This is a highly concerning allegation, and it does explain some interesting results I’ve noticed lately. I’ve wondered why, especially when searching for products, an expected result isn’t there unless I invoke it by name. I’d chalked it up to their competition having more mindshare and thus a higher page rank score. Now I’m not so sure.
Worse, it somewhat supports claims that the far-right has been making, although those claims still completely miss the mark.
Which far right claims are you saying it’s supporting?
I think the claims I’ve heard irl are something along the lines of “can’t trust Google search results, they’re censoring 'em!” I figure the things they’re mad Google “censors” are probably literal or borderline fascist content - and I also tend to assume they’re probably misusing the word censor. I think the tenuous connection here is just that yeah Google is probably doing some shady stuff with their search results.
Yeah, pretty much this. A lot are upset that when you Google for something like vaccine safety, your top results are things like the CDC and the WHO instead of their favorite Bigfoot hunter conspiracy theorist.
And for some reason, they all seem to act like there’s an actual person on the other side, individually restricting results.
unintelligable nonsense Big Tech unintelligable nonsense
Wired has removed the story because it “does not meet [their] editorial standards”.
Who uses google besides my grandma tho?
who do you think is using literally anything else other than tech people?
You’re exactly right. Given the circles we run in it’s easy to forget the rest of the world just doesn’t give a shit about any of this.
Obligatory relevant XKCD
No way any of my friends would pay 10 bucks a month for kagi, so yeah most people just don’t care enough or search enough to want to look into alternatives
I’m not a tech person, and I’m currently using a SearXNG instance
My non techie friends use ecosia or whatever.
You don’t have non- techie friends.
I do, they use ecosia
Non-techie people do not even know what that is, or what you’re talking about.
That’s not true tho. All the techies i know dont use ecosia and similar random search engines that they saw in some ad somewhere
