So my bona-fides as one of HN's loud mostly-left-leaning people are pretty good, and--seriously, guys? Truthout? Like, at times they've historically had some alright commentary--I originally wanted to say "mostly by mistake"--but it is one of the more obvious crank magnets I know of on the left. It's like a poor man's Alternet (and that's saying something).
If Google's dinging stuff like Truthout at the same time they're getting the right wing all aflutter at their epistemic closures being pushed down Google's SERPs, I don't really have a problem with that. The amount of information warfare directed at average citizens from all sides is titanic and Truthout/WorldNetDaily etc. have no inherent right to credibility among people literally unable (through many factors, not all of which are ignorance or stupidity--this stuff also just requires an investment of time to really understand and be able to critically evaluate, and time is at a premium when you are getting paid fifteen bucks an hour or less) to ascertain the prudence of that credibility for themselves.
> If Google's dinging stuff like Truthout at the same time they're getting the right wing all aflutter at their epistemic closures being pushed down Google's SERPs, I don't really have a problem with that.
I do, and I'm pretty left leaning as well. What bothers me is that Google is using human judgment rather than their supposedly infallible algorithms to punish certain sites to the advantage of others. There is a good chance that what they're doing to one side of the spectrum today will be done to the other at some point in the future.
Algorithms are human judgment put into code; there's no meaningful difference. I am all in favor of a neutral arbiter for search engines; one doesn't exist, though, so, there you go. It all comes back to people eventually.
There is a hierarchy of threats to deal with. The information war being directed at everyday citizens to empower real scary dudes is being carried on the back of willful and knowing disinformation campaigns from both non-state and (external) state actors, in the U.S. and elsewhere. The defenses we have are limited, and while I agree with you that it very well may be problematic down the line: if that means I'm in a foxhole with Google, I can live with that for now and work to fight that threat later.
Furthermore, those algorithms are designed to reflect the prevailing winds of the market, if you will. So an unintended (?) bias, plus changes in backlinks, searches, etc. will be reflected in SERP. This happens all the time.
That said, nothing surprises me any more. I'm sure there are plenty of intelligence community "double agents" embedded in the tech Giants with any kind of influence.
If you have proof that humans at Google are actually choosing which sites to reduce the visibility of in search results, that would be big news, and I'd like to know about it. :)
The left: "Google is trying to ban us"
The right: "Google is trying to ban us"
And nobody stops to think maybe the problem is advertiser funding trends to sensationalist yet substantively bland content, it's gotta be political bias against us, the righteous underdogs.
Usually when I click a link titled "Evidence of X", I expect to see, well.. evidence. I see some correlations being made of traffic reduction, with no sources, as well as some selective paraphrasing of guidelines to Google evaluators.
At a casual glance, the lack of evidence and sources makes it seem like Google's alleged approach of floating more authoritative content to the top is working, at least in this case.
This is having a pretty extreme impact if their numbers are correct:
"Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April. The Real News , a nonprofit video news and documentary service, has had its search traffic fall by 37 percent. Another site, Common Dreams , last week told the WSWS that its search traffic had fallen by up to 50 percent."
"As extreme as these sudden drops in search traffic are, they do not equal the nearly 70 percent drop in traffic from Google seen by the WSWS."
It would be nice to have some independent verification of these numbers, if only because some will doubt their veracity due to the source(s) being considered part of the political "fringe."
Which political side gets blacklisted isn't even relevant, what is relevant is the power that companies like Google, Facebook and a few others hold and how media giving airtime can make or break political candidates, swing elections and quietly manipulate public opinion one way or another. This makes them powerplayers in the political arena without any checks on that power.
The article leaves open the possibility that left and progressive readers are switching to other search engines.
We cannot draw our own conclusions unless we also know about changes in total traffic to the sites, in addition to change in number of visitors referred by Google search.
Or, just getting similar news elsewhere. As a fringe cause (if you will) goes mainstream (so to speak) some of the core infrastructure gets left behind.
You sell yellow widgets. They catch on. I start to sell them as well. I could very likely steal market share from you.
If Google's dinging stuff like Truthout at the same time they're getting the right wing all aflutter at their epistemic closures being pushed down Google's SERPs, I don't really have a problem with that. The amount of information warfare directed at average citizens from all sides is titanic and Truthout/WorldNetDaily etc. have no inherent right to credibility among people literally unable (through many factors, not all of which are ignorance or stupidity--this stuff also just requires an investment of time to really understand and be able to critically evaluate, and time is at a premium when you are getting paid fifteen bucks an hour or less) to ascertain the prudence of that credibility for themselves.