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posted by martyb on Monday July 01 2019, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the Google-Biasing-Results? dept.

[Editor's note: This story has an interesting viewpoint given the proliferation of "Deep Fake" videos we recently covered here. I see it as a portent of discussions to come. How much can we trust reporting? How much slanting and posturing of "reports" and "studies" are going to be promulgated in the lead-up to the next presidential election? Is this item all a bunch of crap or an indication of things we can expect to come? How much can we trust, and how to we go about assessing the veracity of what is presented to us by not only the main-stream media, but also social media, too? We hereby disclaim any assurance as to the credibility of the accusations made here and present it solely as an example of what may be coming -- and an opportunity to practice techniques at validating/corroborating or challenging/refuting it. The story submission appears after the break.]

NOTE TO READERS - this is scummy content and scummy journalism, at best. That said, it is news, as the story has been commented on by two congressional questionings and the president. Ugh.

Congressional testimony and comments by the president are being made on a Project Veritas video/report, which details how Google biases their search results to favor certain political narratives. REP Dan Crenshaw (TX) and SEN Ted Cruz (TX) have made comments on the Google reports (link below). President Trump made the comment "they're trying to rig the election".

Basically, Project Veritas had an internal whistleblower at Google who detailed how they bias content against conservative sources. The leaked internal project documents (which may be fake) present a relatively technical discussion on how to bias existing trained neural networks. These are somewhat correlated with leaked internal E-mails (which may be fake) describing how the algorithms are modified to create more 'fair' results as part of "search engine fairness". The whistleblower was interviewed, but their face was masked and voice changed (may as well be fake). This is then correlated against a certainly-illegally-obtained-and-selectively-edited interview with a Google executive, which appears to be at a hotel bar from Project Veritas "undercover" agent. This was all combined into a report from Project Veritas that indicates that Google is politically biasing search results as a byproduct of algorithmic tampering and human influence. Ugh.

Predictably, the Project Veritas video was banned everywhere (YouTube, Reddit, Twitter), with accounts suspended/banned from certain platforms. Some people would say that it is an attempt to silence the "report". Some other people would say that this "report" is dubious at best. I think reasonable people would say, at a minimum, posting illegally-obtained material to the internet warrants a ban. Personally - if Veritas wants to do this 'reporting' then it needs to *report* - and not produce material that is illegally obtained or fake.

Original Source: https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/
Summary: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-believes-google-is-trying-to-rig-the-election-project-veritas-video-cb82f03caee3/
Washintgon Times: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/24/google-exec-project-veritas-sting-says-only-big-te/
Congressional Testimony: (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueCMWBixP4Y (2) https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE?t=44

Final note:
Among other things, the "leaked internal E-mails" indicate that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager are Nazis. At the time of writing, this "story" was picked up by Fox News, TheBlaze, and the Washington Times, according to duckduckgo News ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&iar=news&ia=news ). This "story" doesn't exist according to Google News ( https://www.google.com/search?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&source=lnms&tbm=nws ). The combination of the report, its details, and my own observations when comparing against DDG results have influenced me to switch my search engine to DDG rather than Google. Something is going on.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday July 01 2019, @05:42PM (4 children)

    by SunTzuWarmaster (3971) on Monday July 01 2019, @05:42PM (#862091)

    Okay, fine, let's declare it all step-by-step:

    PROVABLE FACT - I was given a report about Google reporting Jordan Peterson as a Nazi from my Google Now feed. Google gave me this content.

    PROVABLE FACT - This report does not appear in a Google News search unless you jump through quite a few hoops when searching for it, which is strange when you consider that Google Now served me this content originally (https://www.google.com/search?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP87SbopTjAhVPJt8KHWhHBYQQ_AUIECgB&biw=1080&bih=1809).

    PROVABLE FACT - This report is easily found using both Bing News (the first 5 results, https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&FORM=HDRSC6) [bing.com] and DuckDuckGo News (all of the results; only 3, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&t=h_&iar=news&ia=news). [duckduckgo.com]

    PROVABLE FACT - The "Jordan B Peterson is Nazi" claim comes from a series of "leaked internal E-mails" dragged up from shoddy-and-or-dodgy-and-or-illegal-and-or-fake reporting practices from Project Veritas.

    PROVABLE FACT - Project Veritas is a group of scumbags.

    PROVABLE FACT - The E-mails and Project Veritas reporting have prompted 1 Senator and 1 Representative, both from Texas, to question Google representatives on the nature of the content they serve readers. Both the Sen/Rep seem to believe that Section 230 gives Google special legal immunity because they provide unbiased aggregation of news, rather than being a publisher. They pulled their questions directly from materials provided by Project Veritas. This includes - and I kid you not - blowing up the Project Veritas items into a giant posterboard and displaying them to a Google representative ( https://youtu.be/q1YENAvOveE?t=284 [youtu.be] ).

    SUSPECT FACT - SEN Ted Cruz and REP Dan Crenshaw, both from Texas, were provided this information from Project Veritas directly. PV claims this - no reason not to believe it, really.

    PROVABLE FACT - Other Representatives have issued statements against Google, brought to light from some combination of this information ( https://gohmert.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399712 [house.gov] ).

    EDITORIAL NOTE - at this point, the story is "news for nerds". I'm not inclined to post conspiracy theories (this is my first posting), but when multiple congressional representatives are taking action on information that indicates Google is biasing results - it is news - even if that information is later proven to be false.

    PROVABLE FACT - The Google Employee who was interviewed has issued a statement indicated that she, indeed, said the words presented in the video ( https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-monday-to-go-e92771c7aa82 [medium.com] ). This is not a DeepFake. She does not re-state her positions (wisely). It is possible that she was drunk when being interviewed (she looks drunk to me, and there is a wine glass in front of her).

    PROVABLE FACT - Project Veritas is a group of scumbags. The Google employee indicates that she was tricked to coming to dinner with them. They have tricked other people in the same way in the past. The video recordings that Project Veritas took were illegal in the place where they were taken.

    EDITORIAL NOTE - There is little reason to trust information from Project Veritas. I do not trust anything Project Veritas says. As the old internet saying goes "information is proof of ability to produce information".

    CURRENT FACT - The E-mails related to this "leak" have not been released to any organization other than Project Veritas.

    EDITORIAL OPINION - The "insider" presents compelling technical arguments on how you would algorithmically bias search results. I am a technical expert in this area and found his description compelling and chilling. If I were in charge of doing it - this is how I would do it. The number of people with enough technical expertise in this area to perform an algorithmic bias of this nature is in the 1,000s-10,000s in this country, but this would show a level of technical reporting not seen elsewhere by Project Veritas. With regard to the internal leak - it is either a) a real leak/person, or b) Project Veritas really did their homework on this piece and put in hundreds of hours of technical understanding for less than 60 seconds of their total report. I suspect the leaker is a real person.

    SUSPECT CLAIM - Project Veritas claims that Google deliberately doctors their results with political bias. They claim this with "evidence" from internal memos (that they won't release), an interview illegally taped (banned wherever it was found), and an "insider" who can't be named. Even if the insider presents compelling arguments, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is not reliable evidence to this claim.

    PROVABLE FACT - Google Trends and Google Search Autocomplete present different information on politically sensitive topics. As an example, consider the autocomplete for "men are" and the trends for "men are". The Autocomplete indicates that it is Mars/Venus, Waffles, Bluetooth, Visual, while trends indicates Mars/Venus, Visual, Bluetooth, Waffles across all time periods ( https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&geo=US&q=men%20are%20from%20mars%20women%20are%20from%20venus,men%20are%20like%20waffles,men%20are%20like%20bluetooth,men%20are%20visual [google.com] ). "Men are Visual" appears lower in autocomplete than people who search for it. A test like this (but not this test) was recommended to be performed by the expert in the Project Veritas video. He mentioned that "googles own products show their bias" when mentioning that the Google Trends and Google Autocomplete show a mismatch. The only reason that I can think of for this mismatch is some sort of non-random algorithmic reordering. Given the discrepancy of Autocomplete results, there is reason to believe some frequently-queried items are being removed from Autocomplete.

    Final opinion and notes - This is news and worthy of being posted - the involvement from lawmakers sees to that. That said, Project Veritas are scum and there isn't a compelling reason to believe anything they say without checking. I saw effects in both Search/News on the Peterson-Nazi subject, bias in the Autocomplete/Trends data for "men are". I am a technical expert in this area, and saw a reasonable explanation of how they go about biasing results (it would work in theory). Given an *observed* bias in Search, News, and Autocomplete, I am convinced that Google is doctoring results to push a political narrative, and I have changed my search engine on all devices to discontinue its use.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @05:48PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @05:48PM (#862094)

    Project Veritas claims that Google deliberately doctors their results with political bias... extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

    It is "extraordinary" to you that a corporation would use their influence to gain more money/power? I would assume this is going on with no evidence at all.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @10:48PM (#862192)

      It is "extraordinary" to you that a corporation would use their influence to gain more money/power? I would assume this is going on with no evidence at all.

      Are you referring to Project Veritas or Google? Or both?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @11:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @11:58PM (#862214)

        Does your mom know you are either a liar or an idiot, if not both?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @05:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @05:58AM (#862295)

    Two major counter-points here. Most media today is deeply dependent upon Google for revenue. This comes both in the form of ads, which are delivered by Google in some cases, and by directing users to their sites for which Google plays a tremendous role. This alone makes it highly unlikely to see significant investigative or otherwise 'aggressive' reporting against Google from most major media outlets. This is not to say they remain entirely deferential, but rather that they are going to be unlikely to engage in any behavior beyond the minimum standard to fulfill their basic journalistic obligations. The point here is that when you see somebody going beyond the norm to expose bad behaviors by Google, it's unlikely to come from established sources - because those established sources have immense amounts to risk and little to gain by engaging in such.

    The second is media bias. Most media today leans left to far left. The New York Times, for instance, has gradually morphed from a completely balanced and authoritative source to one that now is full of partisan ranting and unabashed ideological endorsement and evangelism. This is certainly, in part, playing to their audience for the sake of revenue generation - but I also think that these media outlets tend to be full of people that do genuinely endorse these ideologies and are increasingly deciding it is their role to try to nudge (or hammer blow as it may be) society in that direction. A problem here is that Google's bias also is aligned with a far left ideology. So now we have yet another confounding factor. Not only are we unlikely to find established sites going beyond to norm to expose or report on such issues, we're also less likely to find partisan left sites reporting on such.

    This two biases alone leave you with the reality that truly and deeply informative news is unlikely to come from the sites we'd like it to come from, unless it's on a topic such as Trump - where you can find their vetting of sources tends to be [drum roll] quite liberal. And for some reason we also tend to hold smaller sites to a higher standard that large sites. For instance the media we wanted to believe ran widespread stories on Nathan Phillips and 'The Catholic Schoolboys Harassing Him.' It was completely and absolutely fake with the boys being the ones who were being approached and "harassed" by numerous actors, including Phillips. Another example would be these same sites claiming Trump's son received an email from Wikileaks offering him access to hacked DNC emails before the documents were made available to the public. Before being key, and fake. The sites all accidentally got the date wrong, somehow. The email was sent after the archives were already publicly available for all. You could list countless incidents of misleading and fake stories from these sites just in the past couple of years, yet we pretend that these sites are authoritative and reputable. By contrast if we can find any sliver of bad behavior on a smaller site, we'll use it to smear them to no end. Quite bizarre behavior.