Google’s algorithms are keeping us in a political bubble, study finds
Your internet search results may look very different depending based on your political views and other cultural interests, a new study claims.
Whether you know it or not, you’re probably living in a bubble. As far as the internet is concerned, at least.
Your internet search results may look very different depending based on your political views and other cultural interests. Searching for hot button political topics like “gun control,” “immigration,” and “vaccination” bring up very different results depending on your search history, according to a study from privacy company and Google rival DuckDuckGo released Tuesday.
The study examined the results of different users searching the same terms and found they varied widely. In the case of searching the term “gun control,” one participant saw the pro-gun organization the National Rifle Association in the top news results while another did not get any results including the NRA. Two were served pages from Wikipedia.org as the first or second result while one did not see any Wikipedia links in the first nine results.
Pull quote: ‘Undecided and inquisitive voters turn to search engines to conduct basic research on candidates and issues.’ —DuckDuckGo report
DuckDuckGo researchers said this bubble can be “particularly pernicious” when searching for political topics.” That’s because undecided and inquisitive voters turn to search engines to conduct basic research on candidates and issues in the critical time when they are forming their opinions on the,” the study said. “If they’re getting information that is swayed to one side because of their personal filter bubbles, then this can have a significant effect on political outcomes in aggregate.”
Google GOOG, -5.03% and other tech platforms including Facebook FB, -2.24% have been scrutinized in light of the 2016 election over how their algorithms order results and insulate people with like-minded views.
In August, President Donald Trump tweeted complaining that Google is against Republicans, apparently commenting on a story that CNN and other so-called “liberal” media outlets dominated the top search results when the word “Trump” is Googled.
In the study, DuckDuckGo examined results for 87 participants including 76 on desktop and 11 on mobile and found 92% of users saw unique or results that varied from person to person when Googling vaccinations, 63% saw unique results when Googling “immigration,” and 59% saw unique results when Googling “gun control.”
The percentages were comparable even when the user searched in “incognito mode,” which does not collect user data.The study was limited to the U.S. to avoid differing search indexes in different countries.
Google said tracking is only part of the story
A Google spokeswoman told MarketWatch personalization called the results “flawed” and said tracking or personalization is not the sole reason for different search results. She said changes in location or even seconds between searches can impact results and their order. Google said it does not personalize “Top Stories” in Search or content in the News tab in Search.
However, DuckDuckGo researchers claim to have controlled for this and found even when people searched at the same time they got different results….
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/googles-algorithms-are-keeping-us-in-a-political-bubble-study-finds-2018-12-04