Yes, what they censor and what they deliberately distort.
Do a search for `American inventors`, and see for yourself. Google will show you that the majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American. You may be skeptical of Google's claim (disguised as search results), but the next generation, working on their school reports, will see the world as Google wants them to see it. Now imagine how much of what we learn about the reality of current events is coming from the same source with the same agenda and policies regarding narrative vs. reality.
But in case you are thinking of contradicting Google's claims, remember: that's what their campaign against "misinformation" is intended to silence. They are indeed serious about misinformation.
A couple of years ago, when they were testifying to Congress that they did not deliberately distort search results. At the same time, someone else in the organization explained why they deliberately bias results. Oops. I can only guess that it was some underling who, in a sea of leftists back in the office (and probably a few non-leftists who know what would happen if they were outed) took for granted that biasing search results for political objectives was something to be proud of. They didn't realize what their execs knew, that if you're going to distort the truth for a higher objective, you don't admit doing so.
On a Google web page that I can no longer find, they publicly explained (it was public, not an internal page) that search results that improved society were sometimes more important than simply reporting the facts. That must have sounded good to an internal audience, but apparently it had to be reworked into externally calling it a fight against misinformation.
I'm not sure we're seeing the same results -- when I (in the US) search for American inventors the majority of the people they show arek not obviously African American. It seems like "the leftists" haven't got to my results yet.
Just tried it in an incognito window out of curiosity. I didn't expect it to be true (if only because results are so variable) but sure enough, the parent accurately described the top carousel of results with photos (a feature I'm not sure I've ever actually seen before—I guess I don't tend to search things that trigger that page element to appear). 5/12 white, 7/12 black (zero any other group) of the set that appears on the front page without side-scrolling.
(I make no claims about why this is—I haven't a clue—and don't, personally, really care that it's the case, but am just confirming that I do indeed see the described behavior)
> Do a search for `American inventors`, and see for yourself. Google will show you that the overwhelming majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American.
I'm not sure that is the best example. For one, this only applies to image results, regular search seem normal. For another, Bing (and the search engines that use Bing) does the same thing.
Given that, I think that there may be some sort of guerilla SEO campaign to distort these results. That campaign could be leftists trying to change perceptions of race or it could be rightists trying to change perceptions of Google/search.
I think it's purely that most kids writing school reports are more likely to be asked to write about "African-American inventors" than "America inventors" or "Chinese inventors" or any particular country, and SEO-optimized blogspam has adapted to that. I don't think it's political.
Bing Search, which has an independent web index from Google/Bing, has the same issue. It's interesting how search results can be biased without any malevolence or even any intervention by search engines.
“ Google will show you that the overwhelming majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American.”
It could just be that there is a lot of activity on the web around African-American inventors which Google is reflecting. Google isn’t an encyclopedia.
Their campaign against misinformation is purportedly intended to reduce the spread of lies and propaganda. There might be some collateral damage where sources of lies and propaganda get generally downgraded (even when telling the truth), but is that really a problem? Most of us do that in our interpersonal relationships. If you are a liar, I’ll tend not to believe you, even if when you tell me something true. (I’ll assume there is some agenda or some part which may be false.)
I don’t feel like you have presented sufficient evidence to support your (apparently politically motivated) case.
There might be some collateral damage where sources of lies and propaganda get generally downgraded (even when telling the truth), but is that really a problem?
Of course it is if Google is one of the sources of propaganda rather than an objective source of truth. In that case "misinformation" is not a neutral question of factual correctness.
When the judge and prosecutor are the same person, the judge considers most of the prosecutor's arguments to be true and the defense to be an unreliable "source of lies" that needs to be kept in line.
Such as Google's censoring of the never debunked lab leak theory? Oops. Or how about the now verified Hunter Biden laptop stories? Double oops.
It turns out the line between "politically inconvienent" and "misinformation" can be very fuzzy, even for high profile / important topics.
There is plenty of evidence if you look for it (and I am pretty sure I fall on the opposite side of the political divide from the commentor you are responding to.)
Edit: Google's biases don't just hurt the political right. Google's quick bar for the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was happy list Hillary with all her pledged votes in addition to those she'd actually won, in violation of journalistic standards and Google's previous practices.
Do a search for `American inventors`, and see for yourself. Google will show you that the majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American. You may be skeptical of Google's claim (disguised as search results), but the next generation, working on their school reports, will see the world as Google wants them to see it. Now imagine how much of what we learn about the reality of current events is coming from the same source with the same agenda and policies regarding narrative vs. reality.
But in case you are thinking of contradicting Google's claims, remember: that's what their campaign against "misinformation" is intended to silence. They are indeed serious about misinformation.
A couple of years ago, when they were testifying to Congress that they did not deliberately distort search results. At the same time, someone else in the organization explained why they deliberately bias results. Oops. I can only guess that it was some underling who, in a sea of leftists back in the office (and probably a few non-leftists who know what would happen if they were outed) took for granted that biasing search results for political objectives was something to be proud of. They didn't realize what their execs knew, that if you're going to distort the truth for a higher objective, you don't admit doing so.
On a Google web page that I can no longer find, they publicly explained (it was public, not an internal page) that search results that improved society were sometimes more important than simply reporting the facts. That must have sounded good to an internal audience, but apparently it had to be reworked into externally calling it a fight against misinformation.