Google Blocks Search Suggestions To Stop Election Misinformation (bloomberg.com) 83
Google said it will block some autocomplete search suggestions to stop misinformation spreading online during the U.S. presidential election in November. From a report The autocomplete feature of the world's largest search engine regularly recommends full queries once users begin typing words. The company said on Thursday it will remove predictions that could be interpreted as claims for or against any candidate or political party. In addition, Google said it will pull claims from the autocomplete feature about participation in the election, including statements about voting methods, requirements, the status of voting locations and election security. For instance, if you type in "you can vote" into Google's search engine, the system may have suggested a full query that includes misleading or incorrect information. Typing those three words into Google on Thursday produced the full phrase "You can vote yourself into socialism" as the top recommended query.
Well, that certainly is misinformation (Score:2, Insightful)
We tried to vote ourselves into socialism but were prevented by the DNC.
I guess we'll have to try a different box.
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Does anyone even make soap-boxes anymore?
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Yes, but they're cardboard.
A similar substitution has taken place with our civil rights.
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Kinda hilarious the paper our constitution was originally written on was illegal to even make until 2018. Itâ(TM)s still illegal to make if the leaves and flowers are too nice, funny how making cannabis legal and expunging records will go a long way to restoring the rights of citizens.
Parchment has always been legal, unless you are vegan. Ironic that you're trying to spread misinformation on an article about misinformation.
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We tried to vote ourselves into socialism but were prevented by the DNC.
I guess we'll have to try a different box.
That "DNC" you're writing about sure is a funny way to spell "Millions of Democratic voters (and independents in open primary states) who weren't too lazy to actually vote, and were disproportionately elderly and minority."
The one big downside of the internet, is that it has enabled people to tailor their media preferences to such a fine degree, that it is possible to gaslight yourself with lies and bullshit tailored to your own specific political pathologies. Lots of activists blame the large media provide
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Oh wait, they're not.
But ya, your conspiracy theory sounds way better.
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Sadly this is true, I've seen it happen so many times. During the last UK election there was a bubble that many socialists got stuck in and it came as a bit of a shock when Labour lost so badly.
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Not so much (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2020? Bernie lost by 30 points. You don't cheat your way to a 30 point lead. And the "Bernie Blackout" while real didn't work. 88% of Dems are aware of and support Medicare for All, Bernie's signature issue.
No, we've got polls and we know what happened. Turnout was up 30% among young voters... and 60% among elderly voters. Old people showed up to vote and young people stayed home.
Now, you can make the argument that voter suppression heavily effected that, but you didn't bring that up. You just did an anti-Dem shit post. If you were an actual Progressive looking for progress you'd have mentioned our Winner Take All, First Past the Post voting system and the need for solutions to voter suppression solutions like Universal Vote By Mail, Automatic Registration and Ranked Choice Voting.
But yeah, gotta get those Hate Clicks and your daily dose of Outrage Porn.
Those are rookie numbers (Score:2)
> Bernie lost by 30 points. You don't cheat your way to a 30 point lead.
A 30 point lead is nothing, I hear that in China, Xi gets 100% of the vote.
We're not China (Score:1)
We still have a functional independent media apparatus and legal system. Had the cheating been out in the open enough to allow 30 points Bernie could have called them on it and used it to win the day. Bernie's people sucked (and I say that as a Bernie Bro) but they don't suck _that_ much.
Bernie's only shot would have been to have done exactly what Trump did: Get to a contested election and threaten a 3rd party run. T
So why vote for the party that supports China? (Score:2)
LOL, you believe the media is "independent" despite the continual, coordinated work with the DNC? Also, this logic is just fascinating:
> Bernie can't make a credible threat because he cares for American too much, and Joe Biden will be a vastly superior President that Trump, saving tons of lives.
So you're saying the support for Biden is because he doesn't "cares for American too much" (sic)?
I... actually believe you on that one, correcting for the typos, but I'm surprised to see anyone on the left admit
There are other Journalistic options besides (Score:2)
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There are very precious few outfits I would consider independent on the left. Maybe The Intercept / Glen Greenwald, though he sure got himself into a mess with his gay partner in Brazil with allegations that they bought that seat and whatnot.
As for Warren... eh, you have a different read on that than I do. We'll have to disagree there.
If it wasn't for McCain, you might've had Palin as president though. I actually think his purpose was to sabotage her. It's amazing how much sexism the left was willing to
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We all know about data mining and figuring out which people never vote and voila they all of a sudden make postal votes now. Do a postal vote analysis, check all those who did not vote for two whole election cycles or more and then all of a sudden chose to make a postal vote and fucking ask them whether or not they actually voted. The DNC primary scammed all to hell. Biden a joke candidate and Harris just to rub Tulsi Gabbards face in it, scammed with a promise that was never going to be kept, so she would
If you keep running from truth you'll end as loser (Score:2)
Google is just so all in on (Score:1)
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I've met a number of blue collar workers who sincerely believe that Trump is a finacial genius because he went bankrupt repeatedly. Oh, and free money. Who doesn't like free money?
Something is desperately wrong with our educational system. We are utterly failing millions of people.
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The New Jersey Generals
That can't be right, "Trump" isn't in the name.
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Read the fine print. I'm sure it's int there. Try zooming in on the "T".
[citation provided] (Score:1)
> [citation needed]
Here you go: https://joebiden.info/ [joebiden.info]
This copypasta makes me laugh (Score:3)
Now look at the full list of businesses and compare it to the nominal 30% failure rate. But sure, if running a casino is guaranteed millions, why aren't all of you guys billionaires by now? I mean, you paste that list and keep telling us that any idiot can do it....
Or was your point that Trump is an idiot, but you're not even that bright?
Do tell. Please give us your list of successful and unsuccessful companies and make sure it's a statistically relevant sample, not just some n=1 lemonade stand.
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Now I'm wondering hwo they're doing it. (Score:2)
I mean - are they just adding a field to the database, or some text token in the autocomplete results, which when seen cancels the autocomplete for the whole input string, or something?
Presumably they're going to time out the script after the elections - but in any case, it can't be super cheap over the scale of their operation to do this - but I do find it completely understandable why they would do it here.
I'd think they'd also do the same for some Covid-misinformation topics also, for the length of the p
Still the top choice (Score:2)
I just checked. "you can vote yourself into socialism" is still the first autocomplete for me.
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Search: You can vote
Suggested results:
You can vote nc
You can vote yourself into socialism
You can vote training
You can vote fellowship
You can vote oha
You can vote events
You can vote volunteer
You can vote however you like lyrics
You can vote jobs
You can vote gone digital
These are my results from Canada, I don't know if Google are doing any geofencing filtering.
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... into socialism here, interesting
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I just https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb... [duckduckgo.com] instead. Why would people google anything any more, everyone knows the results are doctored all to hell, to back their profits and politically ideology (not socialism but 110% capitalism, your lives meaningless except as open wallets to be lied to and manipulated, Google the high priest of mass consumption, the number one advertising corporation, selling more carbon producing junk that anyone else on the entire planet, number one of mass consumption to excess, oh yea
Trump is an Assyrian (Score:1)
As I typed "Trump is an ass" into Google, no crude suggestions came up. But the one about him being an Assyrian did...
Seems like "stopping misinformation" is a difficult task even for the geniuses at Google.
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Our laws need to catch up with reality. These companies want to be the public common and have immunity from punishment, but also be able to censor as they please.
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Google has an enormous amount of leverage.
Search should be considered a utility. They should be totally neutral as far as possible.
I'm saying that a utility provider of a public common (where the general public can post at will, without cost) shouldn't be able to censor the users of that public common. If they choose to censor, to charge, or in some other way limit the membership to less than the general public, thereby becoming private, they should be liable for any content hosted by their service.
In Googl
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Is there any example of another publicly accessible utility that works well by being completely neutral though?
The phone system is kinda neutral and it's a disaster, full of spam and scams. The reason Google search is king is because it's usually the best at returning relevant results and filtering spam, i.e. not being neutral.
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Congress is already doing that, with Harris leading the charge if she wins.
They threaten changes to section 230, and breakups as "too big", if they don't start blocking harrassment.
And the loudest screetches for blocking or scary warning disclaimers are on statements of their political opponents. Facebook has a policy of leaving that alone for politicians. And what happens? Deafening screaming at them for that position. Direct calls by politians to silence certain posts or tweets by others.
In the US. Th
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This is Google disabling the auto-suggest feature when you type in the search field, I don't know where you are getting those comparisons from.
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They are selectively disabling it, choosing what can and can't be displayed. If they were to disable it altogether I doubt anyone would have a problem with that decision. That they won't is suspicious by itself.
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How are people okay with this?
The only solution I'd be okay with is removing autocomplete entirely. What purpose does it serve?
Re:Manifest Hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
The only misinformation I see is the horse shit narrative you just provided.
bad analogy (Score:2)
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Tell me, why do Trump supporters so vehemently support lying vs trying to get people to be truthful? Is it related to the fact that Donald Trump is a compulsive liar?
Can the Republican party not win without constantly lying?
Just dump autocomplete. (Score:2)
If you are on a phoney then tough luck, it's a phone with no real keyboard what did you expect? Use those thumbs.
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Let people type and think for themselves.
Agreed. Enough with this herd mentality.
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U.S.A. Presidential Election ballot paper (Score:2)
[_] Joe Biden
[_] Donald Trump
[x] Write-in: God help us all
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[_] Joe Biden
[_] Donald Trump
[x] Write-in: God help us all
Kanye?
Re:U.S.A. Presidential Election ballot paper (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we need ranked choice voting--so you can vote for someone reasonable, and only after that follow up with a vote for someone less aligned with your beliefs.
The ratchet only works because people feel as though there is a meaningful consequence to letting the wrong lizard win (out of two colluding lizards).
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We do have ranked choice voting: the primaries with caucuses and various other forms of winnowing vote systems. And then, once you get to the general election, you pick one of the two remaining. If everyone participated all the way through the process instead of just one Tuesday in November every 4 years, we would get better candidates.
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We do have ranked choice voting: the primaries with caucuses and various other forms of winnowing vote systems. And then, once you get to the general election, you pick one of the two remaining. If everyone participated all the way through the process instead of just one Tuesday in November every 4 years, we would get better candidates.
While you're right that if everyone participated in caucusing and primaries we'd get better candidates, since that's not going to happen we don't have anything like ranked choice (or better [slashdot.org]) voting. We should seriously think about getting a better system, one that allows more than two candidates in the general, so we can have representation from more than two parties and don't always find ourselves faced with "lesser of two evils" choices in November.
Re: U.S.A. Presidential Election ballot paper (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t think ranked voting would inspire people to actually vote. It doesnâ(TM)t seem to drive participation in other countries that have it.
Itâ(TM)s only a lesser of two evils if you donâ(TM)t like the choices. Iâ(TM)ve been satisfied with the two options for all the decades of presidential elections Iâ(TM)ve been able to vote in. Itâ(TM)s generally between âoehell noâ and âoegood enoughâ.
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I donâ(TM)t think ranked voting would inspire people to actually vote. It doesn;t seem to drive participation in other countries that have it.
That's a separate problem, I think.
It's only a lesser of two evils if you don't like the choices. I've been satisfied with the two options for all the decades of presidential elections I've been able to vote in. It's generally between "hell no" and "good enough".
My experience is very different. It's pretty much always between "no" and "hell no" in the three decades I've been voting. I think that's the more common experience among everyone who doesn't fall squarely into one of the two major camps. Even this election, for me Biden is not "good enough", I don't like his politics and I find him kind of creepy. But I'd choose a pile of manure without bothering to check its temperature over Trump, so Biden will get my vote. Though Trump
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This is why we need ranked choice voting
It's why we need something better than first past the post, but when people say "ranked choice" they usually mean instant runoff voting (IRV), which is approximately the worst of all of the other voting systems (though better than FPTP). If we're going to invest the effort to change, let's not pick the worst of the other options.
Ranked choice is okay, but please let's use a pairwise evaluation method rather than IRV. What's even more expressive is score voting (you get n points and can allocate them to c
LIB'RUL BIAS!!!!1!!UNO (Score:3, Funny)
Telling people about nonexistent problems with mail-in voting and instructing them to commit a federal and possibly state crime by voting twice is reasonable conservative speech don'tcha know!!!
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Telling people about nonexistent problems with mail-in voting
Spoken like a true manager! If we don't measure it, it doesn't exist. We know that there's no problem because we know there's just not a problem.
commit a federal and possibly state crime by voting twice
Oh, really? Isn't it just a test to make sure things work properly and not an ACTUAL election? Hell, I've heard that for decades (vote early and often, esp. in Chicago) about Democrats. Voting twice needs to be detected and prevented no matter WHO it is; voting by mail is an atrocious monstrosity if a large part of people use that way to vote.
We need to be
Bang-Up job there Google (Score:1)
Biden should...
One of the auto-results is "should stay in his basement"
Trump should...
ONLY auto-result is "resign Twitter".
Nope. nothing negative there at all...
Too little, too late Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has been manipulating search results to favor Democrat candidates for the last few years. Big tech has been manipulating the election at orders of magnitude greater than Russia ever did or was accused of doing for the last few years. For Google to claim that they are now somehow not actively manipulating the election highly disingenuous at best.
They have been busted time and again by insiders that have leaked what they are doing. Big tech is presently very afraid of the DOJ bringing antitrust action over the meddling that they have done over the last few years. The FEC is also presently very much on their minds for significant in-kind contributions. There are tax implications that could send people to prison for what they have done just for the in-kind contributions. Google has even privately admitted their significant in-kind contribution to the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign.
Right now they are in a bind. They can go whole hog for Biden and hope he wins and that these problems go away. This will leave an audit trail when people are already onto them and looking intently at them. The DOJ investigation in their abuse of their monopoly is the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley. The justice department already has at least 50 lawyers actively working on anti-trust action against them.
They are taking the option to try to back off now and hope that is enough to appease the DOJ. They can't undo the last few years of blatant abuse of their monopoly. Things go far deeper than autocomplete and they have to acknowledge that Trump may win. I would imagine that their are a lot of people not sleeping very well in big tech right now. Google certainly is far from the only big tech company that has abused its monopoly and is being looked at.
The censorship, media manipulation and cancel culture has gotten completely out of control. Bigtech is starting to realize just how many people they have pissed off and that the world doesn't much like oligarchs. The bottom line is who decides the worlds elections, unelected bureaucrats or the respective citizens of our nations?
Election interference. Plain and simple. (Score:2)
This is direct interference in an election.
They're shaping the information people can find.
Google Influencing the Election (Score:2)
Well, below is a link to a study done about Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). This study has been repeated and found that by changing what appears in a search engine, you can change peoples minds about things. This is what I believe google is doing.
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
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MOD UP
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Well, below is a link to a study done about Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). This study has been repeated and found that by changing what appears in a search engine, you can change peoples minds about things. This is what I believe google is doing.
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
As has been pointed out by another, this comment deserves a little more attention. It does not offer support for possible intent on Google's part, but the description of the mechanism is missing in the other threads I've looked at
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