Skip to main content

Trump claims Google is suppressing positive news about him and ‘will be addressed’

The perceived leftwing bias of big tech companies has become a major talking point for conservatives. And this morning on Twitter, President Trump escalated their claims.

Trump suggested that not only was there a tendency for tech companies to suppress right-wing voices, but that Google has “rigged” its search results to only show negative reporting about him. The president added that Google and others were “hiding information and news that is good,” and said that this was “very serious situation” that “will be addressed.”

Trump included in his tweets a dubious statistic: that 96 percent of search results for the term “Trump News” came from “National Left-Wing Media.” This claim seems to have originated on the right-wing site PJ Media before spreading to other outlets in the conservative news world. It’s the analysis of a single reporter who Googled the term “multiple times using different computers” and tallied up the perceived bias of the outlets appearing in the first 100 results. (The political alignment of the outlets was assigned based on a chart by journalist Sharyl Attkisson, a former CNN reporter who appeared on Fox News last year claiming that the media is feeding the public an “artificial reality.”)

As ever with Trump’s tweets there’s a lot to unpack. First, the president has a habit of making promises he never follows up on, so it’s not clear what he means by saying that the situation “will be addressed.” Could be something, could be nothing. Similarly, Trump’s use of the term “fake news” is pretty meaningless here (and has been for a long time), as the president has a habit of dismissing any coverage critical of him as false.

It’s also difficult to analyze the idea of bias in Google’s algorithms. The company uses a number of measures to weight its search rankings, and while the exact formula is not known, factors like an outlet’s longevity, its reputation, and its ability to fill stories with relevant keywords all play a part. The rankings also differ from market to market, making objective analysis difficult (especially when it’s based on a few Google search results).

However, it’s clear that these latest messages from the president feed into the perception of many of his supporters that the media is the “enemy of the people” and biased against Trump’s agenda. In recent years, conservatives have used this claim to attack sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now it seems Google is in the firing line too.



from The Verge - Teches https://ift.tt/2NlZ4n4

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Magic Leap is shipping across (most of) the US

As Magic Leap holds the first developer conference for its Magic Leap One mixed reality headset, that headset has started shipping across the contiguous United States, instead of in a set of select markets. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition costs $2,295, just like before, but there’s now an installment plan that starts at $96 per month. All orders are supposed to arrive within 60 days. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition went on sale in early August, and while Magic Leap has touted it as a fully functional device, it’s basically meant for people who want to design apps, games, or art for mixed reality. We were ambivalent toward the hardware, which we found limited, and we noted that Magic Leap hadn’t shown off a lot of material that showcased its potential. The company’s developer conference keynote has revealed several new projects. Among other things, Spider-Man studio Insomniac Games is building an experience that will let you grow a holographic creature on your tabletop, and...

The company behind the adorably doomed robot Kuri is shutting down

Less than a month after Mayfield Robotics said it was stopping production on its Kuri home robot, the company announced today on its blog that the company will be shutting down. Mayfield Robotics launched in 2015 as part of Bosch’s Startup Platform, but struggled to integrate with and find a business fit within Bosch. Since the cancellation of its Kuri robot, Mayfield Robotics had been looking for external partners for long-term technology development, but was unable to find investment to support its future. The company will cease all operations by October 31st. We first met Kuri at CES 2017, and it wasn’t yet able to showcase all the features it was promised to have in the future. The robot was supposed to have smart assistant functionalities like an Amazon Echo, but with a much cuter face and movable body. Promo videos showed it working as a moving home security camera that was controllable through the Kuri app, but in the demonstration we saw, it only had as much functionality a...

Amazon’s plans for a New York office are under new scrutiny

A month ago, when Amazon announced that it would build regional offices in New York and Virginia at great expense to the taxpayers there, I wrote that it had misunderstood the moment : Perhaps the furor over Amazon’s regional offices will blow over. But it’s hard not to feel today as if the company misread the room — overestimating the public’s appetite for a billion-dollar giveaway to one of the world’s biggest companies, and underestimating the public’s ability to raise hell on- and offline. Amazon may yet feel that pain, in the long run. Today, Amazon met the room: 150 protesters who showed up to the first New York City Council hearing about the plan. According to reports from the scene, demonstrators’ concerns start with the $3 billion in incentives that New York plans to give Amazon in exchange for locating there — and, it says, creating 25,000 jobs. Here’s Leticia Miranda in BuzzFeed : ”You’re worth a trillion dollars,” New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson told the ...