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My initial impulse is to say, "any such automatic system will be gamed beyond usefulness". Having said that, if someone does solve the problem that would be great.



Is this a major problem with Google now? I know this is completely subjective, but my friends and I have talked about this a couple times, and we feel that Google used to be significantly more useful 5-7 years ago. Has SEO done that much damage, or has the way we use the search engine changed? Or perhaps something else?


The way we use the news has changed. Many years ago we would sit and read a newspaper. Nowadays its all about short headlines or very shocking bits (partially because of computer-based news consumption behavior and partially because of breadth of availability). Catering to the instant and very short nature of news consumption involves a greater indulgence in sensationalism. Google contributed to this insofar as it allowed us to select what sources and what articles to read based on the title or blurb.

I wonder, at a deeper level, if the political divide in the US is fueled by the "bubble" that google allows: many years ago, people read newspapers covering all points of view, but google news lets you select which sources you draw news from (allowing you to select only fox news and drudge report, for example)


I'm not sure this is quite as true as we think it is. Long before the internet we had physical newsletters and pamphlets and fliers with their own slants, and we had newspapers with agendas of their own and no particular standard of ethics, &c, &c. I'm not sure "headline makes me click it when I see it on Google" is a worse pressure than "headline makes me buy a paper when child selling papers on the corner shouts it".

That said, there's unquestionably room for improvement.

I do expect that bubbles have got less regional.




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