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DamianTV
03-23-2019, 02:50 AM
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-22/google-influenced-midterm-elections-may-have-cost-republicans-seats-study


New research reveals that Google built biases into its search results that influenced the 2018 midterm elections - possibly costing Republicans three congressional districts.

First things first - the study was conducted by Dr. Robert Epstein - a San Diego-based Harvard Ph.D. who founded the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. He's also a Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), a UCSD visiting scholar, and served as editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.

He also supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 (just like Google (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-12/panic-and-dismay-leaked-video-reveals-distraught-google-execs-grappling-hillary)!).

Down to the findings:

Epstein and AIBRT analyzed Google searches linked to three highly competitive southern California congressional races in which Democrats won, and found that Google's "clear democrat bias" may have flipped the seats away from Republican candidates. According to the study, at least 35,455 undecided voters within the three California districts may have been persuaded to vote Democrat due to the biased Google search results.


Epstein says that in the days leading up to the 2018 midterms, he was able to preserve “more than 47,000 election-related searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, along with the nearly 400,000 web pages to which the search results linked.”

Analysis of this data showed a clear pro-Democrat bias in election-related Google search results as compared to competing search engines. Users performing Google searches related to the three congressional races the study focused on were significantly more likely to see pro-Democrat stories and links at the top of their results.

As Epstein’s previous studies have shown, this can have a huge impact on the decisions of undecided voters, who often assume that their search results are unbiased. Epstein has called this the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). -Breitbart


...

Full article at link. And better formatting.

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You dont say!

Itsback
03-23-2019, 04:27 AM
Democrats are known to get votes and money/donations from foreign workers who got long term residency or citizenship in USA from lobbying with US government or Capitol Hill members.

Look at how foreigners entered USA legally when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were US Presidents and have stayed in USA for 20 years.

Anti Federalist
03-23-2019, 07:24 AM
Google Search Bias Flipped Seats for Democrats in Midterms

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/03/22/research-google-search-bias-flipped-seats-for-democrats-in-midterms/

ALLUM BOKHARI22 Mar 20196,129

New research from psychologist and search engine expert Dr. Robert Epstein shows that biased Google searches had a measurable impact on the 2018 midterm elections, pushing tens of thousands of votes towards the Democrat candidates in three key congressional races, and potentially millions more in races across the country.

The study, from Epstein and a team at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), analyzed Google searches related to three highly competitive congressional races in Southern California. In all three races, the Democrat won — and Epstein’s research suggests that Google search bias may have tipped them over the edge.

The research follows a previous study conducted in 2016 which showed that biased Google results pushed votes to Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Democrats and Google executives have disputed these findings.

Epstein says that in the days leading up to the 2018 midterms, he was able to preserve “more than 47,000 election-related searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, along with the nearly 400,000 web pages to which the search results linked.”

Analysis of this data showed a clear pro-Democrat bias in election-related Google search results as compared to competing search engines. Users performing Google searches related to the three congressional races the study focused on were significantly more likely to see pro-Democrat stories and links at the top of their results.

As Epstein’s previous studies have shown, this can have a huge impact on the decisions of undecided voters, who often assume that their search results are unbiased. Epstein has called this the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME).

According to Epstein’s study, at least 35,455 undecided voters in the three districts may have been persuaded to vote for a Democrat candidate because of slanted Google search results. Considering that each vote gained by a Democrat is potentially a vote lost by a Republican, this means more than 70,910 votes may have been lost by Republicans in the three districts due to Google bias. In one of these districts, CA 45, the Democrat margin of victory was just over 12,000 votes.

The total Democrat win margin across all three districts was 71,337, meaning that bias Google searches could account for the vast majority of Democrat votes. Extrapolated to elections around the country, Epstein says that bias Google results could have influenced 4.6 million undecided voters to support Democrat candidates.

Moreover, Epstein’s findings are based on modest assumptions, such as the assumption that voters conduct one election-related search per week. According to Epstein, marketing research shows that people typically conduct 4-5 searches per day, not one per week. In other words, the true impact of biased search results could be much higher.

Epstein’s study may also understate the level of liberal bias in Google search results, due to its use of a 2017 study from Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center to rank sources by their bias. The study assigns conservative sources like Breitbart News a far higher bias rating than ostensibly centrist but in fact highly liberal sources like the New York Times. The study also gives online encyclopedia Wikipedia a non-liberal bias rating, despite the fact that its most controversial pages are typically hijacked by its cabal of left-wing editors to push partisan liberal narratives.

As the Los Angeles Times notes, Epstein is not a Republican and publicly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nevertheless, Democrats and liberals continue to ignore or doubt his findings. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has repeatedly called claims of big tech bias a “conspiracy theory,” as have other congressional Democrats. And left-wing academics interviewed by the Los Angeles Times also heaped doubt on Epstein’s work.

Dr. Robert Epstein is featured in the 2018 documentary The Creepy Line, which was produced by Breitbart News editor-at-large Peter Schweizer and explores the bias amongst the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley.

Breitbart News continues to expose left-wing bias at Google. Recent reports reveal that company managers have told employees that the tech giant must stop “fake news” because “that’s how Trump won,” that Google-owned YouTube adjusted its algorithms to push pro-life content off its top search results, and that the company’s own internal researchers describe the company’s changes in policy since 2016 as a “shift towards censorship.”

Anti Federalist
03-23-2019, 07:31 AM
Now, Breitbart is usually considered, within "mainstream" opinion, to be a "far right" site and possibly "fake news".

That report from Breitbart, seemed clear, informative and, while partisan, not overly so, well written and concise.

Compare that to the LA Times reporting on this story and give an honest assessment:



This psychologist claims Google search results unfairly steer voters to the left. Conservatives love him

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search-bias-elections-20190322-story.html

By EVAN HALPER MAR 22, 2019 | 3:00 AM

This psychologist claims Google search can manipulate voters.

The idea that Google is subtly pushing masses of voters to the left has the ring of conspiracy, and thus the work of Robert Epstein is warmly embraced by conservative lawmakers — as well as a president — convinced big tech is plotting against them.

Yet even many scholars who think the San Diego-based psychologist is wrong about the political impact of search engines — he believes bias built in to Google’s processes could have cost Republicans three California congressional districts in the last election — have started paying attention to his detailed work on how voters respond to tens of thousands of search results.

At a moment when misinformation about search engines and social media bias is rampant, with both the left and the right amplifying unsupported claims, Epstein is asking the right questions, they say, about the unseen power of algorithms and how little most Americans understand about the way they work.

The saga of the persistent San Diego psychologist versus the tech giant is a long-running one, full of twists. As Big Data shapes our opinions in ways scholars are only beginning to comprehend, his work has increasingly caught attention.

“The larger issue he is looking at is extremely important,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA who focuses on the relationships between technology and politics. Srinivasan voices skepticism about Epstein’s conclusion that the GOP is being victimized, but argues scholars need to look more deeply at how search engines can shape the views of those who use them.

“We turn to these efficient technologies to do almost everything these days without knowing why we see what we see from them, or what data is collected about us and how it is being used,” he said.

Epstein, a former Psychology Today editor in chief who runs a nonprofit institute in California, calls the phenomenon he has explored the Search Engine Manipulation Effect.

“These are new forms of manipulation people can’t see,” he said. The technologies “can have an enormous impact on voters who are undecided. … People have no awareness the influence is being exerted.”

Google dismisses his research as the work of a misguided amateur. Company Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in December that Google had investigated Epstein’s findings and found his methodology flawed.

Company officials, while declining to comment about Epstein on the record, offered background material asserting that their algorithms are politically blind and respond to searches with news content based on its timeliness, relevance and authoritativeness.

In his latest study, which he plans to present in April at the 99th annual meeting of the Western Psychological Assn., in Pasadena, Epstein tracked 47,300 searches by dozens of undecided voters in the districts of newly elected Democratic Reps. Katie Porter, Harley Rouda and Mike Levin.

Mainstream outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, dominated the Google search results. By contrast, searches conducted on Yahoo and Bing more often showcased links from deeply conservative outfits such at Breitbart.

Using a model he developed to gauge the subliminal impact of what he sees as tilted search results, Epstein projected 35,455 voters who were on the fence were persuaded to vote for a Democrat entirely because of the sources Google fed them.

That conclusion is subject to much dispute. Safiya Noble, a UCLA professor and author of “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” is troubled by Epstein’s argument that search engines ought to counter-balance the content of large, well-resourced and highly trained newsrooms with “disinformation sites” and “propaganda outlets.”

Srinivasan thinks Epstein may exaggerate how many undecided voters use Google to help decide how to cast ballots.

Google executives, for their part, argue it would be corporate suicide to use their influence over voters to sway elections.

But many analysts say that is not the point. Even if Epstein is wrong about the impact of Google’s searches, the real issue, they say, is how little people know about the ways that the company’s algorithms manipulate what users see. Google engineers design their algorithms for a host of reasons — mostly related to boosting profits — and users just accept the top links as the most trustworthy and authoritative information on a topic.

“We need to understand the potential political impact of these underneath-the-hood choices” by tech companies, said Jacob Shapiro, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton. “The question we should be asking is what do we need to do to nail down how consequential this is? And what systems do we need to create as a society to minimize the negatives?”

Noble agrees with that broader point that Google should not be guiding crucial societal questions, such as how we vote.

“We use these search engines as if they are arbiters of truth, and they are not,” she said. “They are global advertising platforms. They are not fact checkers or public interest technologies. … The minute you start to engage these broader social issues on a search engine, you run up against its limits.”

The fix, Noble says, involves giving people viable alternatives to Google that are not designed for profit, but the public interest.

Epstein calls for “a worldwide passive network of monitoring systems to keep an eye on emerging technologies and what they are showing and telling people.” Other scholars suggest equally bold government interventions, some of which align with Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.

But Congress is right now focused on using the potential flaws in search engines as a springboard to air political grievances and launch partisan attacks.

The December hearing into Google was consumed by theatrics. Republicans, citing Epstein, presented themselves as victims of a cynical conspiracy, sometimes conflating his work with unrelated perceived biases. The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, declared political bias in search engines a “fantasy dreamed up by some conservatives.”

Epstein may be discouraged, but he isn’t helping turn down the temperature. He supported Hillary Clinton, but has embraced his role as a fixture on right-wing media. Tucker Carlson sings his praises on Fox News. He gives talks at Tea Party meetings. He starred in a documentary called the “Creepy Line” that was produced by Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash,” who is among the journalists most reviled by Democrats.

“I have become a darling of conservatives, which is driving me crazy,” Epstein said. “But they love me because I am saying things they want to hear. People I am closer to politically don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

Anti Globalist
03-23-2019, 07:42 AM
Well of course Google is going to help Democrats win seats.

Anti Globalist
03-23-2019, 07:51 AM
Not surprising one bit.

Stratovarious
03-23-2019, 07:56 AM
Right off the Bat LA Times uses these terms;


Claims (as if it's prolly' blsth)

Can Manipulate (instead of 'had an impact')


It's the typical OP ED piece posing as journalism.


:frog:

Anti Federalist
03-23-2019, 07:59 AM
Right off the Bat LA Times uses these terms;


Claims (as if it's prolly' blsth)

Can Manipulate (instead of 'had an impact')


It's the typical OP ED piece posing as journalism.


:frog:

That's what jumped out at me...and within three lines, dismissing it as a 'conspiracy' theory from "this psychologist".

Anti Federalist
03-23-2019, 08:00 AM
Ah you beat me to it...merge please

angelatc
03-23-2019, 08:03 AM
That's what jumped out at me...and within three lines, dismissing it as a 'conspiracy' theory from "this psychologist".

While the fact that he's politically liberal is buried at the bottom.

Anti Federalist
03-23-2019, 08:08 AM
While the fact that he's politically liberal is buried at the bottom.

The very first two lines:


This psychologist claims Google search can manipulate voters.

The idea that Google is subtly pushing masses of voters to the left has the ring of conspiracy, and thus the work of Robert Epstein is warmly embraced by conservative lawmakers — as well as a president — convinced big tech is plotting against them.

Are crafted in such a way as to make the casual reader dismiss the entire story and move on.

Usually the government's media organs are not this clumsy, but this was a pretty glaring example of what they do every single day on every single "news" item.

Stratovarious
03-23-2019, 08:11 AM
That's what jumped out at me...and within three lines, dismissing it as a 'conspiracy' theory from "this psychologist".

OMG, I didn't read that far, disgusting.

We've know from experience that Google's search engine is completely biased, it's nice
to finally see a definitive piece published by the Psychologist and SE' Expert.
Of what I've learned of Psychologists, they are very picky about data, unlike
liberally 'funded' Global Warming scientists.

Itsback
03-23-2019, 10:13 PM
Could we see the "End of Google"

Origanalist
03-23-2019, 10:25 PM
I'll be patiently waiting for the media blitz on this story.

Warrior_of_Freedom
03-23-2019, 11:18 PM
Well of course Google is going to help Democrats win seats.

Google already admitted to censoring conservative videos [According to youtube, conservative videos are fake-news-conspiracy videos] on youtube, and that went with barely any backlash.

Itsback
03-24-2019, 12:21 AM
Any other good search engines which gives good results like Google.

Google is the best search engine but those high ranked executives of Google are frauds/scammers.

The founders of Google gave the company into the wrong/fraud's hands.

Swordsmyth
03-24-2019, 12:23 AM
Any other good search engines which gives good results like Google.

Google is the best search engine but those high ranked executives of Google are frauds/scammers.

The founders of Google gave the company into the wrong/fraud's hands.
Use Duck Duck Go.

Itsback
03-24-2019, 12:25 AM
Use Duck Duck Go.

Google is the still the best search engine but we will have to end Google for all the wrong doings. Even bing.com is 60% only of google.com

timosman
03-24-2019, 12:26 AM
Any other good search engines which gives good results like Google.

Google is the best search engine but those high ranked executives of Google are frauds/scammers.

The founders of Google gave the company into the wrong/fraud's hands.

Why are you so against Hindus? :confused:

Itsback
03-24-2019, 01:28 AM
Why are you so against Hindus? :confused:

Google Influenced Midterm Elections, May Have Cost Republicans Seats: Study

TheTexan
03-24-2019, 01:59 AM
Google Influenced Midterm Elections, May Have Cost Republicans Seats: Study

But did they collude with Russia when doing it?