Len@Large
Len@Large
Sep 8, 2018 · 4 min read

(Various addendums added to the end of original comment)

I don’t want to pile on but I will offer a few meandering thoughts in no particular flow.

As someone who has been a professional researcher, I can attest to the importance of knowing how to craft search inquiries (and knowing all info and knowledge is not on the web). Most people have not developed any skill in crafting query syntax beyond 1–3 words, or having any knowledge or skill in using operators— and that’s assuming they have framed and asked the right question. Nor do they question and vet results, so we have a “user error” component to the problem. The search engine algorithms reinforce our intellectual shortcomings and personal biases and present results that give us exactly what we ask for. So if content is being produced and linked to with bias in one direction, that is exactly what the results skew toward. You reap what you sow. Remember GIGO?

Contrarian thinking is a lost art obvious in the current state of public political discourse and what is happening on college campuses. These trends do not bode well for this republic.

But let’s never forget these are not benevolent dispensers of information and knowledge (both the search engine companies and higher education), but profit-seeking enterprises who engineer (manipulate) their operations for that purpose. So search engines give them what they want. And then advertisers and content providers are matched to offer you more of what they think you want based on your search biases, whether you recognize them as such or not.

The scourge of SEO is part of the problem in an effort to get one’s site or post on the first page of results because probably 98% or more of users never look past the first page. Professional content providers and the search companies know and seem to foster this sad state, which is part of the bias engineering issue.

There is a lot of real science in information fields and in search engine development. They also really understand the art of marketing. They “leak” certain aspects of the algorithms from time-to-time when they make adjustments because they know with absolute certainty how the tech press, the companies who make their living purveying this knowledge and how they can help you stay or get on the first page of results, and those of us who have websites will have to respond or suffer consequences.

If these companies really want to remove any whiff of bias they would need to publish their trade secrets: The true and complete details of their algorithms and every change made to them when they occur and the reasons why, and the effects (Yes, they know how. See 2/13/19 addendum below). With that knowledge, market forces would probably fix the problem PDQ and break their present sector-wide secretive monopolistic behavior.

Since private enterprise is entitled to control and protect their secrets that will never happen, so go back and re-read the early paragraphs, become a better info consumer (across the board, not just on the web) and caveat emptor.

Information—valid or vacuous—without depth, context, and intelligent interpretation (hard to do in twitter-bites) is not knowledge and is being weaponized in the art of the info wars going on today. Tech, as it is today, is a major, but the not the only, cause of the problem

All that said, I do think there is institutional bias in these operations. It comes in the form of vague Terms of Use and enforcement bias that is quite evident to me and needs to be honestly addressed before the farcical outrage over “net neutrality” concerning equal time or censorship goes any further.

Addendum 9/13 after this article popped up on my reading radar
https://bit.ly/2QuR9WL

Addendum 10/25 after receiving this instructive piece titled WORDPRESS SITE NOT RANKING IN GOOGLE? HERE ARE 13 POSSIBLE REASONS WHY. It gives a good overview of Google’s ranking methods, some of which are directly related to what is being discussed here. https://bit.ly/2SjHOlt

Addendum 11/05/18 after reading this 2017 piece from Wired also published in Medium:
How ProPublica Became Big Tech’s Scariest Watchdog which gives some insight into a few supposedly legacy Facebook algorithms. The algorithms themselves are…odd…but the thinking behind them is the real issue and clearly shows the tortured bias used in deciding what is acceptable in general, as well as skewing based on revenue maximization.

Addendum 2/13/19. Google makes public more info on algorithm changes:
https://bit.ly/2TO5f6w

For more on sources related to that article, look at this page of links:
https://bit.ly/2txaAnq
What I find fascinating about that page is that it shows the amount of very Twitter-like behavior in media. It’s nothing new, but interesting to see it visually. The challenge is to find the original source.

Addendum 10/14/19:

    Len@Large

    Written by

    Len@Large

    A less-than-gracefully aging old soul trying to understand what the hell is happening around me as I bounce around the pinball machine of life.

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