astroman said...
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So is it really filtering lyme(?),......or filtering out something that does not generate much income for their advertisers?
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yep - that's exactly the issue - 90% of people believe their search results they get from google or any other search engine is an unfiltered view of all results ordered in a simple most popular result first list
but that not what's happening at all
these are private companies and there is no requirement for them to disclose what algorithms they run - what criteria they use to decide what results to display - and for what purposes.
most people are similarly unaware that the results that they get are not he same as the results another person gets - as they are curated / filtered dependent on individual tags for each PC/Phone/User that google tracks
this initially sounds quite trivial but can have surprising and wide ranging effects - eg on society as a whole
for example by showing results to people that the algorithmic calculates they are more likely to be interested in, (something browsers and other platforms are known to do, presumably to maximise advertising clicks by keeping them engaged).
instead of people getting an unfiltered set of results containing differing views and opinions - from which they may form a balanced view with an appreciation of the nuances on each side of an argument, they may instead essentially get more of an echo chamber of things that align with what they already believe.
this is one of the things driving polarisation and a breakdown of democracy in our societies.
useful debate becomes impossible when people cannot even agree on the basic starting facts.
we see the results of that here on the forum in microcosm sometimes