Disclosure: I'm not now and never was a Trump supporter.
Throat clearing out of the way, here's the thing: Trump is absolutely right about the bias in Google searches.
I just downloaded the Google App. I've always used Google search via Safari. But Google kept telling me "it's better in the App" so I did that.
And what I find is that there's an automatic feed to news of the John McCain funeral.
And what are the top ones?
Here they are in order:
- The New Yorker
- The Guardian
- Vox
- The New York Times
- BBC
- Business Insider
- Refinery29
- ELLE
- Epoch Times
- Time magazine
Every single one of these is left of centre, though one could quibble about BBC.
But where is FOX news? We know that it is the most watched cable news and that its online site also has high traffic.
How could it not be above something like "Epoch Times" (never heard of it)? Or "Refinery 29" (ditto)?
It's not *below* them. It's not even on the page all the others are. Zero, zip.
Google's mission is (used to be?) "Don't be Evil". Maybe it thinks Fox is evil.
Wait until they get into bed with the Chinese censors. As they're about to do. Then they'll know Evil. Then they'll be doing evil on a scale greater than simply manipulating news of Trump or McCain's funeral.
I know that Google play with their algorithms (and I do know about "page rank").
On my favourite subject of Islam, a search for "Islam is...." returns auto-complete of "peaceful", "a religion of peace", and so on. The whole of the first page of "Islam is..." is only warm and peaceful stuff. As opposed to looking up "Christianity is... " or "Jews are..." (for which at time of writing the auto-fill was "not Israel or the Chosen People").
Also I subscribe to a Google notification for "Islam", for anything being written about Islam. I did a review some years ago, which showed a gradual increase in criticism of the ideology. Which made sense as people came to learn more about it.
Lately however, over the last year or so, many more positive and Islam-apologetic articles are appearing in the notification. This can't be because people are realising that it is indeed a religion of peace. It must be because the liberal folk at Google just don't think it's right to be criticising it so much. It's too horrid.
