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ThunderIdeal

google to filter results based on "trustworthiness"

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some of you will probably cream your pants over this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be1W32qQy_k#t=658

i for one resent any attempt to force me to think a particular way, and i will avoid google when this has been implemented.

for those who can't sit through the video i will paraphrase the final comment "history's important lesson is that the experts get it wrong time and time again"

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There goes my site's google ranking then... :blink::unsure:

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i'm concerned any sort of self professed authority wants to prevent or limit access to information based on their version of "truth"

wrong or not, information should never be suppressed

i just wonder where they're going to get their fact ranking from? maybe wikipedia will finally not be the top hit when conducting a cursory googol search

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from what I understand about it I personally welcome a change towards 'trustworthiness' rather than 'popularity' this is a step in the right direction IMO.

when this happens I won't 'believe' google anymore than I do now. The current algoithm you see the results for now, just selects in a different way, with different criteria.

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^ it's a pretty complicated matter though, with many paths they could take. at least the way results are ranked now is transparent and i guess deterministic, soon they're putting some kind of human factor into the equation (so i guess it won't strictly be an equation).

if somebody believes every stupid website they see, then they probably believed a lot of stupid shit before websites existed, google can't save those people. it might save us some time when searching for reliable information, but my concern is that dissenting views will be encountered less, maybe they won't even show up on the first page when you are specifically searching for material from a group of dissident thinkers.

dissenting views are not a bad thing, it's not the same as making baseless assertions etc, and i worry about science becoming dogma. speaking of dogma, i wonder which religious websites will be considered more truthful?

anyway i hope they realise you can't just run your own little truth rankings without a lot of people trying quite forcefully influence it. everybody trying to pedal the particular brand of truth which sustains their career/ego/belief/whatever will be up in google's feedback because truth isn't just astoundingly self-evident, not in my opinion, it doesn't promote itself. truth has to be sold ferociously, or belief-systems shop elsewhere for truth and if most of those belief-systems are wearing your competitors line then the buyer has chosen for now, get some cred or fuck off

a "truth" which is now considered very successful and virtually indispensable/indisputable is einstein's relativity. you might think his equations must have just fit the box perfectly and other ideas ceded defeat but you'd be wrong. relativity eventually received so much support that anybody questioning it looks like a schmuck in the eyes of many, to this very day. interestingly, quantum mechanics shortly after received the same unstoppable momentum and shares a place with relativity at the untouchable heart of physics, but the inventor of relativity resisted quantum mechanics to his dying day.

Edited by ThunderIdeal
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Google searches are already filtered and tailored to each individual based on things like search history, location and sites visited etc.

Basically google tells you what you want to hear or what it thinks you want to hear. If you are like me & spend a lot of time researching lesbian biker nuns, then you'll most likely be presented with lots of pages with stuff like harleys and nuns in lingerie getting jiggy with each other. :drool2:

But seriously though filtering is just another form of censorship, I hate it. If the sites with the lesbians nuns are deemed untrusted then I'd have to switch search engines - if I already hadn't.

I don't want some corporate robot/entity deciding what I should trust.

Fuck google

Quack

Edited by Sally
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well as obviously facetious are your claims are are there not real concerns about finding truth to popular narratives, such as the lies pushed by the US government concerning its war mongering and profiteering foreign policy? it's ok for me because I know where to look, but a 15 or 16 year old who hasn't had much experience googling say, "Ukraine War 2015", there might be all the top hits pointing to the "truth" according to the political narrative the US government wants to promote? if this teenager was to think that this information is implicitly trustworthy because google deems it so, you can see how such a system may used to push a political agenda?

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if i'm not mistaken sally, you're talking mainly about the ads presented to you. that's basically the business that google is in, delivering targeted advertising, so when i use their service i know they're collecting information on me, i know that if people watch me browse they'll notice i'm being targeted certain things due to embarrassing, stigmatising interests i have and repulsive health disorders i've been researching.

i haven't seen anything to make me believe the actual search results are being manipulated on google for political/whatever reasons, although i remember something about fairly rare, justifiable cases where the rankings are altered. i'm sure if it seems profitable, they will move to profit by skewing the rankings, eventually, but it won't go unnoticed. maybe that's what they're doing with this truth thing? there is no profit in truth, unless it's your brand of truth, per my last post.

as far as i know the country you're in will definitely have an impact on your results and while some countries have forced google into, say, hiding certain pages from the citizenry of that country, generally it is very handy having the results tailored for your country, or i might get a lot of hits from florida when i search for free crack giveaway in brisbane. my brisbane doesn't seem to have a free crack giveaway.

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having three competing answers to one question in the first page of results lets me know instantly that i will have to visit more than one page and maybe decide for myself. if the first page of results all show the same answer, judged most true by google eggheads (who are also eternal universe wizards), then you're likely to just think okay that's the answer kicking around and you'll go with that, unaware that the metadata and cross-linking algorithms of old (and present) should have let you in on the existence of competing ideas.

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It's a lot broader than just an advertising profile TI, whenever you go online you build a hidden profile that shapes your entire experience on the web. The advertising profile is a major part of the online profile though.

This is a bit long winded but here's an article about it.

Google Now Personalizes Everyones Search Results

http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195

If you could see just how much shit was stored on your system each time you use the web you'd be blown away. Ten minutes web searching can result in hundreds of megabytes of shit you didn't know about being stored on your computer.

If you run Bleachbit after using the web you'd see just how much shit is stored on your system.

Your experience on the web is shaped by where you've been and what you've looked at. Google reads all those hidden files and gives you more of what it thinks you want - or soon to be what it (or some corporate/government overlord) approves and thinks you want.

Edited by Sally
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^ This

Youtube is a case-in-point

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I think this picture pretty well sums up my thoughts on this project...

5d697fc6-680d-4169-954f-ed5fb9db0ecb.jpg

Looks legit to me!

It would be interesting if this "trustworthiness" was a setting you could change - you know how you can set iTunes to shuffle more or less "randomly"? There are some topics where you probably want the "untrustworthy" results. Harm reduction is a good example here, or assisted suicide - few "trustworthy" people want to stick their necks out & provide this kind of info, so the most accurate results might rank low just because they don't come from respected authoritative sources, even though this is a result of political issues & has nothing to do with the credibility of the info itself. But most people (or algorithms) will not have the background to make this determination, so the best answers get lost behind pages & pages of inaccurate & incomplete info from more respectable sources. This is true of the popularity- based system too, but at least with that you can say "I think most people are idiots on this topic, so I'll pick an unpopular result", but how do you filter based on someone else's idea of "trustworthiness"? I don't believe reliable sources should be defined democratically - have you seen YahooAnswers? People are idiots! They believe what they see on the news, what their doctor tells them, what it says on the packet. I wonder if Google have considered that this whole system could be seen as one big "appeal to authority" - they call that shit a logical fallacy for a reason.

Quack indeed.

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when is this supposed to be implemented? i've noticed some discrepancies lately with google searches, results I expect based on search terms I've used previously do not come up

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here's the solution folks: a better search engine.

https://www.ixquick.com/

 

Ixquick is the world's most powerful search engine employing the most advanced metasearch technology.

Ixquick search results are more comprehensive and more accurate than other search engines.

When you search with Ixquick search engine, you are searching many popular search engines simultaneously and anonymously. Combined, these engines cover more of the Internet than any one search engine alone.

Ixquick does not collect or share any personal information, and is the only search engine that does not record your IP address.

have been using this for months, it's great

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"have you seen YahooAnswers? People are idiots! They believe what they see on the news, what their doctor tells them, what it says on the packet."

Well said. Worth noting is that "yahoo answers" is comprised of all fired bunnings staff( :wave-finger: )

I use other engines more now because, well, google is almost worthless. However, My site is still number one page one for my chosen keywords and phrases. Results based on truth you say.. :wink:

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I'm still getting pictures of japanese girls with pixilated genitals when I search for images of obscure organic compound structures.

Whoever this 'trustworthy' guy is, he must be a pervert :P

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I'd want the Japanese muffs to be pixelated if I came across them by accident.

Some of those Japanese muffs look like something you'd see hanging out of an open faced helmet on top of Harley.

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I dont mind the genitalia being unpixilated, but I would like if they would finally start pixilating the octopus.

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shit, this is slightly unrelated but i'm getting ad's pushed to me now in my gmail (in the promotions tab). i never really look at it though so i don't know if this is new.

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