Potential Google Autocomplete Bias
Over the past few months, there have been a number of accusations against Google, as well as the media in general of favoring Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Republican Donald Trump. One recent example is Andrew Napolitano’s assertion that Google fails to autocomplete phrases such as “Hillary Clinton crime” or “Hillary Clinton arrest” when inputted into Google. Such manipulation of the search engine could very well steer people away from those types of searches, despite the potentially high PageRank of their results. If these claims were proven true, Google could potentially be undermining the fairness of our entire election process through seemingly hidden means.
However, Mr. Napolitano’s claim, while technically correct in that Google doesn’t tend to autocomplete phrases that put Hillary Clinton in a negative light, fails to mention that Google implements this type of protection for all people on both sides of the political spectrum. For example, similar searches made for Donald Trump such as “Donald Trump fraud” were also not autocompleted. So while Google’s autocomplete does steer the public from negative news about individuals, it doesn’t seem to target anyone in particular through this feature.
While these recent accusations generally seem to be little more than the typical finger-pointing that occurs during this time of the election season, it’s nonetheless important to understand just how much Google can influence what content you see, and how this extends to more than just the PageRank of a site. Any attempt by a company like google to manipulate or censor results, (subtly or explicitly) impacts the way many of us retrieve information and this could, in turn, imperil a democratic form of government.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jun/23/andrew-napolitano/did-google-adjust-its-autocomplete-algorithm-hide-/