Responsibility of a Search Engine
When it comes to search engines, one can find Google much more socially responsible than its Chinese counterpart—Baidu. Because Google is not accessible in China, Baidu.com is in the very same place in China’s search engine industry in comparison to Google is at a global level: giants, hardly any rival. But development in regulations did not match up the development of Baidu, and false medical information displayed sole based on advertisers’ auction led to the death of a young adult. See the post one year ago: https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/10/17/baidu-scandal-and-advertisements/ .
Search advertisement becomes incredibly lucrative when it comes to medical information and some specific industries, and these misleading advertisements got caught coming back again years later. But the applicability of displaying advertisement is far from exhausting the responsibility of a search engine. While it seems counterintuitive to see what Google does not do (assuming it is a responsible corporate), one can easily see how Baidu can nevertheless worsen itself. Think about this. If Google wants to display an advertisement, it can only pay itself. So it can bid as high as possible? When Baidu crossed that line, it went even further: they adjust the search algorithms. Baidu started to operate its media platform Baijiahao in 2016 and started to adjust search results so that the Baijiahao articles show up more frequently in 2018. After an article unveiling this went viral at the beginning of this year, the company simply removed the Baijiahao results’ mark and all results’ sources become less recognizable, so Baijiahao got better “blended in.” Regulators come in later, as always, but concerns persist. Similar to how one would be worried about the fairness of Baidu search, how google handles one’s privacy is always controversial. The responsibility of dealing with information abundance and information unbalance is and will always be immense but pressing.
https://qz.com/1530831/an-obituary-for-baidu-argues-chinas-vast-internet-has-no-search-engine/