Page 3 - ARUBA TODAY

A3
U.S. NEWS Wednesday 29 august 2018
GOOGLE A search for "why is the sky
Continued from Front blue?" for example, yields
Trump has made similar initial results from NASA,
complaints before, but universities and "Scientific
he carried it a step further American."
Tuesday. Similarly, entering "Trump"
"Google search results for and clicking the "news" tab
'Trump News' shows only the will produce results from
viewing/reporting of Fake mainstream media outlets
New Media. In other words, that large swaths of the
they have it RIGGED, for me population tend to trust.
& others, so that almost all That is even though Trump
stories & news is BAD. Fake has derided some of these
CNN is prominent. Repub- outlets as "fake news."
lican/Conservative & Fair Trump and some support-
Media is shut out. Illegal?" ers have long accused Sili-
He added, without offer- con Valley companies of
ing evidence, that "96% of being biased against them.
results on "Trump News" are But, while some company A cursor moves over Google's search engine page on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Portland, Ore.
from National Left-Wing executives may lean lib- Political leanings don’t factor into Google’s search algorithm. But the authoritativeness of page
Media, very dangerous." eral, they have long assert- links the algorithm spits out and the perception of thousands of human raters do.
A query Tuesday morning ed that their products are Associated Press
several hours after the pres- without political bias, and
ident tweeted showed sto- indeed no such bias has Elementary School was acting as a journalist. Trump by Rep. Greg Walden, R-
ries from CNN, ABC News, been proven. staged, in any tweets on the has praised Jones' "amaz- Ore., recently announced
Fox News and the Market- Trump didn't say what he issue. Jones has since said ing" reputation. that Twitter CEO Jack Dors-
Watch business site, among based his tweets on. But in he believes the shooting The issue is also of concern ey will testify before the
others. A similar search later a blog post over the week- did occur and has argued on Capitol Hill, where the panel on Sept. 5 about the
in the day for "Trump" had end, conservative activ- that the lawsuit should be House Energy and Com- platform's algorithms and
Fox News, the president's ist Paula Boylard had said dismissed because he was merce Committee, chaired content monitoring.q
favored cable network, she found "blatant prioriti-
among the top results. zation of left-leaning and
Trump tweeted that anti-Trump media outlets"
Google and others "are in search results.
controlling what we can & Boylard based her judg-
cannot see." ments on which media out-
In response, Google said its lets were left- or right-lean-
goal is to make sure users ing on a list by Sharyl Att-
of its search engine get the kisson, host of Sinclair Tele-
most relevant answers to vision's "Full Measure" and
their queries quickly. author of "The Smear: How
"Search is not used to set Shady Political Operatives
a political agenda and and Fake News Control
we don't bias our results What You See, Think, and
toward any political ideol- How You Vote." Sinclair is a
ogy," the Mountain View, significant outlet for conser-
California-based company vative views.
said. "Every year, we issue Trump began complain-
hundreds of improvements ing about the issue earlier
to our algorithms to ensure this month as social media
they surface high-quality companies moved to ban
content in response to us- right-wing "Infowars" con-
ers' queries." spiracy theorist Alex Jones
"We continually work to im- from their platforms. The
prove Google Search and president also argues regu-
we never rank search re- larly — and falsely — that
sults to manipulate political the news media avoid writ-
sentiment." ing positive stories about
Google searches aim to him and his administration.
surface the most relevant Apple, YouTube and Spo-
pages in response to a us- tify have permanently re-
er's query, even before he moved some of Jones'
or she finishes typing. The content, Facebook has
answers that appear first suspended him for 30 days
are the ones Google's for- and removed some of his
mulas, with some help from pages, and Twitter gave
human content reviewers, Jones a weeklong timeout
deem to be the most au- and was mulling deep-
thoritative, informative and er changes to try to limit
relevant. Many factors help the spread of fake news,
decide the initial results, misinformation and hate
including how much time speech.
people spend on a page, Trump has not named
how many other pages link Jones, who is being sued
to it, how well it's designed for saying the 2012 shooting
and more. massacre at Sandy Hook