs Work; Selling Point Doesn't Exist for Me (Score:5, Interesting)
Massive failure on that example [blekko.com] unless you consider the top three results (newscientist.com, livescience.com and physorg.com) to be more than just news sites. And (of course you new this was coming) the gold standard does a better job with the same search [google.com].
Of the first page of Blekko results, I'd argue that only half of them have any business being on there. The other problem is that a lot of things like date ranges or news that this slashtag hopes to fill is already covered by Google's advanced notation [google.com]. People who need these have probably already learned to use them (for instance the site:slashdot.org term helps me see if a story has already been up on a topic). If you want a bias other than range restrictions, just add it as a search term.
I spent a lot of time playing around with this and nothing I tried really jumped out at me as "useful." Of course I was just fiddling around and not really looking for anything in particular.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the more people use it the better it's going to get.
I hate to say "duh", but every search engine works that way. Google takes into account what people are clicking on when they do a search, and if the top answers aren't getting clicked, they move on down. The first search engines pretty much used this as a metric, plus meta tags.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course I was just fiddling around and not really looking for anything in particular.
You get absolutely fantastic results if you use the "BS marketing" or "investor attractor" biases rather than the "reality" bias.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with your position that Blekko isn't really useful when you have the option of jumping onto Advanced Google.
I can see people using it in the future if a community builds up that uses the slashtags dilligently. It seems to be hivemind powered, at least to a certain degree.
Unfortunately, I don't see this ever working as envisioned, because the terms that describe the bias can never be free from bias. Endless debate over which sources are "liberal" and "conservative" will ensue. The best we can hop
The bias of bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Bias is inherent in everyone, this engine included. Who decides what fits a category? It is up to individuals to interpret the bias. Who decides whether something should appear in /terrorist or /freedomfighter ?
Re: (Score:2)
And I don't know that's really bias (Score:2)
That is an active, declared, stance. You are telling the search engine "Make the results like this," and it is.
Normally when talking about bias what someone means is a balance in a direction that is unintentional and unnoticed on the part of the person doing it. They are biased towards or against something and it effects what they do, but they don't know it. When they believe they are neutral they are in fact not.
A geek analogy would simply be one of electrical circuits. If you have a properly working ampli
Re: (Score:2)
Guy Fawkes was a terrorist. Guy Fawkes was a revolutionary.
Bias? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
Re: (Score:2)
There fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:2)
This suggests that you hold a very large left-leaning bias.
Re: (Score:2)
The reasons for firing do seem a bit contrived, but I haven't dug into it enough to know; it could be that good old Juan was sleeping with some executive's girlfriend or something and that's the real reason for firing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
Are you suggesting that NPR promotes the left as FOX promotes the right?
Have you actually listened to NPR, or are you just assuming that the FOX propaganda regarding NPR is true?
Re: (Score:2)
You appear to disagree. Are you more left or more right? :)
I listen to NPR ... in general, they seem to at least try to give both sides. It seems to me, though, that most of the commentators/show folks are somewhat more left than I am, and generally more supportive of, if I were to name a party, Democrats than Republicans. They also seem to have certain ... issues/agendas that they do push, though they aren't necessarily conservative or liberal.
The problem is people confuse what bias is (Score:4, Insightful)
I mention this in another post.
So Fox news is NOT biased. No, really, they aren't. The reason is they know exactly what they are doing. They don't think they are perfectly in the center, they don't think they are trying to be equal. They know they are supporting republican causes and agendas. They may not admit as much, bu they know it. It is an active, purposeful stance. It is not bias.
Bias is when you are trying to do something, but don't (at least not completely) because you are predisposed for or against something. So bias in the media would be something like a story not getting reported on because the editors decide it "isn't news" because it tells a narrative they don't like. They aren't actively working to suppress it, they just don't like it and thus decide it isn't news worthy, not realizing what they are doing.
You do discover bias in new media, no surprise it happens in all human endeavors. Fox News just isn't a good example because they are actively working towards a stance. It isn't bias if it is your actual goal.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
bias [thefreedictionary.com] (bs)
n.
1. A line going diagonally across the grain of fabric: Cut the cloth on the bias.
2.
a. A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
b. An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.
Re: (Score:2)
Juan Williams was FIRED from NPR for expressing his views on FOX. Political Correctness of the Liberals run amok.
Being biased doesn't mean you're not reporting the "facts", bias comes across when reporting the "facts", whether or not a "fact" is buried deep in an article or report.
Finding out that the perp was "white" in the first paragraph is bias, if you don't report the similar fact when it isn't a "white" guy. You know, burying the fact that the guy who wanted to blow something up was "muslim" on the se
Re: (Score:2)
You are muddying the issue here with the Juan Williams story. The fact that Williams was fired doesn't in itself prove anything about whether their programming or reporting has left bias.
I'm not saying that I support the decision to fire him. I think it was kind of boneheaded, but at the same time I can at some level understand how NPR does not want to seem like they are tolerant of anti-Muslim bias.
However, your equating being afraid of Muslims as natural as being afraid of sharks in itself sounds like a
Re: (Score:2)
You must watch "The View" and think "Insightful!"
When was the last "Extremist White Christian" bombing you can think of off the top of your head.
Your bias is trying to get moral equivalency when there is none. Nice try though.
Re: (Score:2)
When was the last "Extremist White Christian" bombing you can think of off the top of your head.
The US bombing of Afghanistan. Bush said he believes we live in the end times, and that god works through him.
Re: (Score:2)
When was the last "Extremist White Christian" bombing you can think of off the top of your head.
I believe that the last "bombing" that resulted in a fatality was in 1998, by Eric Robert Rudolph. Of course, it was nowhere near the scale of destruction as the WTC towers, however that wasn't simply a bomb either.
The point is that there are extremist whack-jobs (as well as moderates) in just about any religious or political groups.
If you think that Muslims are the only people that have dangerous nutcases, then you are naive. Furthermore, If you think violent Muslim extremists are the norm, rather than t
Re: (Score:2)
I should point out... I meant the last bombing "in the US"...
Re: (Score:2)
So, what you're saying is that NPR can create Post Hoc "standards" for firing someone.
What standard did Juan Williams violate when giving a PERSONALIZED account of an event?
Meanwhile, I wonder if you'd support reporters creating news stories ....
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/10/30/anchorage-cbs-affiliate-caught-on-voicemail-conspiring-against-alaskas-gop-senate-candidate/ [biggovernment.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Have you actually listened to FOX, or are you just assuming that the propaganda regarding FOX is true?
FOX propoganda? (Score:2)
Please, tell me, where is the anti-FOX "propaganda"?
Nobody has to create propaganda to make FOX look bad. They can be completely honest and show what they have to say, and FOX frequently appears to then satirize themselves.
And yes, I've seen far more FOX than I have ever wanted.
I've also even seen guests or commentators on FOX presenting a reasonable opinion that I found myself actually agreeing with. I even once found myself agreeing with Glenn Beck on an issue. Usually it's followed up with the rest of
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Sad as it is, if you're seeking unbiased news, you can get it from the Daily Show... sort of.
It isn't really a news site, and it does at first glance have a pretty decent liberal slant, until you realize its not really slant, just a product of the fact that the show is about making fun of dishonest media, which happens to be much stronger from the opposite side of the spectrum you think they're biased in, and they do in fact target both sides.
The news side is also not really intentional, its just they make
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Tea Party! (Score:2)
I see huge potential in selling this to Tea Party members and other political groups so they don't need to be confused by other points of view!
Re: (Score:2)
I see huge potential in selling this to Tea Party members and other political groups so they don't need to be confused by other points of view!
They already have conservapedia.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering the people who declared the rally for a return to sanity as a liberal get together I doubt we get something else. Especially considering that the satellite rally I attended seem to have just as many people on the conservative side of things as the liberal side.
Like left-right.us (Score:3, Insightful)
This looks like a professional heavyweight cousin of Left-Right.us [left-right.us], a relatively simple Google hack I posted some weeks back. Very cool.
(though I still like seeing the results side-by-side.)
LALALALALA (Score:2)
Great for Fox News "research" (Score:1)
This might not be so bad.
I can just see Fox News anchors with actual quotes to back up their uninformed stances on on the issues they have chosen to rally behind... or more often against.
Unneeded? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I want to further specify search keywords to add bias to my search in Google, I can. Unless Blekko is *really, really* good at this, I'm not sure I see how it will end up better than google with the same keywords without the slash?
I suppose it's an interesting *idea*, but the devil will be in the detail of getting the filtering to be really good, better than bing, yahoo, or google with similar searches.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How about searching for
industrial design colleges
On google, no actual colleges. On Blekko, it auto-slashtags it to industrial design /colleges, and 100% of the results are colleges.
Re: (Score:2)
No college calls itself a "colleges". If you search in the plural, you get sites that list colleges (which seems perfectly reasonable). With the singular "college" you get a mix of college listing sites and a few schools.
If you want a list of only colleges in google, just search for "industrial design college site:edu" (or whatever extension for schools in your country of interest). Yes, not many folks know how to use "site:", but then most folks won't figure out slashtags either.
Re: (Score:2)
It does raise the point that google is a little strict about plurals. If you accidentally leave one in it can totally bone your search results.
A personal reality distorsion field generator... (Score:2)
...great, just what people need.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
...great, just what people need.
Problem is... these distortion generators already exist in abundance. People have no trouble gravitating to as many of their preferred degree of polarity as they have time to surf. The novelty here is that it is adjustable so one site serves all (in theory).
This has a certain subversively educational appeal. Making the issue of bias in providing (or absorbing) information explicit forces people to confront and think about the issue.
Unfortunately only people who are curious, undogmatic and reflective are lik
Oh, God (Score:1)
Oh, god. As if it weren't easy enough already to find only information that only supports what you already believe, here's a search engine that deliberately provides blinders.
How about a search engine that analyzes your search, and then guides you to sites that show you information that confronts what you think you know with thoughtful and clearly-reasoned analysis and real, verifiable data?
Oh, wait-- clearly-reasoned and thoughtful analysis? This is the internet we're talking about. That gets buried und
Re: (Score:2)
And it's not just me, I've noticed it being done to others as well. People seem to hate that "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take any more than can reasonably be expected" stance.
One problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This is obviously a "search engine" for American Neo-Cons.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Google can do bias too (Score:1)
No clue how it works, but the search results seem to be skewed towards Ubuntu. I try not to use it for that exact reason: not understanding the mechanism of altering.
Obv (Score:2)
0 results, please try expanding search parameters
Using /truth /falsehood slashtags... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
I think it's your definition of Fascism that is screwed.
Fascism is about nationalism and strong divisions of social class.
Socialism is about internationalism and removal of social class barriers (at least in theory).
It is true that both advocate a strong central state, but that is the only similarity.
Re: (Score:2)
rival the level of knowledge that hardcore game designers typically have of Physics and Geometry.
You mean, it's almost right, and looks like it's doing what you think it's doing, so it's good? ... oh shit rocket jump!
Re: (Score:1)
I suppose the better question is who gets to define which political groupings are associated with each other and think what. Do Democrats get to associate Conservatives with Nazis? Do Republicans get to associate Liberals with Communists?
Re: (Score:2)
Likewise, many liberals claim to be about individual freedom, but the policies they support (non-discrimination laws, speech codes, gun control, high taxes) when applied to individuals are extremely illiberal.
Wow, this blows my mind. Speech codes and gun control you've got somewhat of a point there. But non-discrimination laws are there in order to ensure that liberty is available to everybody on a more or less equal basis. Society involves making sacrifices in non-essential liberty in order to have a better life.
And high taxes is just what conservatives say when the liberals propose actually taxing to cover the cost of government. It might be tax and spend liberal, but the status quo since Regan was borrow a
Re: (Score:2)
Well he's right at least with Geometry - if you ever try writing your own engine code - you need a university level understanding of Linear Algebra in order to even understand what you're looking at. I'm not talking about when you open Valve's SDK to make a Source Deathmatch Mod, that's peanuts that any teenager can pick up and go with. If you want your new game to run with both OpenGL and DirectX (as some developers do), and you start relatively from the ground up - knowledge of matrices and how to use the
Faded from memory (Score:1)
Indeed; I don't remember any of them existing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I vaguely remember cuil, but I don't remember what made it different except that it had fewer results than the big boys (google, yahoo, everyone else really).
What happens - (Score:1)
- when all the US sites are classified /rightwing or /reallygoddamnrightwing by the rest of the world? Or when all non-US sites are classified /commiepinkotreehugger by legions of Americans?
Is there a /yeehaw tag?
How about /nospam and /whatimlookingfor (Score:1)
I guess an unbiased search engine is basically choosing a random set of web pages.
I rather like this idea (Score:2)
I would certainly prefer to get "slants" as well as scientific informational results in searches. It's interesting that there doesn't appear to be much of a "centerist" view any longer. I think this is largely due to certain extremes branding centerists as opposing extremists rather than what they are. Still, filtering out even more crap might be interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this is largely due to certain extremes branding centerists as opposing extremists rather than what they are.
If you are not for us you are against us!
OK, I'm going there right now.... (Score:2)
Still using Clusty (yippy) (Score:1)
Clusty hasn't completely faded from memory. I still use it all the time at search.yippy.com - I still find the search clusters very handy for quickly focusing my searches to get to the useful stuff.
Pr0n? (Score:2)
I know there's an election tomorrow (we get to select which side of the same corporate purchased coin we want, yay for us) but I think the killer app for this isn't "right" "left" or "liberal" "conservative" but more for Pr0n, like "blondes" "redheads" and uh, many other not safe for work tags, you get the idea.
*Any* bias? (Score:2)
the_internet/!stupid (Score:2)
no results found
Hmm, let's see... (Score:3, Funny)
politics /retarded [blekko.com]:
Impressive.
That's all we need... (Score:3, Insightful)
More confirmation bias.
I'd rather switch... (Score:2)
Go Blekko! ...ank
Well, ok, if that turns you on... (Score:2)
There's Wikipedia then there's Conservapedia. The former has hourly bunfights about bias which results in many bias free articles, but also some spectacularly biased articles on both the left and the right, while the latter insists only on a right slant.
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader whether a biased (left or right) search engine is any good.
--
BMO - Obviously using a biased commie liberal Canadian spell-check, because Wikipedia doesn't get a squiggly underline but Conservapedia does.
fix all of 'em (Score:2)
All I want is for search engines to accept single quotes, and not, in any way, shape, or form, interpret the contents. For example, I have an artist friend who I lost touch with, and can't search, since she spells her name Mel. White, and yes, that's a period after the "l".
Any number of other searches I've done, I've had similar problems.
The other thing I'd like is proximity - "these words within 3/5/whatever words of each other", so I don't have to do three, or six, or 12 searches for just one statement th
Hilarious (Score:2)
This is cynical enough to sound like material cribbed from the Onion, or possibly Stephen Colbert. :P
But spot-on. When it comes to politics, people don't want to be informed, they want to be agreed with.
Dictionary rewrites (Score:2)
Liberal /conservative = Democrats buying votes with Republican money seized at police gunpoint (taxes)
/liberal = Republicans attempting to repeal the First Amendment to be replaced by Leviticus 18
Conservative
Me /you = idiot
/me = idiot
You
Moderation /slashdot = Insightful if I agree, flamebait if I don't
/moderation = Selection bias case study
Slashdot
Darok /Jalad = Tanagra
They should name it "ostritch" or "blinders" (Score:2)
It's an anti-spam search engine. (Score:2)
This article manages to completely miss the major reason you might want to use Blekko. As a logged-in user you can personally tag a site as spam, and you'll _never_ see it again in any search you do. A large body of users, tagging as spam, produces a nice database of statistics that can be used to drive the _global_ spam tag. It already does a pretty good job pulling spam out of your search results, and if it really takes off they're going to be delivering pretty high quality.
Blekko doesn't make any money f
Bad UI (Score:2)
What's up with the red-colored links ? I do my first ever search on Blekko, and it looks like I've already visited all the pages...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't Google scrub sites that are contrary to it's views and sometime disappear a site altogether?
Re: (Score:2)
Google changes your results in that regular use of Google will filter out and make things have higher rank depending on your search history.
For example, searching a lot about Linux and their distributions will make Wine the software the top result instead of the beverage.
Re: (Score:2)
This is selective.
Re: (Score:2)
"WINE" should go to the project and "wine" to the beverage.
Re: (Score:2)
Lame, what about "apple".
I would suggest that google should have a "clarification" page like the ones on wikipedia.
It should say something like "I'm sorry, you searched for \apple\ that request is ambiguous, please select the category of you are interested in /electronics/food/etc"
Re:reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Google changes your results in that regular use of Google will filter out and make things have higher rank depending on your search history.
For example, searching a lot about Linux and their distributions will make Wine the software the top result instead of the beverage.
Yet another reason not to accept JS or cookies from Google. The feature itself may not be so terrible. It's pretty bad though that this would be turned on by default, which is the same problem with lots of features that try to be "helpful" without clearly explaining up-front what they are doing and why. It goes counter to the common-sense expectation that a give set of search results is based on only the keywords entered. It really sounds like a way to put a pleasant spin on all of that data collection and retention: "See, it's just so that we can better serve you, honest! No, we won't delete it upon request."
Re: (Score:2)
And that is exactly why this thing may be very successful. The last thing most people want is to be exposed to viewpoints other than their own or have to actually think about what they believe.
Re: (Score:2)
Now then, specifically searching for a bias can be useful for research, especially in the realm of argumentative writing. Even when you're representing one platform, you should acknowledge the existance of other ideologies and attempt to counter their claims. What better way to do this than to specifically look for the bias