
Audit suggests Google favors a small number of major news outlets - hhs
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/google-news-algorithm.php
======
kristianc
There's a bit of mixing of correlation and causation here.

Most reasonable people would consider Google to be an inferior search engine
if it surfaced results from the Daily Caller, Kos or Breitbart above those of
NPR, BBC and the WSJ.

Search engines therefore surface the more authoritative / linked to sources
first. These smaller sites are trying to achieve through regulation a level of
prominence that they can't get in the marketplace.

~~~
colordrops
It seems though that they now surface "authoritative" sites over clear user
intent in their search.

For instance, search for "has Infowars ever been correct" on Google and then
Duck Duck Go. For Google, you will see results that have nothing to do with
the clear intent of the query, such as Wikipedia and mainstream news articles
trashing Infowars. For Duck, you will get several results that actually answer
the question.

Since Google pioneered natural language processing for search queries, and
these sorts of queries worked fine years ago, the only conclusion is that
Google is actively burying certain results to manipulate the narrative. Why
does their natural language search break all of a sudden when I want to find
out something that is unpopular?

~~~
agentdrtran
Doing that search gave me a Quora link as the first result, and then two links
to infowars...which is an awful result.

~~~
colordrops
I'm seeing 2 out of 10 links as Infowars, links #3 and #4. The top two are
Quora. mediamatters and rational wiki are examples of other front page
results.

They all directly address the query. Why exactly are they "awful"?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
You seem in your answers to be prioritizing "direct answer to the question
regardless of reliability" rather than "useful information about the
question's subject." I suppose there's an argument to be made for that, but
it's an argument that leads to prioritizing a search engine that will return
the answer "orange pinstripe" to the question "what is the color of the sky"
over a search engine that returns a scientific article about how sunlight
behaves in atmosphere.

(In any case, this all seems a bit orthogonal to whether Google is right or
wrong to prioritize widely-recognized news outlets over smaller ones when it
surfaces searches for news articles, doesn't it?)

~~~
colordrops
I don't believe it to be orthogonal. There is a deeper philosophical question
that has barely been touched on what search engines should return in response
to user queries, which also applies to surfacing news. In the past with Alta
Vista, word matches were the heuristic and it was extremely obvious as to how
to measure the quality of the result. Now you've got very abstract heuristics,
such as intent of the user, trustworthiness of the source, whether the source
is healthy and good for society, the correctness or honesty of the content,
how much revenue will be made with particular set of results, etc. and the
public is being left out of the discussion as to which heuristics are
important to apply.

------
tj-teej
Can someone explain why this is any different from the fact that almost every
Train Station in the USA has the same couple newspapers available (NYT, WSJ,
USA Today, etc.)?

If the problem is the monopoly on how people get their news, then shouldn't
that be what is solved?

~~~
wuliwong
The train station is not algorithmically deciding what to show you. The
station has brokered a business agreement with the newspapers in the
newsstand. I am unaware of any deal Google has with CNN to make sure a
percentage of their articles show up in search engine results.

~~~
yeahitslikethat
What is stopping this from happening? What is stopping Google bombs?

What is preventing us from being smarter? From going out and educating
ourselves? Thinking more deeply? Finding the truth? Introspecting?

Where do we get our thoughts from? Who guides our behavior?

There is a struggle going on right now to regain control of the human mind.

It used to be just a few major news/media outlets. Now it's the entire world.

Someone has to be in charge of the information we are given. Else chaos will
consume us all.

No one is in charge any more. We have to fix that. People must be told what to
think again. They are thinking too many different things to predict the future
anymore and that is disconcerting to those in the old power structures.

~~~
samdfonseca
what?

------
Pxtl
Good. The 21st-century internet has created a crisis of credibility. We've
learned that "information wants to be free" and "The Net interprets censorship
as damage and routes around it" applies just as well to lies as it does to
factual information. We are in a storm of misinformation, and have been for
many years.

I don't love the 500lb gorillas of mainstream media, but they have skin in the
game if they get caught pushing falsehood. Look at men who've trainwrecked
their careers over getting caught in a lie - Olbermann, Dan Rather, etc.

Can you imagine smaller no-name media sources facing any real consequences in
that kind of situation? No.

We need credibility again. Until somebody finds a way to algorithmize
credibility, I'm happy with saying "only the big boys are assumed to be
credible by aggregators".

~~~
ilaksh
People who have a different worldview are probably just going to bury this,
but in case it is useful information to anyone, I will write it anyway.

To make it easier for people to accept the premise, let's suppose that we are
not concerned about the United States. Say we are worried about some other
countries.

The issue is that when only a relatively small number of the largest media
companies show up in the results, that makes it easier for state or corporate
interests to control the information stream that citizens receive. If smaller,
independent outlets were surfaced more often, it would mean that in order to
push any particular narrative effectively, there would be that many more media
outlets to control. It could make it much more difficult for a government or
special interest to propagandize, since they would need to influence a very
large number of independent outlets.

And again I realize that many people here may not believe that government
propaganda still exists in American media. But I think that most can agree
that it does happen in many other countries at least.

~~~
Pxtl
This assumes that an endless array of small media sources is more difficult to
control than large ones. I'd say that's false. An endless array of small media
sources can just as easily be all traced back to a single controller. That's
actually the business model of Sinclair media, for example.

But because smaller media sources are forgettable and have fewer eyeballs
checking them, there's no record when they do something unethical like the
large companies.

Rathergate would not happen with some small, forgettable news source. The
falsehood would be pushed and unquestioned because nobody wants to play whack-
a-mole.

------
saalweachter
> IN THE LAST WEEK OF APRIL, nearly 23 percent of all traffic to news sites
> tracked by web analytics firm Parse.ly came from search engines. Google
> alone accounts for nearly half of external referral traffic...

Is this surprisingly low to anyone else?

Depending on how you parse it, only 10% or 20% of news sites traffic comes
from Google.

When I worked in comparison shopping, 80-90% of our inbound traffic came from
Google, as we failed and failed again to cultivate any loyal, direct users.

~~~
jon-wood
When comparison shopping all anyone really cares about is the price, and
you're comparing like for like in most cases so Google works really well. News
is something where I at least rarely find myself wanting just any old opinion
on a story, so I'm more likely to go to a news source that I trust already for
their take on that.

~~~
maccard
? When comparison shopping all anyone really cares about is the price

I disagree - people care about delivery times, quality of goods (is it what I
ordered), and in some cases, they are open to alternatives (I would like a
cheap android phone, If you can give me a Nokia instead of a Huawei, I don't
care).

Similarly for news, people may have some preferences in their browsing, but
ultimately for breaking news it doesn't matter whether it comes from CNN or
the India times if there's no opinion involved in it yet, and lets be honest,
most short-form journalism has very little research/opinion

For long form/blog-like content I agree with you though.

------
ChuckMcM
I certainly felt like Google does this for their 'Google News' product. I
selectively blocked half a dozen sources I found to be excessively clickbaity
and it really cut into the amount of news that was shown.

My guess would be that there are three things going on a least;

One is that news outlets are loath to let Google crawl them and post snippets,
they argue that Google gets the 'benefit' without paying for the content.
(this was used in a couple of lawsuits)

One is that Google may provide the advertising feed for news outlets that are
shown, thus a double benefit to Google is that you go to their news
aggregator, and when you pop off into a news story you continue to be served
Google ads.

And finally, there is the polarization of people's news intake through a
limited number of sources. Per my experiment I found after deleting the new
sources I found offenses Google was unable to come up with additional
"interesting" news sources, they just didn't crawl them or have access to them
(or they don't exist I suppose). Regardless of the reason, the additional
wasn't in their index to serve up.

~~~
nmstoker
Interesting you should say this, as I've found Google News to be "desperately
local", to the point of excess. I'm all for regional news and mixing things
up, but typically when I've traveled somewhere within the UK perhaps for a
weekend, Ithen get inundated with totally inappropriate news from the area for
ages, until I proactively block it!

Their algorithms can suggest amazing insight at times, but when you suddenly
get stuff like "Local council changes bin days in Huddersfield" it's clear
they have a long way to go to understand news relevance, especially when you
were just passing through.

------
GCA10
Before we get too deep in arguing about supposed favoritism by Google, let's
back up and look at the types of search terms that were entered in this study.
Just about all of them relate to the sorts of Washington-focused headline news
that's primarily covered by "a small number of major news outlets."

Searching for "Rex Tillerson" is the perfect example. (Remember him?)

Typical news searchers are looking for a much wider swath of news than just
the latest on the former U.S. Secretary of State. In my own experience, that
includes local news (what were all those police cars doing last night?) and
lots of sports news, business/tech/entertainment news, scientific news, etc.
Those articles come from a much wider assortment of news outlets, and I think
Google does a decent job of finding them.

There's a limit to how many news organizations can generate meaningful
coverage about Rex Tillerson. I'm at peace with the idea that Google has found
most of the ones that matter.

~~~
writepub
You'd be at peace if Google favored news and narratives that overlap with your
world view. Hypothetically, how'd you feel if 65% of those articles were from
Fox news and the greater Murdoch empire?

I wish they simply skipped narrative driven, opinion filth and stayed with
factual reporting from AP, Reuters, NPR, ...

In the last 5 years, NYT, WaPo,.. have wholly embraced narrative driven
opinions instead of sticking with plain news, because anger sells

~~~
smt88
65% of articles in my Google News (not logged in) are from Fox News and/or
Washington Examiner.

I think geography affects search results a lot. I'm in a blue city, but red
state.

~~~
BiasRegularizer
Are you positive about that? I just tried to VPN from a few different
locations in the US (Texas, Georgia and Seattle) with a fresh private browsing
session each, all of the headlines appear the same and doesn't change by
region.

~~~
smt88
I'm not positive about that. All I can tell you is that I never see WSJ, but I
often see Fox News, WaPo, Politico, and Washington Examiner. The rest of the
sources are a mixed bag.

I've been hitting Google News without a logged-in session (but with my real IP
address) multiple times a day for 5+ years.

I noticed the increase in Fox News as a source around the time conservatives
were complaining about censorship a year or two ago. Interestingly, though,
Fox News is rarely the source for a major political news story -- it's often
their fluff pieces that hit my feed.

------
hirundo
Dear Google, I suggest that you embrace this kind of audit in service of
transparency and credibility: Create an automated news.google.com/audit page
so that readers can easily evaluate the sources and track how they evolve over
time.

As a user I would also greatly appreciate the ability to toggle news sources
on and off, and/or to weight them, and to easily share those filters.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>As a user I would also greatly appreciate the ability to toggle news sources
on and off, and/or to weight them, and to easily share those filters.

IDK. Do we need more ways for users to create bubbles for themselves? Is the
solution to avoid Google's preferred bubble just to let you build your own?

~~~
hirundo
To mix metaphors, bubbles are essential sanity equipment when drinking from a
fire hose.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Are you implying that to protect yourself - that you need to only see news
sources that you think will already agree with your idea of how things are?

------
lugg
Major traditional news outlets are shown to be major news outlets online.

News at 11..

This study is just proving the Pareto principal and claiming its some big
thing. Of course these outlets get most of the Google love, they're all linked
to as sources by all the little news outlets, how is anyone surprised by this?

------
40acres
Spoiler alert: so does everyone else (see subscription numbers).

There are a few niche and highly specialized publications which I view (GQ,
Men's Health, etc.) but for major news and in depth reporting I'm more likely
to frequent WaPo, NYT, Vox, etc. There is a huge drop off in quality when
viewing work from the mid-tier news providers.

~~~
winningcontinue
It's true, they're the only ones actually putting people on payroll to send
them out to areas, do interviews and original investigation. Everybody else is
just reaggreggating others from other news outlets, social media and public
documents with their own analysis. But even the big mainstream companies suck
at local reporting for their own towns. For things that are not national
federal news you have to really get it from other people.

------
wuliwong
I'm not positive but I feel like this is getting mistakenly lumped into the
issue of censorship by big tech companies?

I could be being naive but this seems like an echo chamber problem that faces
websites attempting to surface content to you based on what you like or your
network likes. This doesn't appear to me to be same issues of political-based
censorship of certain people's accounts that we have been hearing a lot about
over the last year.

------
VikingCoder
It's not difficult to understand:

Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users
favor a small number of major outlets.

I can appreciate that you may love RC Cola. But it shouldn't surprise you that
most gas stations mostly stock Coke and Pepsi products.

If you think gas stations need to be more "fair" about which pop they sell,
then I'd love to hear you explain how you think that should be done.

~~~
tucaz
I think your logic is perfect. As long as you agree to treat Google as a
publisher and not as a platform like it is currently being treated now.

Section 230 [1], which in theory was supposed to protect free speech, is
actually doing the opposite and giving Google and other major media companies
the power to censor free speech and decide what you can see or not.

I'm sure the gas station would be held liable if RC Cola made their customers
sick and they kept selling it.

Google is not liable for anything they publish/display, but still have the
power to choose what they publish/display.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[1] - [https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230](https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)

~~~
bilbo0s
You're thinking about Section 230 wrong. Censorship is a government only
thing. But even if we accept your definition of censorship, in google's case,
there is no censorship taking place. Because google always lets every user
know about _every_ hit it found for their search at the very top of the first
page of results. So if google knows about 1,690,000,000 instances of, say,
"chocolate cake", it tells you that up front. Crucially, given enough time,
google will always present to every user all 1,690,000,000 instances of which
it is aware.

You are not required to present all of the information on your platform at
once in order to be considered a platform. Indeed, it is generally accepted
that platforms, by their very nature, are not able to do so.

~~~
tucaz
I don't want to argue semantics, but even if we do, I would state that you are
wrong. [1]

Censorship can come from anyone and anywhere. Especially when a private
company like Google has more power that many governments in the world. Google
could even be considered an un-elected government depending on how you look at
it.

What they are doing by de-platforming people is censorship.

They offer no clue as to how their algorithm works or why some people get up
on the list while others don't.

While they could theoretically show all 1,690,000,000 results, we know for a
fact that just the first or second page at tops is what matters. So, in all
practicality, the other results do not exist.

If the other results do not exist, then they are a publisher and should be
treated as such since they pick the winners and losers.

If there's nothing wrong with what they are doing, what's the problem of
calling then a publisher? Why not embrace it and take full responsibility?

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship)

~~~
mullingitover
You seem to be suggesting that by curating the content on their platform,
Google is losing (or should be losing) their section 230 protections. This is
simply wrong.

If I have a blog, and I ban someone from commenting, I don't lose my 230
protections. Even though I've 'de-platformed' someone from my blog. Google is
no different than a blog, just scaled up.

~~~
tucaz
@bilbo0s I’m sorry. Let me be more specific.

When I refer to deplatforming I’m talking about users and opinions being
banned from the plaftorms (YouTube, Twitter, FB, etc).

When I’m referring to search engine results what I’m saying is that Google is
promoting a few selected sites over others based on a undisclosed criteria.
The undisclosed criteria here is what makes a world of difference.

By not making it clear they are picking winners and that should not happen.

~~~
mullingitover
On my blog I'm free to delete any comment I like, and I'm not beholden to the
government to explain why I did it. That's simply the Constitution at work.
How big, in your opinion, does a publisher need to be in order for their First
Amendment protections against forced speech to be stripped away?

~~~
pixl97
Right, because your blog is tiny and meaningless. When you control the
eyeballs of a country it is a different story.

~~~
mullingitover
Can you direct me to the clause in the Constitution that limits free speech
rights if you attract a big enough audience?

~~~
pixl97
Anti monopoly laws, would be one. You can say whatever you want, you'll just
have your platform split in smaller pieces to avoid harming the average
individual.

------
nerdkid93
So the large news outlets have better SEO for their articles? I can't say
that's very surprising.

------
tag_0
It seems like a popular response for this kind of this research is “Well of
course - I expected this result” or to point out the murky causality going on
when an intelligent technology is trained on the behavior of people using it.

I agree this murky causality is important to discuss and that indeed these
results are consistent with other observed distributions of online content
(i.e. Pareto/Zipf), but I think excessively focusing on these responses
undermines the importance of audit research like this. Audit research is
mainly descriptive by design (can’t really conduct an experiment unless you’re
Google) and without the descriptive results from audit research we can’t argue
empirically about the these topics at all!

------
minimaxir
Important caveat: the data analyzed is from November 2017, which is an
eternity ago in the SEO world.

------
sonnyblarney
This is an interesting thing and we can argue about it, but it's a distraction
from the fact we have a de-facto 'single source' for a considerable amount of
information.

Google fits many of the criteria for the definition of monopoly. Once you
consider both systematic issues (i.e. Chrome, Android, default browser
choices, behavioural things) and even brand and mass-market issues ... it's a
monopoly.

The control of most information by a single source entity simply is not
beneficial to the world, even financially.

Google could possibly be broken up, at least the distribution of search entry
points should be a different business than search itself i.e. Android/Browser,
Search different businesses.

Google's control of distribution (i.e. Chrome, Android) is much akin to
Standard Oil's control of the railroad system, which was really how they
developed their monopoly.

Also given the inherent power here, we may want to at least have some
regulation on how information is processed. We regulate so many important
things, we can require certain things for tech companies as long as they are
smart regulations.

Edit: put differently we have, without realizing it, put an _enormous_ amount
of trust and goodwill into Google - they are 'mostly' doing a good job with
it, but there's not reason for us to believe that will continue indefinitely.
Though I'm wary of the politicking and sometimes total lack of understanding
of this stuff in Congress/Parliament ... at least theoretically we should be
able to get past that.

~~~
marcosdumay
The largest gain would probably come by splitting the Ad infrastructure out of
Google, and forcing it to make their ads available for any search company on
the same terms.

------
politician
Arguably, the purpose of a search engine is to help people find sources that
they don't already know about. Ideally, Google Search should present a
diversity of results (the long-term trend of declining search quality,
notwithstanding).

Google News, however, isn't a search engine, it's a link aggregator curated by
a multi-armed bandit that seeks to maximize clicks and minimize political
blowback (i.e. via censorship). Providing a diverse set of news sources is
inconsistent with these constraints.

If it wasn't obvious, Google uses Search to identify topics that reach a large
enough audience, and then they build specific properties around those topics
curated by algorithms in order to create screen space in which to sell
behavior modification products* (ads). While Google News, Maps, and Local are
the obvious ones, even AMP fits this model with an attempt to monetize the
"waste heat" of the lower click sites by appropriating their content.

* gfodor's observation that ads are behavior modification products: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798178)

~~~
CoffeeDregs

        > Arguably, the purpose of a search engine is to help 
        > people find sources that they don't already know about.
    

I certainly don't want that... I want a search engine to show me a set of
results likely to be most relevant to my query and to my interests. Google
does some limited randomization of results to prevent winner-begets-winner
outcomes (based on my SERP result research) but they're purpose is certainly
not to show people sources that they don't already know about. Most of these
queries are basically "navigational" anyways: is someone searching for "trump
tariff" looking for interesting results or are they looking to _navigate_ to a
story about "trump tariffs"?

~~~
politician
If people already know the answers they seek or where to find them, then they
aren't using a search engine in the first place. At a fundamental level, the
purpose of a search engine it to help people find sources they don't know
about.

Is Google Search used as an atlas used to navigate the Internet? Almost
certainly, but it's not fit for that use case. Google knows this and steers
people towards their curated experiences - Maps, News, etc.

------
guntars
It looks like the impressions follow an exponential (geometric? someone will
surely correct me) distribution which is what you would expect if it was based
on what people click on. If it was something different where niche outlets
were featured more often than their "share", that would imply manipulation and
would be a cause for concern.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Power law is the term you are probably looking for

------
peterwwillis
_> As much as our results help better describe Google’s curation of news, what
our study decidedly cannot say is_ why _some sources dominate on Google._

 _> News source concentration on Google implies an unequal capture of
attention and its benefits, including any advertising or potential
subscription revenue that might result. If they are serious about supporting
digital-first newsrooms, algorithmic news curators, including Google and
others, might be more explicit in articulating the inherent design tradeoffs
between the relevance desirable for individuals, the diversity desirable for
society or democracy, and the fair competition desirable for news
organizations._

So, because Breitbart doesn't get as much traffic as CNN, Google must be held
accountable?

------
luckylion
Isn't this to be expected when you're using links as your primary/major
ranking mechanism? The largest companies will have the most links, therefore
they'll rank on top, be visible to users, and get more links. Sounds like the
Matthew effect, in a way.

------
amichal
Many years ago I asked google to provide a “reverse popularity” view for
Google News via some customer feedback mechanism. Got back a noncommittal
“interesting idea”. I understand it would be hard technically and all the
reasons why it doesn’t exist. Still wish it did... are there any interesting
solutions to this technically? A “show me stuff I would no normally want/seee”
anti filter bubble tech?

------
rcarrigan87
If you want a much more interesting read about the few brands that dominate
google this article is an excellent breakdown.

[https://detailed.com/google-control/](https://detailed.com/google-control/)

------
openfuture
There is only one way to make sure that a platform is fair. Make it AGPL. That
way there is an information symmetry and even if there is bias there is equal
opportunity to exploit it.

------
mc32
I’d like to see Google impose a “clickbait” penalty and derank clickbait
articles, as long as they are imposing editorial control over content and not
simply being a conduit.

------
neilv
IIRC, the article from the HN post on AMP Stories the other day mentioned the
Washington Post as a charter featured participant.

------
Terretta
WHY SOME NEWS SOURCES DOMINATE ON GOOGLE can be readily answered:

From the article: _“As much as our results help better describe Google’s
curation of news, what our study decidedly cannot say is why some sources
dominate on Google. Perhaps some outlets have cracked the SEO code for Top
Stories. Or there may be a number of other factors taken into account by
Google’s algorithm that end up prioritizing certain outlets over others. We
just don’t know unless Google is more transparent with the editorial design
and goals of news curation in the Top Stories box.”_

If you have the question, perhaps you could Google? I cheated on this search,
because I recalled something about Google knowing where stories appeared
first, and weighting that.

Google: how google ranks first to publish news original sources

Top result: “Under The Hood: Google News & Ranking Stories” by Danny Sullivan

Link: [https://searchengineland.com/google-news-ranking-
stories-304...](https://searchengineland.com/google-news-ranking-
stories-30424)

Summary:

> _“Google News tries to determine important story clusters by looking at what
> individual stories are being featured across the board at various
> publications. When those publications begin to feature new stories, that in
> turn influences the creation of new story clusters that get prominent
> placement at Google News.”_

And then, the factor I was looking for after seeing the ranks in the “audit”
... who are likely sources of original reporting?

> _“So what causes an individual article to be the lead item in a particular
> story cluster? Various factors are involved, Cohen said: ‘The source ranking
> involves many things. Is there original content? The timeliness. Coverage of
> recent developments? The relevancy to the cluster at hand. In some cases, is
> there local relevancy? Is there content from a local source with local
> content?’”_

> _“Cohen also explained more about the balance between ranking the latest
> content versus the originating content: ‘Say you publish something and then
> someone else sources you but adds no real new information. If they come
> after you, you don’t want to penalize the original source for being
> first.’”_

And what is their reputation, aka NewsRank, not PageRank?

> _“There are source specific rankings, the equivalent of PageRank for a
> particular site. We look at different third party metrics. What’s the volume
> of publication of original content in a given category? If you look at
> Bloomberg and Reuters, they may have hundreds of original articles in
> business. That’s a pretty good indication of the quality of that source for
> that category. Compared to sports, there’s not that much original content
> [and so they might not have as much authority for when ranking sports
> stories].”_

------
BiasRegularizer
In machine learning we often use regularizers to reduce bias (amongst many
other neat things that it can do), and I've been thinking if similar
techniques could be applied to help us humans to reduce bias and strengthen
our belief system against malicious information.

Some information contain objective facts (e.g. climates change, vaccination),
thus citing reputable research is often enough.

Though many of the political and economical belief have little objective truth
to them (e.g. government regulation, taxation plan), and it is useless to
discuss bias, we can only hope to prevent from malicious information. Perhaps
allowing both sides to show arguments can help reduce bias, but this technique
is far from perfect.

------
Angostura
Presumably major outlets have good Pagerank scores?

------
zarriak
This is no surprise, the Trump-Russia news story did lots to make Google
tighten down and reinforce the major news outlets.

A lot of this was documented when it happened when the concern of fake news
was at its height, Google intentionally censored many outlets. This is one of
the many articles that documented this happening:
[https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-silencing-of-
dissent/](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-silencing-of-dissent/)

------
kilbuz
Pareto suggested this before Audit did.

------
PaulHoule
It doesn't seem all that strange to me.

The NY Times, Washington Post and the BBC do original reporting. CNN and Fox
News have no paywall, and they do something which passes for reporting.

Sometimes a regional paper has special coverage of an ongoing story, as the
Seattle Times is doing with the Boeing 737 MAX scandal.

For each of those there are 100 blogs that are reloading real news sources
over and over again and cut-and-pasting a story where the real reporting is
"The New York Times reports..."

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
The list is surprisingly similar to the green box on the media bias charts:
[https://www.adfontesmedia.com](https://www.adfontesmedia.com) if you remove
the sources with a hard paywall like the WSJ.

The only outliers are CNN and FOX, which are probably included simply because
they are large, and would tend to cover more of the stories this survey
searched for.

------
james_s_tayler
people themselves also tend to favor a small number of major news outlets?

------
kartan
CJR seems not compliant with GDPR. Do they think that the content should be
delivered to all the world to read? The big newspapers have taken GDPR
seriously as probably other regulations and are safe to be seen around the
world or send you to a page were explains why you cannot see the content.

Why do so many small companies think that they have the right to sell their
content worldwide without following local laws? (To be fair some big companies
think the same)

"Columbia University and authorized third-party service providers collect
information about users’ activities and experiences while visiting a Columbia
University website."

I do not agree to third parties having my data. Where I can opt-out? Where can
I delete my data? Will I be notified if there is a data leak in less than 72
hours of the discovery?

------
tssva
The author of this article and the Columbia Journalism Review should be
ashamed of themselves. The article uses another study which as the article
itself states didn't measure bias in news outlets but instead the self-
reported political leanings of those who prefer the news outlets to classify
news outlets as left or right leaning.

Google may indeed mostly provide links to a few select major news outlets but
the article is trying to go beyond this by suggesting a left or right slant to
the outlets chosen and therefore to Google using data which doesn't support
this.

------
zpeti
There's an interesting case here of do you manipulate search algorithms for
political reasons, or political alignment? The brand value of a lot of left
wing brands is higher without question (and I imagine they have more links
too), so do you show them more, because, hey, it's just an algorithm... Or do
you have to start showing an equal number of left vs right publications?

Also, who says what's left or right? How left? How right?

~~~
nicoburns
> who says what's left or right? How left? How right?

It seems pretty pointless trying to adjudicate this. If not for any other
reason that what is considered the centre changes over time (e.g. it moved to
the left in the post-war years, and back to right in the Reagan/Thatcher
years). Furthermore, these changes are arguably a good thing.

------
gdilla
don't worry. Google's YouTube will happily send you down the right wing rabbit
hole of white mail victimhood and climate change is a hoax after you watch a
couple of non related videos.

------
lisper
Headline should be: Audit suggests Google favors a small number of major
_NEWS_ outlets

------
ycombonator
Merchants of "Mainstream"

------
mola
That's a good thing. Too many outlets is chaos Too few is tiraney.

------
freedomben
A few months ago I was of the opinion that Google was falsely accused of bias
and favoring (likely because I tend to agree with their results). However,
it's getting easier than ever to test the bias for yourself.

I actively wanted to read some of the extreme right wing stuff a few weeks
ago, so went searching for it. I've done this with left wing stuff before and
it is very easy to find it via Google. (meta comment: I believe strongly that
we do everyone a disservice by silencing people. It harms the rest of us by
isolated us from anything not "mainstream" and it further pushes the silenced
into radicalism and vindicates/bolsters their argument that they are
mistreated. So, I try to put myself in uncomfortable territory to see what
people are saying, even if it's just to get it from the horse's mouth than
spun by somebody in the media or on twitter).

I literally could not find it on Google, but just moving over to Duck Duck Go
I found what I was looking for right away.

You should try it yourself! Think about some polarizing political topic and
plug it into Google and then do the exact same search in Duck Duck Go (and
maybe Bing, I haven't tried that but I will). You'll be shocked at the
difference.

~~~
tzs
Can you give some specific examples of the searches that did not work on
Google but did on DDG?

~~~
freedomben
Yes certainly. I just typed "abortion" into Google and DuckDuckGo and compared
the results. Look at the news articles, and "coincidentally" planned
parenthood are the top two links.

Google:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=abortion&oq=abortion](https://www.google.com/search?q=abortion&oq=abortion)

DuckDuckGo:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=abortion&t=h_&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=abortion&t=h_&ia=web)

DuckDuckGo (news):
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=abortion&t=h_&iar=news&ia=news](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=abortion&t=h_&iar=news&ia=news)

------
ycombonator
Fahrenheit 451 in real life. Instead of burning books they are suppressing
links that don’t favor their political inclinations. Case in point, google
‘the gateway pundit’
[https://www.google.com/search?q=the+gateway+pundit](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+gateway+pundit)
and search for the same In DuckDuckGo
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+gateway+pundit](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+gateway+pundit)
find out where they show the actual website.

~~~
moultano
Thanks for the report, that looks like a bug. I've passed it along.

~~~
burfog
I'd like to think it is a bug, but I wasn't born yesterday. You were caught.
The behavior is consistent.

Another interesting search is American inventors. Out of the first 16 featured
with photos, only one (Thomas Edison at #5) is not black. It mostly continues
that theme for all 56 featured, not even getting to the Wright brothers. It's
been that way for a while, as seen in this article from 2.5 years ago:
[http://www.unz.com/isteve/great-moments-in-google-
american-i...](http://www.unz.com/isteve/great-moments-in-google-american-
inventors/)

Another interesting search is for the_donald. It is pretty clear that the
subreddit should appear first, probably followed by the old.reddit.com
version. Right now it is fourth, mixed in with a lot of far-left hate and
conspiracies. The second link is a conspiracy claiming that /r/The_Donald is
run by Russians!!! It was even worse last week, being totally missing from the
search results -- but that was starting to become a news story, so it got
"fixed" to be subtle.

You have a bit of a PR crisis forming here. The idea to abandon Google is
spreading. Once lost, trust is hard to regain.

~~~
moultano
The issue with the "american inventors" query is a well known issue in
information retrieval called "compound intrusion." The phrase "american
inventors" occurs most often in web documents as a substring of "african
american inventors" and unless you specifically exclude that from the results,
it tends to dominate, producing the list of people you see there. If you
search for "US inventors" you get a more reasonable list, because "US" isn't a
substring of "african american."

