Bias in Google Searches
https://www.wired.com/story/google-algorithm-conservatives-biased-its-just-not-human/
This article summarized a congressional hearing regarding the bias of Google search results. Because Google is so unanimously used, one big concern that quickly arises is how political information is presented. In specific, the Congressional committee asked multiple questions regarding how Donald Trump is portrayed by Google – specifically remarking at one point how entering the phrase “idiot” into Google Images produces photos of Donald Trump.
The Google CEO responded with an answer similar to what we have seen in class: the Google search algorithm is, at its core, based in the way the network exists on the internet. However, there are some changes that have been made to the Pagerank algorithm; the CEO noted that other things such as “relevance and freshness” are taken into consideration. That is not to say that these points are not brought up with due concern.
We recently saw both in lecture and in a problem set how easily the original Pagerank algorithm can be manipulated – simply creating a few domains and routing internal links with a bit of forethought can trick the algorithm into thinking that your page is highly valuable. However, since the algorithm was initially used, Google engineers has made it more difficult for the system to be gamed, by taking into account other, harder-to-fake factors. While this makes it harder for outsiders to game the system it also (much to the focus of the committee) presumably makes it harder for a disgruntled Google employee to develop the algorithm such that it favors a certain type of response. This is important, as Google is so commonly used to retrieve information for a wide variety of people, and we as a country would not benefit from having them decide what information we get.