I have just enjoyed the last episode of "Who is America" by Sacha Baron Cohen"
It astounds me how Trump can be in power
Can someone please
1. Tell donald trump (lowercase intended)
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/23/us/all-caps-typography-history-tweets...
Being an Australian where we have had 7 Prime ministers in 11 years (7 11) at least we know how to get rid of the bad ones quickly
Please USA do the right thing
12
And to think conservatives coined the phrase "snowflake" to describe liberals. They should look in the mirror!
8
As I read the title of this article I thought about how childish and pathetic this administration is.
Trump uses Twitter and other social media to spread his lies, attack his critics, defend his cruel, petty and vindictive policies, demean President Barack Obama when ever he can, undermine U.S. allies, encourage hatred towards the media, vilify Hillary Clinton constantly, tweet erroneous stories that he heard on Fake Fox & Friends, and Re-tweets posts from neo-Nazis...There's much more. Need I go on?
And now he whines that no one has any 'good' things to say about him. Oh Please.
18
Next, Russia will sue Facebook for discrimination after it shut down its rogue sites. A hapless, conspirational republican WH and Congress will of course support it.
8
If Russian carpenters were building onion domes atop the White House, Trump would insist "It's got NOTHING TO DO WITH ME!!"
8
The truth will 'trigger' Trump every time.
6
Trump is right in one sense: Google isn't a safe space for liars. One way or another they eventually get outed.
7
Don Jr. is apparently fishing for Silicon Valley techies to start a "conservative" social media company. I suggest he call it "FacePlant"
10
Google is the leader in the search engines market because its algorithms are better than the other competitors'. Before Google we had AOL and Yahoo, but when we the people found that Google produced more exact matches, and in higher quantities, faster, we decided to crown it as the King.
We don' t think that Google is going to alter the algorithms to please any politician. Because making changes will undoubtedly alter the accuracy of the whole system. A potential mathematical disaster. In very simple terms if they decide that 2 + 2 = 5, from where did they get the additional 1? Oh, they should create another formula that says 3 + 3 = 5. And so on.
Search engines in countries with dictatorships are altered by the censors. They hate accuracy. For example in April 10 2018, the censors deleted all the information related to the Goldman Sachs Group and Venezuela. Thanks to algorithms the information resurfaced three days later.
A graphic way to show how algorithms work is the Rubik Cube. You have to use the proper movements to finish the job faster. If you, in desperation use a knife, or worst, a hammer. You destroy the magic. https://youtu.be/NevGDFBfQGw
4
I don't think that anyone is stopping them from starting their own social media platform. Kinda their own safe space. A bit snowflakey I know, but, free enterprise,wisdom of the marketplace,yada, yada.
3
This is the same misinformation strategy that creating the joke of 'fair and balanced reporting' during the 2016 campaign, where the repubs make outlandish and false statements on a daily basis and the press bowed and took notes like a freshman in a class by Albert Einstein. Let's not do this again.
A lie is a lie and should not be afforded the same coverage as fact.
If Infowars is blocked it is because it spews hate and misinformation. Stand up and say so. Call a lie and lie and move on
7
The executive branch enforces laws. Even if Google et al are biased there couldn't possibly be a law Because Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. So Trump can shove off.
6
Part of the problem is that the press approaches Trump as if he were a credible source/politician/president. Thus, we end up with articles and essays like this one, and everyone seems surprised, or outraged, or what have you. All you needed to do was end the headline after the second word: Trump Whines. That would free you up to cover important topics that sometimes get sidelined by the antics of this ridiculous person/president.
5
If one uses Infowars as the apex of the bell curve upon which this line of reasoning stands, then, of course, the rest of the data will be skewed to the left of center. It is the warped prism from which DJT views the world. He has used Twitter extensively, and yet criticizes it for not being fair. He wants to hear from people that agree with him. He is a broken, hypocritical, unethical, unhinged xenophobe. He wants the western world to remain under white peopled hegemony and can't stand the idea of a browning western world.
The universe of social media consists mostly of younger, well-informed, well educated GenXers, millennials and etc. These young adults want a fairer, more inquisitive, more inclusive, cleaner world. They reject the thinking of DJT and his ilk. But they are the future and we owe them a better America than Trump can provide.
The task of the media is to keep writing, keep exposing, keep its bias to a minimum, and tell ALL of the truth.
4
If the news, the election, the nomination or whatever occurs in the course of his political agenda goes against “The Donald” it must be rigged. How else can you explain his latest 36 percent approval rating?
2
I noticed that suicide awareness gets most of the hits for people searching suicide. Maybe the pro suicide alliance needs to speak up.
This is the kind of nonsense that we have to deal with in today’s world, where your position, no matter how strange or unsupportable, entitles you to an audience.
Any discussion with a pro tromp person travels to the toilet with the response that “you were just saying that because of a liberal bias.”
4
Didn't Facebook give the Russians a big boost as they interfered in our elections in order to help the Trump campaign? Didn't Google's YouTube implicitly endorse RT--the Kremlin's own propaganda media organ? Didn't Twitter just change its rules so that now the president's account is in a Twitter category of his own--which they will never block no matter how much he violates the rules that apply to the rest of us vis-à-vis bullying, violence, racism, and the like? Didn't--and don't they still?--these three monopolies function as behavior modification machines for the Trump GOP or any other bad actor who sought to manipulate their users via rage, resentment and hatred?
My goodness. If that isn't MAGA-friendly, what is?
3
In my opinion we (rational Americans) should try to ignore the majority of what President Trump tweets or says. If anything, he's building a solid case for Impeachment. In the meantime, he's irritating the heck out of the majority of Americans, most of whom will be fed up and ready to vote at midterm against any politicians aligning themselves with Trump and his ideology.
2
The chef executive of law enforcement is taking action against a private company because he thinks they are critical of him.
3
I think that Facebook should fire the right wingnut troublemakers. They have no place in civilized discussion since they only permit their side to speak with authority.
As for Google, you can see what giving in to authoritarians does. It weakens us all as individuals, excludes our ability to grow from an honest interchange of ideas.
As for Twitter, it should block Trump for bullying. Give those who demand equal time for evil no quarter.
After all, it is still true that for evil to triumph, good people merely need to do nothing.
1
I'd love to see Google and other media companies sue the Trump government for its unrelenting attack on media companies' first amendment rights. This government has gone too far.
2
One reason Trump may not get the results he likes is that his favorite news organization (using that term loosely) daily creates a different reality than most other sites. For example, on the day that Manafort was found guilty of 8 felonies and Cohen pled guilty, Fox's lead headline was about the immigration status of the alleged murderer of the young woman in Iowa. The Manafort and Cohen news, reported front-and-center nearly everywhere else, was all-but-buried at Fox. Maybe, if he wants to read only favorable coverage of himself, Trump should go straight to Fox.
6
I think 2 major points are not emphasized here:
- Right wing extremists and Trump have been waging a war on truth, and this is part of it. He's basically encouraging people not to use regular search and social media outlets (or don't trust the news reported there), and instead get their news directly from some right wing site.
- Criticism like this will further encourage the likes of Facebook and Google to strengthen the algorithms that show each person the articles he/she would prefer based on their political preferences. This way when Trump does a web search, he'd only see articles praising him! With this going on, after a while if two people with different political leanings switch their phones, they'd feel like they've been dropped on a different planet.
6
Isn't the basic tenet of conservative political practice to avoid regulations on businesses?
10
Didn't Trump, as a candidate, ridicule women, make hostile remarks about NFL players who didn't stand for the anthem at football games, lead chants about Hilary Clinton, and say that he might not accept the results of the 2016 presidential election if he lost? As I recall, when I typed in certain things during his presidential campaign I didn't see more "liberal" sites or listings. I saw quite a few extreme right sites.
He's using this to avoid the real problems he may be facing. His loyal toadies are turning on him and getting deals for themselves. The louder he yells the more we ought to look at what's happening with the investigation Mueller is running.
7
I chose 100 articles on Trump from a spectrum of content providers on the internet, posted over the last 12 months. I drew ten at random and applied an objective favorability scale to each article, rating them from 1-10. I plotted my results and applied a linear regression analysis. Generally speaking, the results showed that Trump's presidency has been a disaster.
15
First call anything that you don't like "fake news". Then begin demeaning trusted (but human) government institutions, picking on and magnifying some otherwise trivial mistake. Then begin demanding that non-governmental organizations tailor themselves to suit your interests.
First they came for the trade-unionists...
17
So is Congress going to require FOX to actually be "fair and balanced?" How about Breitbart?
15
What whining. Why don't the Trumpists (and by extension their enablers in Congress) get filtering programs that can be configured to screen out all the "leftist" information so that they only get stuff they like? Of course, screening out the Washington Post would hide the weekly ravings of Marc Thiessen, but that's a small price to pay for ignorance.
3
Darn that Reagan, for revoking the fairness doctrine.
1
Here is an example of how corporate media deals in fake news. Chuck Schumer cut a deal to fast track Trump judicial nominees, and the NY Times hasn't mentioned it.
Most people that would vote against Donald Trump don't think that he should be making any appointments at all. He is an obviously corrupt pathological liar, who thinks that We the People exist to serve him.
He obviously picked Kavanaugh specifically because he said that presidents can't be investigated. One of his nominees couldn't answer first year law questions. His former Attorney calls himself a fixer, and implicated Trump in crimes.
The USA should not have a president who regularly admits to crimes on TV, corrupting the the U.S. Court system by nominating judges.
How could Democrats still be voting for Trump nominees? How could Schumer not be doing everything he can to stall these nominations?
Democrats are always mad more people didn't vote for them. It's things like this that chase people away.
And when the Democratic Party is thumbing its nose at its own base, and the NY Times is carefully pretending its not happening, the problem is not liberal media. It is a right media and a right party (the Democrats) giving the fascist party everything they want, while giving the left a bad name.
4
Didn't Trump claim before the 2016 presidential election that it was "rigged" too? Can America get a Mulligan on it?
65
@rich perhaps it was rigged, for him to win it. I do wonder what would happen if it came out during an investigation that ballot boxes were stuffed and the GOP had gotten illegal immigrants to vote for them. Alas, that's just a dream.
5
A member of Trump's entourage at the rally in Indiana rather angrily placed his hand over a photographer's camera lens to prevent a protest against Trump from being covered....
Yet Trump complains about Google censoring him when it's not even factual. Truth is not the truth, Mr. President?
At the rally, AP photographer Evan Vucci posted a photo of the staffer: https://www.instagram.com/p/BnH8WvzHxMv/
10
Dictators control all the aspects of their nation. Democracies don't. Dictators are never openly critiqued. In Democracies all elected and appointed officials are scrutinized.
To be sure, a free-press will have a lot of non-substantiated material, but most legitimate news organizations take pride in verifiable reporting.
Social media is just a bunch of opinion. Yes, occasionally an individual shows something real and newsworthy but generally social media is just about expressing yourself and getting followers.
Personally, I don't participate in social media. I don't have the time or the interest. Unfortunately a lot of people keep the opinion that if they agree with an opinion that makes it true.
I think our nation can survive unless there is an armed insurrection - perhaps in November.
3
@George N. Wells. Knowing that a large portion of my FB friends don't read anything BUT FB, I repost articles, opinions, news stories, etc. from the NYT, WAPO, NPR on my FB page. If they read my reposts, it may very well be the only way they get the "real" news. I'm hoping that's the case because some of whom I considered to be "friends" are at best, strangers!
1
Algorithms—vs. AlGore rhythm, (whew!)—rule the world.
It's true. Whoever controls the searches controls the world.
Note: controls the searches—not the truth—because we're now in The DISinformation Age.
No one seems to have noticed the inflection point.
When did it happen? During the Clintons? Or was it Obama? (Trump is simply the catalyst.)
Determining The Truth in the DISinformation age is an exercise in circularity, if not futility.
Which makes Michelle's point…
Pointless.
2
Well, since the current Republican Party seems to be filled with radicals and not conservatives, why are they complaining about "liberal bias"?
A party that treats its own heroes, such as John McCain, et al, with such casual contempt doesn't really seem to have the right to complain about anyone else being anti-conservative. Donald Trump is sufficiently anti-conservative all by himself.
7
Let a right wing billionaire build his/her own Google-like search engine. Call it Wiggle and have the algorithm display only "feel good" GOP stuff, like Trump rallies etc.
Just don't force the rest of us to use it.
10
@Eduardo. trump is no billionaire as his tax returns will reflect should we EVER get to see them!
@Eduardo Perhaps a simpler approach would be for Trump to consult with the Chinese government on how they are working with Google to make sure Google searches in China screen out undesirable information.
Trump has a point, NYT...
Consider your coverage of a...
> Former Nashville mayor
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/nashville-mayor-affair.html
“...Nashville’s Mayor Has Stumbled. Who Will Cast the First Stone...
> Current Minnesota congressperson
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/us/keith-elllison-karen-monahan.html
“...A bad breakup is not the same thing as abuse...
> Prospective Florida governor
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/us/politics/andrew-gillum-florida-governor.html
“...There’s not a subpoena document out there that names me...
(one might ask – brother where art thou)
.....
Yet, you metaphorically publish interactive GPS-locator maps of where Trump was and what he was doing and with whom, as Melania was giving birth...
You all have raised selective omission and soulful circumspection to art form, in supporting your faves (NYC strangler not mentioned in months) – while raining hot Kilauean lava on your foes...
Let’s look at the NYT and – when it was all one – the phone company, as two bookends of communication businesses...
Imagine what the reaction would’ve been, if the phone company stopped putting through calls from Trump to Cohen – or started broadcasting calls from Omarosa to Trump on FM radio...
.....
So where does Google fit on this bookshelf – between these two...
a) Like any 800 pound gorilla – any place they want
b) Nowhere – for the Amazon Kindle version
c) Bing!! – search me
d) Could Lean In – both ends toward the middle
Google is also failing to direct me to Trump’s Better, Cheaper Health Care Program. I can’t find it. Will someone please post the link?
18
Tech employees are becoming "woke" to the liberal bias in the Silicon Valley. So, please. And btw, 'safe spaces' are for college students who take identity-politics too seriously. You mean "...a Fair Space."
@Teller
Fox News is a "safe space" for conservatives.
Maybe he is looking for a cyber space sanctuary city. According to my ESET antivirus security report - current world virus situation, google is a safe space:
Indonesia virus infection 15.2%
China virus infection 14.9%
Russia virus infection 9.6%
India virus infection 9.4%
Mexico virus infection 6.7%
Canada virus infection 5.2%
Australia virus infection 3.6%
United States virus infection 3.5%
New Zealand virus infection 3.3%
Denmark virus infection 2.8%
1
For years, the right wing excoriated the mainstream media for "liberal bias" because it aspired to journalistic objectivity rather than expressing right-wing biases. When it formed a biased news medium of its own, it shamelessly used the lie "fair and balanced" to promote it.
Now they turn to search engines, which are based purely on algorithms and not specific content, and claim that they, too, are biased. Enough! The right wing has been demanding "safe spaces" for decades, yet they call liberals and centrists "snowflakes." Maybe their positions don't rise to the top because they remain minority positions in the reality-based world. Let them start a biased search engine called Schnoogle or something if they want to protect themselves from ideological contamination.
Giuliani notwithstanding, truth is still truth for most of us.
10
Bingo! The Trumpsters want a search engine that zeros in on the Fox News-Breithbart-Infowars-Pravda...and the Bible. They’re just too lazy to build their own because there’s no money in it.
8
An article starting with the words "Trump whines.." is safely ignored - by me.
But I am sure there are plenty of others who love your sort of language. There will be no shortage of readers.
@Ludwig. "trump whines" along with his base.
1
It's "funny" how conservatives abhor government interfering with private commerce, except when it doesn't favor them. IF they don't like the way the Google search algorithm behaves, let them build a better one. Then the marketplace will decide
11
@odschneider Conservatives also support freedom of religion which in their case means being able to enforce their own religious beliefs on others.
2
If the toxic narcissist in the WH is all hot and bothered by the stories about him in the press and on social media platforms, then perhaps he and his despicable cronies and lackeys should change their god awful behavior and do something halfway decent for a change. Aw shucks....I forgot how impossible it would be for this wretched cabal of con artists and grifters who are using their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the middle class and the poor.
13
Free speech makes it legal to dispense fantasy, It is legal to lie all day long unless you affect another's life by lying about them, slander. All the ad hominem attacks and slurs that are lies are essentially slander. Trump is king of that.
Fact based thinkers who care about verifying what is real are not taken in by all the liars and hustlers on radio, in print, on TV, and in congress and state government. But the fact that FOX news is so widely watched shows how vast the number of people who believe fantasy there are.
Trump is an example of how one can be successful through fantasy, a false image which hides the reality of the person from those who are unable to discern fact from fiction.
Michelle Goldberg is a national treasure. Why would the GOP repeal the Fairness Doctrine in 1987? What's bad about some mild check on utter drivel passed off as "a valid opinion"? It was after the repeal that Limbaugh became able to sell his distortions and hate.
The right wanted to be able to spew malicious fantasy more easily, that's why they did it. Michelle points out the tech attack is just the same old right wing assault on truth. They are so power mad and infantile, they cannot bear any evidence based truth that reveals their moral cesspool approach to life.
So many people unable to perceive the contempt these grifters show for their marks. You think Trump respects a chump who is fine with him shooting another person? He's laughing at his whole base for buying his con.
5
Russian takeover is fine because it was pro-Trump but any other reporting not so much. This guy has left paranoia in the dust and landed in a new category altogether.
The walls are closing in and catching more and more of his enablers. That must be really scary to him, knowing they used to be friends. Except that he treats his friends with the same disregard as most of us treat our enemies. Why wouldn't they turn on him when faced with jail while he goes free?
This nightmare will end and his supporters will go back to complaining about their personal injustices, again ignoring facts.
3
I say bring back the Fairness Doctrine. That’s where all this trouble started.
Perhaps it’s too late. In the Internet Age, ideas of fairness seem quaint and old fashioned.
4
The Fairness Doctrine was intended to provide equal time for organized political parties on the then scarce FCC air time. Hardly relivant to the internet where almost everyone has access to social media.
2
You'd think the man had sent bloody columns of tanks down to Google's offices by the tone of this. He just blathered on twitter, please god get a grip and step down off that stratospherically high horse.
You cant keep the dial at 11 when nothing happens then wonder why no one cares when actual crises happen. Get some perspective.
1
@Mark F - Easy for you to say. You live in Canada!
1
Facts have a liberal bias. It's no Google's fault that Herr Twitler, is bad news!
4
OK, Mr. Trump; Get on Google and type in 'fox news trump' and hit enter.
You will get 814,000,000 hits, all favorable!
(huge laugh emoji here)
5
Seems the backstage censors are being bullied again--making Trump's point a fact not conjecture. So one more time for NYT free speech:
No question the deep politics of the Larry and Sergey high-tech gulag is comfortably cultural Marxist.
Add to that it's located in Lenin's Bay Area and the worker bees are coming from university Maoist reeducation camps and, no surprise--bias is decidedly, as Zuckerberg pointed out in his testimony before Congress, hard left.
With a Sovietized mass-media at its back, 2020 should be a "snap" for the DNC Politburo--save for the constitution, e.g., 2016.
2
For Gun's sake, Al, if you mean they're Commies, then just come out and say it. Don't pussyfoot around. Your Trump wouldn't.
2
@Lorem Ipsum
"Commies" argot belongs to the Stalinist era--these guys are from post-Modern university Maoist reeducation camps with Marcuse at UCSD being the genesis, at least for California's UC system.
1
The media chart comes from Sharyll Attkisson 's website. She used her own biases and lists three sources.
1. The Pew Center of Journalism. I haven't tracked the artice.
2. Alex Jones Info War site.
3. Media Blast Fact Check. I've never heard of this group.
Anyone who uses info wars to help create a chart on media bias has lost any credibility for the chart on bias. That Attkisson felt that she could list this organization on her web page shows that she doesn't care about displaying her bias.
I know Attkisson for her anti-vaxxer screeds while a CBS reporter. For her, truth was just a tool, not an end.
Get this, on the top of her website, one of the categories is Benghazi.
Disgusting. And oh yeah, her main gig these days is working for Sinclair Broadcasting.
7
Do you actually know what an “algorithm” is?
1
Pretty troll-ee headline!
That's fair, after all Trump trolls both the NYT and anyone critical of him on a daily basis.
Let's turn it up just a little:
"Our snowflake-in-chief thinks Google isn't a safe space"
@Rich Huff Why is Google supposed to be a safe space? It's a shortcut for finding information, everything from phone numbers to articles to how to find products. I typed in turquoise dress with yellow flowers and found what I was looking for. It's not about safety, it's about having the world at your fingertips. He's such an idiot.
5
Google owns Youtube. Youtube has put dozens of 5-minute educational videos from Dennis (HAPPINESS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM; THE NINE QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK ABOUT JUDAISM) Prager's Prager University on its "restricted" list, including such allegedly harmful titles as:
* "Is there Life After Death?"
* "Is Fascism Right or Left?"
* "Is the Death Penalty Ever Moral?"
Pointing this out isn't whining. It is a call for fundamental fairness on the part of the Big 5 information companies.
2
Lacks context, as the NYT likes to say. These are age restrictions not prohibitions. The suit against youtube was dismissed earlier this year.
Irrelevant argument anyway. All publishers select what to print or publish.
It's a free country. Don't like YouTube's policies? Find a different free publisher. And please, cry on someone else's shoulder.
So let me see if I’m getting this. Any article that is critical of Donald Trump is “fake.” Fake news. Meaning that there are hundreds of journalists around the globe who secretly conspire to write similar articles or similar columns pointing out Trump’s lies and missteps. How do they link up, do you think, to carry out these evil intentions? Some kind of world-wide conference call? It’s amazing to me that Trump’s base loudly cheers him on when he targets the media. Do they ever stop to think that journalists are hired and paid to report the actual NEWS. That they wouldn’t hold onto their jobs long if they were writing untruths or making up sources?
The actual enemy of the people are Trump and his minions. They will go to any length to control the narrative, so that it’s “nice” and not “nasty.” “Truth” can be stuffed into a safe or tamped down with payoffs. That Trump convinced enough people that he would apply himself and do right by our country and its citizens? That’s what’s fake.
4
I disagree as it is your responsibility to choose what you want to read and what you don't. Your brain has a filter and the choice is yours as to what you decide to read and what you don't.
Cyber space is no different to roaming the world physically - you need to protect yourself with insurance such as antivirus and firewalls etc and know what areas to stay away from and what areas are dangerous. A wise person is known by the company they keep out of. In cyber space your security allows in safe websites and blocks others so it's no different to life in the real world. Web pages are designed by individuals and google has nothing to do with that. USA, NZ, Australia get the least virus infections and places like China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia etc get the most virus infections according to ESET stats so google is a safe place for the Western world.
2
Trump is a neophyte autocrat-dictator. In any event, silencing conservative outlets is in everyone’s best interests. They are the troublesome minority keeping the water muddy.
1
If Trump supporters only want to read pro Trump propaganda on the internet, the obvious solution is to download the publications they want to read, and pay the subscription fees.
5
I'm still searching for a "safe space" from the daily PTSD of Persistent Trump Stress Disorder.
7
". . . so that almost all stories & news is BAD"
With Trump, almost all grammar is bad.
And if you do vile, outrageous stuff, what kinds of stories do you expect?
6
Can't wait for the day when typing "criminal Trump" at Google elicits thousands and thousands of webpages.
9
@Ken We need a pithier name. Like Watergate, instant recognition. So many failures to choose from. Criminal Trump too obvious.
2
@Kathy
Perhaps someday the Twitter symbol will just have to turn itself red to represent the right wing properly, after all, with it's position, it is not showing a left wing...
His 'fact's seem to be his 'Knowings', I think he has that spelled wrong, again, it in being No Wings, and since his Administration is having trouble staying in the air, staying aloft only by ground effect, the people working for him keep bailing out of the burning airplane of Trump, not caring if their parachute is golden or not, they are getting away from the crash scene, Far Away, and buying futures in Popcorn, Paper and Printing ink.
They may be onto something
I want to read all about Trump’s MAGA Infrastructure Program fixing the bridges, filling the pot holes, revolutionizing the transport system, and bringing the US up to World’s Best Standard like in Japan and Germany. I keep googling and I can’t find the information anywhere. I blame Google. That 3 hour bus trip to work for long suffering NY commuters must be fake news. However, when I went from Tokyo to the US, it felt like I was traveling from the future to the past. BART, Metrorail, MTA...were all real shockers. It was so confusing.
8
It's nothing to do with Google and more to do with the agendas of news media and their right or lack of rights for people to have access to free speech. Lots of newspaper articles aren't biased and reflect a writers opinions. Depends on whom is putting up web pages and how good their website developer is and whether the articles appear at the top of the list for your search engine. Also, your computer security won't let you look at dodgy websites. I have ESET and they block fake websites that could give me a virus or whatever. It pays to have https at the start of your web page as you can check that it is a genuine page by hoovering your pointer over the lock to see if the page is a fake website or a real genuine website and is what it says it is.
1
Our cowardly bully in chief wants to be godkingemperor. His rules for life, "evil, be thou my good" and "better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven" are not good for children and other living things. His exploitation of the bought and paid for Republican party and its cheats on the way to minority rule are neither constitutional nor do they represent the majority of his "subjects": we, the people.
Republican PC snowflakes can't get their heads around the facts and the truth. Sadly, the damage they are doing in their headlong way to full exploitation and autocracy is heading towards the irreparable.
Once upon a time, corporations worked not for only their short-term profit focused shareholders, but with their customers and employees. Now they just require fast profits; all too often destroying value.
"You can't have a stable democracy that has not seen any increase in wages for the vast majority of working people for over 30 years, while there's a tremendous increase in compesnation and earnings for a small percentage ... That is destructive of democracy." (Martin Lipton)
The party that chooses to give no voice to most of us because they've manipulated the system to take over the executive, legislative, and legal branches of government should not be demanding our silence.
We need our voice, and if Google notices that we exist, it means Trump has not yet destroyed our democracy. He may, however, have pushed us over the edge to destroying our planet. That's enough!
5
Trump is absolutely correct to be concerned about how platforms such as google, facebook and twitter are patrolling their content, and it would not surprise me in the least if they were using their positions of power to improperly influence people to think more like the people who run the foregoing entities. Even though these are not governments, the concerns about impeding free exchange of ideas are serious.
Following the election, we suddenly became extremely paranoid about the ability of foreign entities, particularly Russia, to use our tech platforms to spread misinformation. Were they doing so? Of course. But they were merely one set of entities out of literally billions trying to influence people (improperly and otherwise), and, frankly it didn't amount to a hill of beans given the nonstop flow of nonsense people are exposed to these days.
The response was to bring folks like Zuckerberg into DC to discuss what he was going to do about the spread of misinformation. It's an understandable response, but it's the wrong one. The risk of empowering (or requiring) these tech CEOs to tell us what's true, what's false and what's newsworthy is vastly more substantial than any risk posed by Russia. These tech platforms are potentially more powerful than any government. They know what everyone walking around on planet earth is thinking about and doing, and they have the ability to vastly influence these things. The last thing we need to be doing is giving these folks more power.
15
@Bill Can't you at least point to a teensy weensy bit of evidence for your beliefs?
3
@Bill - Their power is derived directly from their enormous number of users and the time those users spend on the platform. Their algorithms are designed to maximize traffic and revenue from advertising dollars. As sites like Twitter and Reddit have learned, policing objectionable or violent user content is nearly impossible.
1
@Bill
If twitter were patrolling their content, only about 10% of Donald Trump's tweets would pass muster.
Hey, there's an idea! How about that for a test on what should be allowed. Trump can be the canary. If over 10% OR under 10% of Trump's tweets get published, then corrective action is warranted!
1
Trump,and his supporters,is more concerned about the reporting of his behavior than the behavior itself. You reap what you sow.
5
Reality isn't a safe space.
5
Since trump is so wealthy and he bragged to his fellow billionaires at Mar a Lago that he made them richer, why don’t they create search engines that favor his point of view?
Same thing with newspapers, movie studios, all the other cultural institutions he constantly whines about.
3
I used Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google to search "Trump News". Not surprisingly, they all returned pretty much the same hits, mostly bad news about the Trump administration.
Is it possible that there just isn't a lot of good news?
182
@Bruce Meyers
Not according to news outlets where results seem not to matter.
Saw a lot of Black leaders at Aretha Franklin’s funeral. The rank and file are at work, thanks to the racist POTUS.
@Bruce Meyers
I can’t find it now, but there was a user comment to a WaPo article about this subject that summed it up nicely: “I typed ‘Charles Manson’ in my search and it wasn’t until page 28 that I found something positive...”
2
@Bruce Meyers
I googled "Venezuela news" and it was all bad. I guess that proves an anti-left wing bias.
2
Aha, when Apple, Google and other tech companies bend to China, they are asking to be forced to bend anywhere.
1
Conservatives need to worry a lot less about imaginary conspiracies to suppress their viewpoints, and a lot more about evidence-based "fact checking" of their viewpoints.
5
@Tom B Truer words were never spoken.
1
I love reading all these comments how Trump supporters are all idiots, or dumb, or uneducated, or racist or whatever ism you need to scream out.
Then you wonder why people vote for Trump. You scream and shot about Trump so much all the other politicians get less than 5% coverage and that's putting them all together.
Thing is Trump came with an agenda and he is full filling that agenda mostly. He will appoint more justices to the Federal courts possible than any other POTUS. If he wins again in 2020 then he might get another 2 SCOTUS picks.
He has deregulated an over regulated country. People don't care if Trump had an affair before his time in office they care about having jobs and an income. Trumps support among the Asians POC and Hispanics has has risen to the point the Dems may are losing so many people they had taken for granted as voters.
2
@Mr Chang Shih An, No - I don't think that ALL Trump supporters are dumb.
@Mr Chang Shih An If all of that is true, why is he constantly complaining? Why not just take the win and shut up? He behaves like a petulant 2-yr-old. That turns off a lot of people that might otherwise agree with you. And since when is putting 2-yr-olds in cages good policy?
5
@Mr Chang Shih An - Statistics do not support your statement that Asians, POC and Hispanics have increased to support republicans. Let's see in November just how democratically those tribes vote.
Trump whines about everything, Tech shouldn't feel alone. He whines about the media, about minorities, federal pay scales, Alec Baldwin, Robert Mueller, Jeff Sessions, the DOJ, China, Canada, regulations, empty chairs at his rallies, Hillary and Barack, how criminal suspects are treated, CNN, NBC, flag height and witnesses who decide to tell the truth.
He promised us that we would get "so bored with all the winning when he became president." Clearly he didn't read the teleprompter. It isn't the winning we are getting tired of...it is the whining.
12
A number of nouns come to mind when I think of everything said in this opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg. One is "circus"; another is "quagmire ", but "swamp" will do in a pinch even if it is overused. I know there are people who hang on Rush Limbaugh's every word (my own brother is one such person), but having listened to him myself, I can say he has a good radio voice, but is otherwise incoherent and contradictory.
I thought Trumps problems with Google came about because in true Donald J Trump fashion he Googled himself and got a lot of negative search results. This, of course, made him very unhappy and angry. He and his allies have been wanting to go after tech giants for that plus other subjective reasons. Though I should think they'd thank Facebook for selling 87 million user's information to Cambridge Analytica would haved pleased our aging President. This is what I mean by a "circus". It's not as if the big tech companies are entirely blameless, but they aren't part of any plot, leftist, rightest, socialist, only capitalist. Because in the end it always comes down to money. Who has it and who doesn't, and how to get more of it.
3
According to a NYT article that ran two days ago, at least 100 engineers at FaceBook agree with Trump.
2
I googled "Orange Clown" and got references to trump. Biased? I don't think so, that's one of the things people look under when looking for trump. If he doesn't like, then he should stop being an orange clown.
8
@buck cameron Thanks, good to start the day with a smile.
1
@buck Cameron - Good one.
As the president’s lawyer has asserted “truth isn’t truth,” a view that our president shares. The only truth is his truth, and at least in his mind, he’s doing a great job and media coverage should reflect this “fact.”
Whether Google search is biased can be debated, but I suspect its results are much closer to reality than what our president would like to impose on Googles readers. What the president is suggesting is a thinly veiled attack on the First Amendement. The irony is that his preferred news source - Fox - is hardly even handed in its coverage of issues involving President Trump.
Fox can, of course, espouse whatever point of view it likes, but then, so can CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc. If the president does not like the collective coverage he receives, his best option would be to re-examine and moderate his behavior, but the chances of this happening seem unlikely.
What we all need to remember is that the right of free speech is perhaps the most important freedom of our democracy. If we stand idly by while this right is taken away from some, we face the certainty that it will eventually be taken away from all of us.
82
Great point, free speech cannot defend itself, that is up those who believe in it.@Scott B
It would be nice if Ms. Goldberg could counter the argument about left-wing bias in the media by pointing to the pages of her own newspaper and naming the journalists and columnists employed by the NY Times whose articles are supportive of Republicans and/or President Trump.
It would be nice.
4
@Maurice Gatien
Not supporting Trump is not evidence of "left wing bias."
When Trump stops doing things such as bragging about sexually assaulting women. attacking POWs and Gold Star families, mocking disable reporters, getting caught on tape committing a felony by making illegal payments to porn stars, telling lies by the thousands, and acting like a petulant child, he can expect better coverage.
Hillary Clinton got negative press for decades, which is why she entered the campaign with such high negatives in polling data. Al Gore was portrayed as an insufferable know-it-all while George W. Bush was portrayed as a likeable guy you'd want to have a beer with.
If the media were out to get Trump as he claims, when that Access Hollywood video came out it would have been 24/7 relentless saturation coverage until Trump either dropped out or lost, just like they did with Anthony Weiner. His alleged victims would have all become household names. Pundits would have repeatedly asked American voters how they would react if it were their wife or daughter Trump assaulted. Instead they quickly dropped the story and moved on to obsessing about Clinton's emails.
trending...
Snowflake Melts Down!
1
This is not a battle between liberals and conservatives. This is a battle of truth vs. ugly violent lies.
Donald Trump launched his complaints about social media screening at the behest of liar and violence-exhorter Alex Jones - the man who terrorizes families of Newtown's murdered children and school staff. So not only does the president call Nazis fine people and publicly worship murderous dictators - he shamelessly shills for homegrown terrorists.
As for the congressmen supporting Trump and Jones - the shame is all yours.
8
Factual reports about Trumps corruption and abuse of power make him look bad! We need more right-wing lies and fact-free conspiracy theories in the media so he will look “good”! NY Times, Alex Jones - separate but equal!
1
Conservatives want to gerrymander the news just like they have gerrymandered the vote. Google searches are mathematical. They show what people are writing about. If the majority of people find Trump’s behavior disgusting, destructive and dangerous, that is deemed “unfair” to conservative demagogues. They want Google searches to find the white-supremacist “Daily Stormer” and the lunatic conspiracy theories of Alex Jones as easily as this article in the NYT - regardless of the fact that far more people want to read the objective reporting here. That’s gerrymandering pure and simple. When the thousands who like to read racist hatred are given an equal places among the reasonable discourse of millions, then we will have gerrymandered our minds as thoroughly as some states have rendered majority Democrats to a minority vote. November 6th - vote!!
9
Trump whines about virtually everything. Trump is a sad pathetic old man who has the maturity of a three year old.
10
@susan
We can only wish he had the maturity of a three year old... it would be an astonishing improvement. I just wish he'd get surgery to correct his prolapsed lips when he rants.
6
What an uneducated, liar as a President !
By the way...where is "gemli" these days, missing his valuable comments with his top readers pick ?
5
The GOP is the most macho thin-skinned weaklings ever.
A fire is a fire. If you don't like being called out for being a fire, don't light the match.
5
@George But if you light the match and then complain about the fire you get double the exposure. Just like all arsonists, they love the flames.
1
"They’re running the same playbook on tech that they ran, for decades, on media, caterwauling about bias so that defensive editors would treat them with kid gloves."
I noticed during the Obama Administration if the President came out in the morning with news that the economy was improving, or that millions more Americans were getting health insurance, or anything that shed a positive light on America later that day McConnell would find a microphone and say exactly the opposite. And the media would report those two as opinions instead of showing that Obama was right and McConnell was just passing gas.
Perhaps had editors done their jobs a little more factually, instead of trying to curry favor with republicans, we might not have the garbage fire we currently have in the White House.
Maybe publishers, editors and reporters are realizing, once again, that in a fascist state news people are generally out of work. And in prison. Or worse.
How about someone inventing an algorithm that tracks what these right wing nuts are saying and when they keep quoting Hitler a little mustache appears on their faces. Would that give them the attention they crave? I wonder.
4
Boo hoo, hoo, hoo. Little lyin Donny Tweeter can say and do anything, including repeating and tweeting demonstrably false racist propaganda. But like all bullies can’t stand any push back.
Yet in the case of google, their aggregate is putting up the amalgam of legitimate news organizations coverage. This in contrast to Trump’s personal propaganda network aka Fox. As well as the myriad of right wing bloviators like Rush Lie-baugh, Alex Jones’ for fake conspiracies, et al. Of course the spineless republicans in CONgress play along to their comb overed orange tinted pied piper’s tune.
Lying Donny has told more than 4,250 documented and confirmed LIES since his “rigged election”.
Just sayin. Sad.
5
Everywhere he looks, Our Emasculated President sees rigged witches - one of whom presumably stole his manhood. Pray for him.
1
@Lorem Ipsum
pray for his removal from office is more like it.
3
@Lorem Ipsum Thoughts and prayers...
Trumpet, here's some advice for you: 1) If a website or a search engine is not a "safe space," don't use it, 2) If people contradict and insult you with retorts when you tweet, stop tweeting, 3) If you worked and earned your pay as prezzz i dunce, Trumpet, you'd have no time to be concerned about trivial matters, 4) Your position requires that your criticism of entities be focused on protections for the general public, not for yourself only.
The Trumpet is such a megalomanic fool! O Lord, for how much longer must we endure?
4
Trump's whining about Google search results demonstrates (again) how incredibly stupid he is. Relevant content, combined with smart SEO practices, are what deliver search results. Number of hits also plays a role (the "popularity factor") in search results. When an article (fact-based, relevant) on AP, CNN or NYT sites is clicked on a million times vs 60k for an InfoWars article, those AP/CNN/NYT articles rise to the top. It's not rocket science (although to folks like me who specialize in SEO, it often feels like it!). The Twidiot-in-chief is a no-nothing!
1
Trumps just wants what Manjoo wants in his column today. (No comments section for that piece?) They both want Google results to be context aware and bent to reflect a particular preferred point of view in hopes of driving culture in that direction. I prefer results that reflect reality so that we can know what parts of reality we would like to work on.
44
I read news reports about social media activity which saves the time and tedium of actually using it. Those reports only confirm my initial impression from a 3-day trial with Facebook per my wife's request. She and I concluded it was nothing more than worthless gossip and graffiti and promptly cancelled it.
However, the prez has added a revelatory dimension to the junk as the news media reports on his regular morning efforts to post blowout patches on his royal ego. He and his puppies are obviously very indignant that the U.S. Constitution wiped out the Divine Right of Kings and they want it fixed!
1
Because labeling opposition "whining" is *such* an effective means of rebuttal.
1
Well after reading the article and the posts by fellow readers it becomes clear that Donald J Trump our president is completely delusional when he says that the main stream media is against him and its all rigged . Non-Sense .
There is an old saying that ignorance is bliss, however, Trump has turned that upside down as well. In the era of Donald J. Trump ignorance is a weapon against a civilized society.
5
If trump can't find anything positive about himself on Google, he needs to realize he doesn't do anything that has a positive result. If he is looking for adoration it doesn't exist. Maybe he needs to rephrase his searches or extend them. Other sites that are being suspended or banned are because they are not news worthy but are based on lies & made up conspiracies. If they could produce proof of what they say it would be different. I could start a conspiracy theory saying trump is really the son of a prostitute & use his line of the evidence is just pouring in but never produce it. Who would believe that theory? National Enquirer might pay me to shut me up but it shouldn't be available in a Google search without proof. You can't find stuff that's not there.
1
Google image search for "American Veterinarian". Look at the top 20 results. According to the American Veterinarian Assoc. 93.2% of vets are white, Asians are the largest minority employed in that field at 2.45%, and blacks comprise 1.6% of all vets. Now look at the racial makeup of the vet images Google pulls up first. I despise Trump and his language towards the media is inflammatory and reckless. But unfortunately it is mostly true.
@Tara Pines
I agree. When it comes time to illustrate a story about steelworkers, the Times will pick a female steelworker, notwithstanding that they constitute maybe 2% of that occupation.
And, when it comes time to illustrate a criminal with a Zorro mask on his face, it is *always* a white male, not a white female and not a-gasp!-person of color. Even though large parts of cities like Chicago and Baltimore are suffused with black criminals and the black male percentage of violent crimes committed is far out of proportion to their representation in the overall population.
These outlets are trying to get us to agree to a certain world-view, not principally to provide facts.
Don’t fret about MAGA. The nation could move the needle in a positive direction by losing the self-flagellation. And that starts with the media.
Just another false equivalence argument by the right, when conservatives are confronted with the facts that so often are not on their side they either just outright lie like their god Trump or scream bias.
I can’t see this ending well for them or the rest of society, facts and reality have a nasty habit of biting you in the behind in the end!
2
Trump attacking the technology companies is just poof that the investigations are getting to him. He's like an injured, cornered animal striking out.
And it's going to get worse when his followers flip on him.
85
Hey. whatever happened to Conservapedia.com? It was a really fair & balanced site, fighting against the horrible liberal bias of Wikipedia. For example, on Conservapedia, liberalism was defined as a mental disease.
An old man, his hair dyed orange, has reportedly been seen on the White House lawn shaking his cane toward the sky and yelling at God. In truth it wasn't a cane he was shaking, but his cellphone. And God wasn't the subject of his ire but a Mark Zuckerberg and some guy named Mr Google. Apparently, with God in his pocket, the old man wants to control the closest thing down here on our troubled Earth, those search engines mimicking the Wizard of Oz.
1
Drip,drip, drip. Little by little. Control the people. Control the press. Now, control the internet. This sort of thinking happened in, oh let me think, about 1939 someplace in Europe???
2
These tech companies should all tell these Republican congressmen to go fly a kite.
I’m sick of this working the refs. A bunch of whiney babies on the Right. That’s why they created Fox News.
There are hundreds of right wing radio and news programs across the country. That’s not enough for them?!
The reason all the news on Trump is bad is because Trump constantly does bad things. The news is only good when Fox and InfoWars make it up. Trump is the whiniest victim of them all.
Or is it that these people don’t know the difference between an opinion piece and a news story?
5
Thanks to the constant act of lying everyday on every topic, whatever Trump says is so much slop for the pigs. He lost any sense of integrity long, long ago. He offers nothing for the American people other than a reminder of how corrupt our system and state of politics have become in this country.
Vote in November like your life depends on it, because it does! And, especially for the lives of your children and grandchildren.
3
Go ahead, blame “The Algorithm.”
It does vaguely sound like a kind of ‘other’.
2
Here'a great irony for Trump and his cult members, including the Republican congress: in their zeal to strike down net neutrality, and thereby negating any possibility that giant search providers like Google be treated as public utilities, Trump also negated the very tool that could be used to implement new federal regulations on these companies and search results.
But since the Republicans chose the "rights" of corporations over the people, everyone is currently stuck with the tech overlords being able to decide what will be shown when.
The fact is, Google could quite legally decide to demote all content they deemed as supporting Trump to the bottom of search results, and there's nothing to stop that. Moreover, AT&T could decide to selectively throttle the bandwidth to conservative sites, which is now 100% legal.
Way to shoot yourself in the foot Republican snowflakes! Maybe you'll be smarter next time...
4
Type "American Inventors" into Google and then come back and tell me that Google's search results aren't biased.
@Thinker
You have my attention now.
Plain and simple, Trump is creating a cult of personality the likes of which were embraced by Mao, Stalin, Castro and Chavez. All of those cult leaders wanting to silence any view not in line with cult leader.
The irony, the First Amendment prohibits censorship by the Government. Capitalism permits private entities choosing what they want to publish which is why Fox News is permitted to broadcast rubbish.
Thank goodness for Google and the free press. Armed with competing ideas, we can reject this cult leader.
1
Mr. Trump is full of prunes.
Why do right-wing conspiracy theorists care about Google, Bing or any other search engines? Just watch Fox News and visit InfoWars for the unproved echo chamber you want and stop trying to block the rest of us who are looking for verifiable facts. You have your alternate world already. Stay out of ours please!
7
Trump could get more positive “press”. All he has to do is earn it, (which is highly unlikely).
15
@michael h
I watched MSNBC for two hours today...the media is in a full-blown and pathetic obsession. It is no longer anything approaching reportage or close to objective.
It has become weird.
@Stuart - When the "leader of the free world" is working to destroy the "free world" (undermining allies while cozying up with dictators being just one data point) coverage is warranted. Add in the high probability the guy in the WH is a felon (conspiracy, tax fraud, money laundering, treason...), news programming has a lot to report on!
BTW - I tuned in to MSNBC a couple of times today and the main story was McCain's memorial
1
The only news outlet Mr. Trump favors is FoxNews, which has become the official mouthpiece of the Republican party, sort of like Pravda in the old Soviet Union.
It's amazing how the right excoriates virtually every news provider in the free world, save for Fox and a bevy of AM radio stations that toe the party line.
Mr. Trump is fond of using the word 'disgrace' in his tweets to describe everything and everyone who disagrees with him. This attempt to discredit all sources of news is a disgrace, a disgrace to our democratic principles.
13
@T Norris
The other news outlets are struggling.
That is sad, but they brought this on themselves by first choosing sides, enabling an organization like Fox to rise.
Now it’s just business. Adapt.
Poetic justice would have Tom Steyer or some other Trump foe with deep pockets start campaigning a la Trump style rallies.
Complete with all Trumpist invectives we've come to know so well. Crowds chanting "Lock him up! Lock him up!" to calling him and his cohorts "Enemy of the people!" and tell the world that many, many people say "Trump cheats at golf!".
Rallies that would be open only to supporters who are rabidly anti-Trump. Make them raucous enough they are deemed spectacles so the press covers them, giving them free advertising.
Let the anti-Trump whine and complain and make unbelievable accusations that goad the rally crowds to fever pitch that might possibly meet or exceed the Trump rallies like we saw last night in Indiana.
Why should Trump be the only circus that gets the limelight?
4
@medianone
Steyer = joke
@Stuart
Didn't say the anti-Trump candidate had to be a serious candidate. Trump is a joke who got elected with a little help from his Russian friends.
Just pointing out that someone should put on a circus just like Trump so people can see just how ridiculous Trump really is.
1
Apparently the GOP and maybe Trump are concerned that there may be a blue wave in November. Their total control of Congress would be gone and maybe for the last time.
So while they have the ball, I believe that the old white men in America are giving it all they've got to take control of as many government institutions and industries as they can before they start their steady decline into minority.
The aggressive growth of Sinclair Television and now attempts to control the internet are all part of the huge propaganda push of these old white men. The GOP and Trump can not handle the truth. They have to keep their base ignorant of facts and fearful and hateful. It's one of the ways they get people to vote for the GOP despite their real interests.
88
@Elizabeth Here we go again with the fantasy that your political foe will "die out". "Old White Men" are not going anywhere. They are imparting their "Old White Ways" on the next generations and it is working. Seems to me the only Democratic platform I can see is : "we will outlive them" with zero self awareness that they are in reality a shrinking regional party. It is especially ironic calling anyone old when one assesses the Democrats in leadership positions. Talk about "old and white"....
Anybody remember when conservatives used to pretend to revere the "free market," unencumbered with government interference or regulation? That to do otherwise would be to encourage tyranny? Goodbye to all that. Hello, Big Government. I certainly don't see that so-called libertarian conservative Rand Paul speaking out against these attacks on Big Tech by the Trump administration. What I do see is Rand Paul making odd trips to Moscow. Now why could that be?
7
How ironic that the King of Twitter and avid user of Instagram would attack other social media platforms, ones that you can be assured he does not use. There isn't even a computer on his desk, making it doubtful that he has Googled anyone or anything. But you can be assured that a staff person Googles the Donald every hour - to see if he is at the top of the search engine and what the point of view is.
My 5 year old has computer skills far superior to those of the least tech-savvy person on earth - the president. Tell him to go back to the typewriter and the encyclopedia - the rest of us have moved on.
5
If Google and the other major platforms give in to this cynical manipulation then it will be a further nail in the coffin of democracy for our country. It is bad enough that the lies promulgated daily on Fox "News" have somehow gotten firmly established in the infosphere over the last 25 years — at least up until now the populace has had unbiased access to truthful news sources, if they want it. If we institutionalize misinformation and propaganda across the board, we are sunk as a country. When you close your eyes to reality and live in a dream world, you bump into things and break them and hurt yourself. As a strategy to navigate in the real world it's a recipe for disaster.
5
Isn't it amazing that it's the first time that Trump has Googled himself?
The reason is because he does not know how to use a computer - not even to send emails. Have you ever seen mention of emails since he's been *president? Nope! He only uses Twitter.
The fact that Trump has never bothered to learn today's most commonly used technology speaks loads about his backwards look on life in general.
I wish more media would report on his computer illiteracy as a sidebar to the "rigged" Google travesty.
6
@Elaine O'Brien - Perhaps Trump's slogan should be "Make America the Way It Used to Be - in 1950."
I completely understand what Trump is complaining about. I googled the following:
> The earth is not flat
> The moon is not made of green cheese
> The moon landing was not faked
> Elvis is not alive
> Paul is not dead
> A list of true statements made by Donald Trump
The first 5 searches returned thousands and thousands of results. The last search returned a 404 error.
10
Diamond and Silk received a notice in error from Facebook; this "morphed into claims that Facebook had deliberately engineered a decline in their traffic, even though it had not, in fact, declined." Precisely the sort of fake news that the right wants to spread - and they think they're entitled to help from Google?
There's an excellent book out, entitled "Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics," that's essential reading for anybody interested in the phenomenon of the right-wing media bubble. The New Yorker has a good review, and the NYT ought to have a look at it as well.
3
Maybe Trump should keep his mouth shut and thumbs idle for a week and see if this bad coverage stops? Goolgle, twitter and Facebook are private companies. Congress has no authority over them at all . I don’t expect Scalise or Hatch to recognize this or,magically realize they are powerless to do much of anything about it except express indignation over the fact that they can’t skew the dissemination of information in the direction they would like.
"whining" is not the correct description. Outrage would be more appropriate. Google is censoring conservative viewpoints, and the only reason you aren't outraged is because Google supports liberal policies and commentary. If Google squelched (censored) liberal views, we would hear NO END of it from liberal media. It would be a national CRISIS news story FOR MONTHS. Just remember that half of the USA is conservative so there WILL be consequences for Google's censorship. And then you will be the "whiner".
2
@Patrick McCord
Half of the population is not conservative, unless you are defining it the way it used to be defined, which is to say fiscally conservative and socially moderate. Today's conservatives are anything but fiscally constrained (U.S. under Rs is trillions in debt), and they are rabid about controlling people's personal lives, i.e., relationships (same-sex a no-no, interracial frowned upon), sexual orientation, religion, equal rights (unless you're white and hetero), family planning, geographic location (immigrants allowed in, or kept out), and the list goes on. In polls, today's conservatives are in the VAST minority. All this is to say that if "liberal" policies and commentary come up more often, it's because the majority in the U.S. believe in diversity, freedom of religion (i.e., don't impose yours on others), immigration/diversity, equal protection for ALL, etc. To force Google to promote the right disproportionately to the number of people who are actually on the right would be skewing content, that is, creating a false perception of reality, which the right calls fake news.
7
@Patrick McCord: What nonsense. When I search for political news, I get plenty of right-wing sites in the results. Google censors nothing except the most extreme pornography and violence. Trump and his minions want what every authoritarian regime wants: total control of information. You want "consequences" for reporting the truth? Well, at least you're honest.
3
Let's first destroy the press that can counter right-wing propaganda (of which Fox's talking head programs spew their fair share, in addition to its fairly biased 'news programs). Then the US will be completely free to fully embrace Trump's amazing and wonderful MAHA (Make America Hate Again) dream. What a dream to give our children and our children's children. Why did we wait so long to start trying to hate in earnest... And so wonderful that so many evangelists see fit to embrace Trump and his dream, too.
4
Nice analysis. Thanks.
If there's any tech platform that's become a problem, it would have to be twitter. Yank that out of his small hands as fast as you can.
4
What I find strange is that Trump isn't hammered much more by those within the military and government who KNOW that the Russia investigation isn't a "witch hunt" in the slightest, or that what Trump calls fake news is easily provable by facts.
Why let him say this with no powerful rejoinder? Trump's association with Russia is the biggest and most obvious security problem we have had in generations. Why isn't our Intelligence Community and Military constantly disputing the witch hunt claim every single time Trump tells this provable lie?
Why haven't these people and others of Government and leadership created a format on social media to incessantly and instantly hammer back at Trump and expose him for the sham he is? Why haven't they grabbed social media out from under this miscreant?
Trump plainly has Putin and Russian Intelligence working tirelessly for him. Why hasn't our Intelligence clearly and openly mounted a Psy-Op of equal power, but the truth to offset that? Why don't they just come right out and say that because Trump is lying so frequently and maliciously they have been forced to counter those lies with the simple facts of this deviant presidency?
All seem to say that this is a gigantic security threat to the both the American People and our Constitution, so why don't they act like it?
1
Dear Ms. Goldberg,
Your article is brilliant (as always)! Thank You! Please, write "something" on the take over by the the right-wing federalist court that with this travesty of administration we are enduring it actually sat Mr. Gorsuch at the Supreme Court and now ANOTHER one will be sitting soon, there is no doubt about it. These Supreme Court members, who defend the interests of the 0.001% dominates the country. These are the nefarious ones who will maintain the despicable twitter # 45 in power. So, my point again is, we have to uncover all these men-butlers of power sitting at the Supreme Court and made them everyday accountable for the daily decisions and deeds against us, the 99% citizens of this country.
3
Facebook has over 2 Billion active users. The most successful conservative media company, Fox, has 2.7 Million prime-time viewers. Do the math, Mr. Trump. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Snapchat et al are overwhelmingly started by progressive/liberal/libertarian visionaries who have no interest in skewing their business to please conservatives who have never been able to build comparable media networks. Fox News has been in business for over 20 years, and no Silicon Valley VC would even return a phone call from an entrepreneur with such a puny record. Caterwauling conservatives should ask themselves why that is.
5
@William L. Valenti
Please let us keep repeating ths mantra. The radical Fox right would have us all believe that they are a (hmmmm)"moral majority"
when in fact then become more the minority of the country day by day... and moral...well...with cheating residents (taxes marriage, kids ) how moral can they be...
Just remind ourselves..they are the minoriyty and the majority will prevail
2
I have no problem going after big tech. Google, Facebook, Twitter and all. They control an outsized influence on our society disproportionate to their nature. By all means, please attack.
The problem is Republican attacks are politically motivated. These same critics would never apply equal scrutiny in the defense of their opponents. So the whole sham is one big lie.
We are once again ignoring the legitimate issue in exchange for partisan one-upmanship. Republicans are taking the easy way out again. When was the last time anyone remembers Republicans taking the hard but correct action. I can't think of anything since George H.W. Bush increased taxes. McCain saving Obamacare doesn't count as a Republican effort.
2
It is true that the opaque (and proprietary) way in which these tech companies exercise control over their platforms invites criticism, but they are locked in an arms race with trolls, scammers, and more recently covert foreign propaganda operations. It is likely impossible to avoid the former without being overrun by the latter.
Moreover, the services are hardly monopolies. Anybody can make a website. Do it well enough and users will flock to yours instead. If people find negative content on Google, that's probably because the reality is negative.
2
Republican propaganda all intended to defend Donald Trump and his band of GOP mercenaries intent of serving the demands of their corporate and wealthy supporters. Trillions of dollars in tax cuts to be paid for by cutting social programs.
Now that we know what Republican rule means for the middle class and working poor - it is our responsibility to vote end their Congressional majorities November 6th, 1028. VOTE!
1
Clever rhetorical trick claiming Trump wants social media to be a "safe space" for the right wing. Not wanting to be banned is not wanting a safe space. The truth is that Google, Twitter, and Facebook are run by liberals and have tried to squelch right wing voices. Liberals used to care about protecting speech of those they disagreed with, but free speech isn't a liberal value anymore. Since when is Alex Jones (banned) a greater threat to us than anti-vaxxers (not banned)?
5
@Epistemology
People who said vaccinations are not helpful are ignoring the majority of scientific studies. Someone who says actors faked a mass murder is (stating as fact an untruth that damages a reputation) committing slander. It would be better, I think, if all libel and slander were removed from all social media. Alex Jones has committed several acts of slander. He doesn't say it's his opinion. He states easily provably untruths.
1
The majority of voters in 2016 didn't vote for Trump. I'm not surprised that google would lean toward the left. If they leaned to the right, and the things that the right buys, then their ad revenues will go down. In other words, Google is only chasing more money by leaning to the left.
That said, Google has something called a Customized Search Engine in which you can cause Google to search specific websites. Some features are free, and some cost money. I'm surprised that Russian hasn't set up a CSE that generates search results that target conservatives. Russia's hackers could even cash in on the Rabid Right.
"The chart puts Infowars, Alex Jones’s conspiracy website, closer to the center than Time magazine."
I could not just take Goldberg's word for it. No disrespect to her, but it is so crazy, that I was glad to see she provided a link to the chart in question. And of course, there it was, PRECISELY as she described. I would strongly recommend that no one take MY word for it either. Just follow the link and see for yourself. I don't care who made the chart, it's representations are absurd.
INFOWARS, you understand? Never mind how it's ranked as more politically balanced than Time Magazine. It's not even reasonably ranked among other CONSERVATIVE outlets. PJ Media places InfoWars at almost the same political balance as The Federalist and the National Review. I've strolled over to both those pages from time to time and they are nothing at all like InfoWars.
That's not where the ridiculousness ends. C-Span is placed dead center on the right/left line, fine. Why is Fox News placed less than an inch to the right of that same line? For context, CNN is placed at least 5 times that distance from the center line. I assume Politifact is where it is because it fact-checking statements and providing sourced explanations as to whether they are true or not is inherently liberal?
Who in their right mind would take PJ Media seriously having seen that?
4
I do not know who is primarily responsible for the kind of man Donald Trump developed into, but he is totally void of compassion, empathy, integrity, honor and decency. Those words have zero meaning to Trump.
2
When Donald Trump is re-inaugurated in January, 2021, one of his first official actions will be to welcome FOX News to the Capitol as his newly created Ministry of Truth, and give it the seat immediately to his right at the table. No pronouncement from either house of Congress, no decision by the Supreme Court will be allowed to air without prior approval from the Ministry of Truth.
10
@Glen
and if you doubt this, because your vote "doesn't count"...think long and hard
and just VOTE!!
Penetrating essay by Michelle Goldberg. Trump and his supporters are verifiable idiots, out to control the thought in this nation. They childishly accuse media of being against them.
This is why I call trump supporters dumb; they do not reason and they try to force the results of trump’s hypnotic control of them onto this nation. It’s very dangerous to our democracy.
By controlling the search results of search engines, trump and his trumpkins infiltrate yet one other aspect of our right to free inquiry. They are aided and abetted by Fox News.
There is no news in Fox News. It is an unconscionable entertainment medium that is the voice of donald trump. This is another reason why I call trump supporters dumb; they believe Fox Noise.
Google, et. al. produce results for us that we not only use for entertainment, but that we actually require to do our jobs. We do not want trump, his trumpkins and Right Wing ideologues to interfere with the truth.
It anything, I want Google to *improve* its algorithms to come up with more relevant results. If I do a search on a topic, I’d like Google to come up with *all* the papers on that particular topic. Google isn’t quite there yet.
The next step is to employ better semantic analysis of the search request. This would be enormously helpful in getting the results that we need. Trump and his trumpkins and Fox Noise want to alter the meaning to bias results to trump’s hysteria.
We have to end trump’s attack on free speech.
10
We had a consititutional crisis when Republicans refused to put forth President Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
We have a constitutional crisis as Trump veers toward refusing to accept Special Prosecutor Mueller's findings, and intimates to supporters that violence will occur in the midterms.
We have a constitutional crisis as Trump moves toward censoring and controlling social media because he lives in a world where everything is apparently about him. And a pervasive right wing agrees.
We're in a tough spot.
21
As I a result of the misinformation campaign during the past election I recall, at least Facebook, has been attempting to use fact checkers as part of their attempt to control misinformation on their platform. I would bet Mark Zuckerberg may have mentioned this when he was called to testify in Congress already. Could this be the reason conservatives find their content further down in the depths of searches? Victims of their own misinformation?
4
Whether I am a fan or not of Mr Trump is irrelevant. Google is a behemoth and there needs to be some accountability here. No one really knows the algorithms used in Google searches and because of their market share this is a huge problem. There is often bad or outdated information. Here’s a personal example: did you know that Google can not differentiate 2 businesses at the same address? I ran into this problem for years and was never able to rectify it. I shared an office with another employer and because he had been at the address first, only his business appeared on Google searches. I alerted Google and explained the situation to no avail. It’s a relatively small thing but it clearly shows how unfair and ambivalent Google can be. Despite numerous attempts to fix the issue, Google was less than interested in helping me resolve it. Something has got to be done about these new tech era giants whether it’s Google, FaceBook, or Amazon. It seems they do business in America with little or no oversight yet Europe has managed to secure privacy rights for its citizens from Google. Why can’t the US? Because they don’t want to and that’s downright scary.
5
@Mike L
Part of the algorithm relies on the number of hits. If one address had been in existence longer than the other this would automatically default to the original.
The US has had Congress decide you do not have privacy rights.
Trump Signs Measure to Let ISPs Sell Your Data Without Consent
by Alex Johnson / Apr.03.2017 / 8:20 PM ET / Updated Apr.03.2017 / 8:21 PM ET
They have legislated it is OK for your personal information to be shared as this headline found on NBCnews.com proves. If you google ISP selling data you will get many other confirmations.
2
please read Murph, who posted right after you
Why does a private business (Facebook, Google, whatever) have to be "fair and balanced?" I suspect the 1st Amendment permits these businesses to be biased if they choose to be. Certainly, they should be able to be at least as biased as Fox News.
Idiocy is relying on Facebook and Twitter as "news" sources. Neither claim to adhere to the standards of journalists.
Eventually, all but the most naive citizens will conclude that Facebook or Twitter may be a fine way to keep track of what old friends from high school are doing, but there's no reason to regard either as a legitimate news source and every reason to suspect every controversial post to be misinformation.
If Mr. Trump wants to read only favorable press about himself, he should simply not wander away from Fox News.
31
@Murph
You're correct that the first amendment applies only to governments and not to private enterprises such as Google and Facebook. Given the power these enterprises wield, however, it's a fair question whether they ought to be restrained from impinging in certain ways upon the free exchange of ideas. Further, all citizens (yourself included) are being influenced by what they read on twitter, facebook and google. It's extremely naive to think otherwise. As to the "standards of journalists" you speak of, I have serious doubts as to what those are and if they exist these days.
1
That’s an interesting argument but Fox News does not have a relative monopoly on news reporting. There’s ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc, etc. But who does Google compete against? That’s a HUGE difference and one that you do not consider in your comment. The internet is like a utility and should be regulated as such.
What chooses Google makes (whether algorithmatic or editorial) has nothing to do with restraining the 'free market place' of ideas. Don't like Google search results? Use a different search engine.
I could buy the whining if Trump also went after Sinclair news and Fox. Trump can’t have it both ways.
30
The only solution will be for We the People to take back government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Step one will be the House of Representatives in November. Step two will be honest investigations by House committees exposing the corruption and anti-democratic policies of the current administration, policies that enrich crony capitalists at the expense of the health, well-being, and finances of average Americans. Step three will be the Senate and Presidency in 2020.
10
How ironic: A NYT columnist protecting the commercial interests of the Google octopus.
2
Show up and vote against any Republican you can find in Novamber. Put Democrats in charge of this would-be despot.
17
Scary times keep getting scarier, main stream media, including this newspaper, have bent over backwards for years accomodating right wing whining. Even now articles covering this president in the NYT tread carefully in calling out his constant lying preferring gentler words when the lies are blatantly obvious.
21
Trump wonders why when he googles his name bad news pops up -- duh -- BECAUSE MOST NEWS CONCERNING TRUMP IS BAD. Hush money to porn stars, financial ties to Russian Oligarchs, cutting humanitarian relief to 5 million Palestinians to make their miserable life more miserable , making healthcare less affordable, increasing wealth disparity , supporting authoritarian regimes, increasing military spending, war with Iran, more pollution etc. I could go on and exceed the NYT word limit. Has Trump and his enablers in Congress done anything that would be considered good news?
24
@John Reynolds. Hear, hear. Just what I have been thinking. As my mother told me when I was a kid, "if you don't want people to say bad things about you, then don't do bad things!" Simple, eh?
@John Reynolds I would add to your list concerning how horrible trump is by adding his separation of toddlers and young children from their mothers and basically putting them in a prison, when they fled oppressive situtations in Central America. If this doesn't resemble Nazi tactics during WWII, I don't know what does.
1
Fascist behaving like fascists. They have their window open now with control of all of the federal government. And they're going to party like it's 1984.
8
Rx for Trump:
Don't lie
Stop being a racist
Take a short trip with Barron to the Grand Canyon
Watch the Christmas Carol before going to bed
Give thanks for all that life has given you
Resign
The Google machine will love you
9
Ever tried to leave a message on the comments site of Breitbart? How about calling Limbaugh to disagree with his ranting? Well, YOU CAN'T. These right wing organs, including Stormfront, scour their comments section regularly, and remove any comment that dares to disagree with their warped reporting.
Another load of fake outrage and crocodile tears from the Trump worshippers.
30
I realize this goes away from search engines, but how about legislating that Fox and InfoWars provide 50% “fair and balanced” left wing content?
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press be damned.
7
Well gee, Donnie, maybe if you don't want all the news about you to seem BAD, just maybe try doing something GOOD for once in your benighted life.
19
Welcome to fascism. Next we'll all be required to put a framed photo of our "dear leader" in our living rooms.
18
Republican complainants clearly overlook the obvious - nobody's stopping them from creating their own neocon Google, Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Between the Kochs, Uihlliens and countless others - they've got the financial power to do so - so why don't they? Oh, wait - bashing is easier than building - there's that.
4
@Wilson1ny The issue is that these platforms claim to be bias free. Its not that the conservatives are trying to control everything. If they are bias free then you would have equal representation for search results and that is not the case now.
I think you are forgetting that you have freedom of choice. If you think Google is falsely 'claiming to be bias free' use a different search engine.
1
Trump can always just hang out at "Trump.News"run by his buddies or he can head over to 4conservative.com where they pre-filter the search results to make Conservative folk feel better about their situation.
5
...all of the above is why I have cancelled and deleted all personal social media connections. Now I have more time to write personal letters, read books, and talk with my family & friends.
4
Please add NPR to the list of broadcasters practicing false equivalency. I am tired of hearing interviews with conservative mouthpieces who are not asked any hard questions or are not confronted with the truth when they spin their lies. I am also sick of hearing the newer “journalists” end their pieces with a flippant tone that is, I guess, supposed to mean that they don’t quite believe what they have just fed the listening audience.
13
I work in the medical field and we had a presentation by a Google employees who explained how they manipulated
the search engine results. It was mostly due to the fact that when people typed in symptoms they would often
get a "worst case scenrio" (it's cancer!) results that would scare them. And photos that showed examples that
would scare people. For example, photos of gout would show moderate to extreme cases rather than more mild cases. She said they looked to replace top searches with more "Normal Rockwell" (her words) examples.
I encourage people reading this comment to google images for "American doctors" and "American surgeons"- about half or more of the top images are of
black physicians. According to the AMA about 6% of American doctors are black, surgeons even a smaller percent.
In some ways this discriminates against Asian Americans who make up the largest minority in the medical field.
By looking at the search results for Google images you would think physicians/surgeons in America were about
50-60% black, 10-20% Hispanic, 20%-40% white, and 5%-10% Asian. It's creepy.
3
@Tara Pines
Typo: Norman Rockwell, not Normal Rockwell.
Google image search for "American Veterinarian". Look at the top 20 results. According to the American Veterinarian Assoc. 93.2% of vets are white, Asians are the largest minority employed in that field at 2.45%, and blacks comprise 1.6% of all vets. Now look at the racial makeup of the vet images Google pulls up first. Google images for occupations that are predominately white and/or male. Or regions that are predominately white.
About a year ago someone told me to google "European art" and 90% of the top paintings were Africa artists or subjects. That got widespread attention and is no longer quite as severe.
I despise Trump, and his language towards the media is inflammatory and reckless. But unfortunately it is mostly true.
are they really concerned on the right that they are being supressed and maligned, or are they just crybabies? is it a complaint, or a strategy?
truth is in the eye of the beholder. I think Teresias said that.
inquiring minds want to know.
2
It's a mistake to entertain conservatives' fallacious argument that they deserve space on somebody else's publishing platform. Conservatives would have a point if a medium provider such as Comcast were to ban them. But Facebook is as much a publisher as The Nation or National Review. The First Amendment is biased toward liberal democracy. The argument for balance to a free press is a false equivalency that Americans can enthusiastically reject.
3
John McCain isn't even in the ground, but he's already rolling over in his grave at the debasement of his party.
but, that's where they like to be: in debasement.
6
The presidential solution to this is quite simple: make an offer to Google, Facebook et al to buy the right to review and accept or decline to publish (i.e., censor) all their negative comments. It worked for the National Enquirer, after all.
In all likelihood the new fixer for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has made this approach and found it too expensive. The next stage, of course, is making threats against the publishing entities, which is the essence of the recent tweetstorm.
1
I think we can all admit that the majority of the news is not conservative. When I express my views here someone always accuses me of watching Fox News, although I am leaving comments here and reading the New York Times. They do not say any of the countless other media outlets. Trump has a point only in the fact that there are way more liberal media outlets or at least we can agree that there are very few conservative outlets. Conservative views are under represented in the entirety of media.
2
@Mark, facts and reality tend to have a liberal bias simply due to their nature of being facts and reality.
2
@Mark Could it be because most people tend to avoid those that are more outwardly racist or homophobic or sexist?
2
Each site, be it National Review, New York Times, Breitbart, Daily Kos, Infowars, etc. is nothing more than the equivalent of a 18th century pamphlet or tract being handed out on a street corner of the internet. That is all that is required for free speech. Nothing requires that your pamphlet be parsed, summarized, and exhibited in the equivalent of a digest or index on Google or Bing or Firefox. And even if it is, nothing requires that it be listed near the top, if it adds nothing to educated, informed discourse.
If you want me to read your pamphlet.com, get out there like a Jehovah's witness with his weekly copy of the Watchtower and put it in my hands, do not get the government to require businesses to do it for you.
Karl Popper was right, we are seeing what he meant by the paradox of tolerance.
3
The truth always hurts those, like Trump, who are frauds, to say the least. As for Dobbs and Fox--well, they are life's failures. And Congress? It has the power but not the will. Its Republican members, especially, are, for whatever reason, scared of the pariah in the Oval Office.
2
A very helpful article and thank you.
To me, as a 59 year old, if an event is not reported in the Irish Times, the NYT, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, El Pais, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung, the London Times and Daily Telegrpaph, Corriere de La Sera, or the BBC,etc it has not happened. Reputable journalists doing their work, even if they make the inevitable mistakes. Full stop.
6
Surely Trump understands that Google, Twitter and YouTube's results are based on POPULARITY. Conservative, white nationalist views are simply not as popular (fortunately) so their results don't show as frequently in searches. And, by the way Donald, your inaugural wasn't all that popular either judging from the size of the crowd. Oh, and you lost the popular vote too.
6
Earlier in the week, my husband woke the morning after listening to your and others' participation in an MSNBC news discussion and said that he had had "a horrible dream": in his dream, he had sat down to watch Ari Melber's show on MSNBC and was met with a screen saying "This station has been removed by order of the president." He then turned to CNN only to find he same message. He tried a couple other outlets and found the same message. Finally he flipped to FOX just in time to hear Tucker Carlson announcing Trump's Truth and Justice Campaign, which included details of the shutting down of all the fake news media and the arrests of MSNBC, CNN NYTimes, and Washington Post reporters.
After listening to my utterly rational computer programming husband, I sat down and checked all my favorite news sights on line, just to make sure I had heard a dream and not reality.
Maybe now is the time to have a national conversation about the possiblity of what could happen when the executive office occupied by a candidate and his associates who manipulated the electoral process with the aid of an enemy power and American aiders and abettors, a judicial system stocked with presidential appointees and legislative branch enslaved to and fearful of the the executive officer and his/her minions effectively undermine American democracy.
3
Rather than dealing with a real issue such as the massive increase in human migration due to climate change, the Trump administration wishes to distract us by caterwauling about a non-issue.
If stories were actually covered that dealt with reality instead of reality TV personalities, we might actually get some traction on important issues.
If you cover this non-sense then the fire is stoked and looks like a legitimate claim, which is most certainly is not.
"that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens
2
Trump's cocooned behind multi-million dollar security and he's scared witless by a Google result. Poor wittle scaredy cat.
Perhaps he should have used some of his 70-odd years reading. He might have actually learned something.
1
I think people lose sight of the fact Google is a corporation not the public library. Some call it a natural monopoly. Of course, this not really about Google but the fascist attempt to silence critics.
1
The right wing mantra-up is down, lies are truth, we have always been at war with oceania. VOTE DEMOCRATIC
2
In a perfect world, there would not be a president whose sole intention is to attack and destroy every source of independent and objective news reporting that he finds offensive. Mr. Trump is determined to shape this world in such a way that everything he does is the acceptable norm. The late Senator John McCain described today's political climate as one of darkness over openness and light. Each passing day, lends credence to his remarks.
3
A simple test of various topics across multiple search engines will prove the bias, especially coming from Google. There's legitimate reason for any citizen, regardless of political preference, to be concerned. It's unfortunate that Trump's method of criticism (for virtually any topic) is so objectionable to so many. It becomes a distraction. The dominance of a very few tech companies within a single sector that bears so directly upon freedom of speech issues is a legitimate cause for concern.
1
@Mitch Powers such a simple test! Please share it with us. If you can.
2
I’m a reasonably well educated Republican who reads the NYT, The Economist and Barron’s on a regular basis (I subscribe to all three). I know that the editorial pages of the NYT and Barron’s represent points of view at opposite sides of the “liberal/conservative continuum” and I keep that in mind as I read. On the other hand, News is news. I trust all three to give me unfiltered news in their news pages, which has been proven true over time. Obviously, mistakes in reporting are made and that’s why these institutions print corrections and retractions. To put an entity like “Inforwars” into the mix is like adding a fairy tale to a discussion of physics. Alex Jones makes up stuff, reports it as “news”, doesn’t admit to mistakes or fabrications and then gets dragged into court, screaming “freedom of the press”, for his libelous and defamatory “reporting”. Yes, there are some liberal and conservative publications that represent their ideological points of view (The Nation on the left, The National Review on the right) but st least they start from a basic set of truths.
461
@Dave DiRoma
I'm in the same camp, although personally I feel that the NYT puts too many opinion-slanted pieces on the front page masquerading as news. I usually just skip to the opinion section to hear from the other side of the political spectrum.
That said, all of the major social media sites do participate in censoring conservatives to some degree. Anyone who thinks that the Southern Poverty Law Center is an unbiased reviewer of content lives in another universe.
3
@Dave DiRoma
Agreed Dave DiRoma, Alex Jones' "news" is like a fairy tale. But when flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers are allowed a voice and Alex Jones is banned it begins to look like the targeting of political speech, not truth. Right?
1
@Dave DiRoma
anyone ever see the corrections page on Fox's "news" site, you know the one the NY Times prints every single day?
2
This is just another demonstration of the Right wanting privilege for its point of view. I have no problem with the rightwingers having access to media markets but I will join the caterwauling if the Right continues to operate on a fact free basis and still insist that their propaganda should be given equal weight to information that has a demonstrable evidentiary basis.
335
@Susan
Actually, I think this is the public forgetting that the internet and the World Wide Web are not extensions of some government operation like the Marines or one of the Navy's aircraft carriers-belonging to the entire united states.
The WWW and programed devices like search engines are privately operated and owned and have no legal reason outside commerce to give more space or preference to one set of ideas or people.
A result of the ever more common use of these devices is that people think use of them is the same as ownership and that since they are not putting in money, that they ought to be able to get to see what they want PDQ.
If this is the aim-write your own search angine and tell your friends and ask people in your political party to use it.. That's more-or less-what Google and all the other search engines did.
I am positive no one ever suggested at Ford or GM that their cars only give a safe and comfortable ride to one kind of people. KFC doesn't care who buys their chicken as long as they pay in the local currency.
So too, the WWW is a device mostly for commerce-owned by No man
2
@Susan
But information with a demonstrable evidentiary basis also has a well-known leftward (liberal) bias. What do you expect?
I started writing a long comment about how dangerous all this is. But most NYT readers know that, and many commenters have eloquently pointed out the absurdities of the endless and increasingly sharp attacks on all our media. I'll simply add this - we are in a world of hurt in this country, and are well down the slippery slope to full blown fascism. If things don't change come November 6 our democracy is done. Period, full stop.
29
It would be helpful if these folks understood how basic SEO works. Without going too deep into it, relevancy of the topic and authority of the source Have the largest impact. There is nothing nefarious about it.
Suppose if I were a NY Mets fan, I might also be upset that when I google “Mets scores”, it won’t always show a victory. More often, it would show a defeat. Because that’s how they have performed this year. It would be asinine to suggest that the search engines were biased against Mets victories, but that’s what the right wingers are doing.
My suggestion? Stop doing stupid stuff that ends up as news.
49
@Bill Seng What a great metaphor.
Indeed, if your home team loses the news reports the loss. You can't emotion what you want to be true to be true.
Hatred and lies will never be a good filter for reality. Trump may think he is the only reality, and he can make it up as he goes along, but he can't.
1
In this upside down trump world anything is possible and much of it is not good for our democracy over time. All of the things that would help get us out of this mess are being torn apart. Education, healthcare, good paying jobs, developing the middle class. These are the keys to getting these guys out of office and making true progress towards something better. Ignorant, uneducated people succumb to fear and tyrants every time. These guys are victimizing the poor, ignorant and backwards thinking people of our country to line their own pockets and kill off the best parts of our country.
4
I believe it is actually a fake trope that the GOP is mainly taking advantage of the uneducated and brain damaged segments. of course they're doing that, but their core supporters are not necessarily poor, or stupid, or uneducated; they are fearful, vindictive, and mean.
2
The interesting part of this thing is that Trump's source of his Google nonsense is none other than Lou Dobbs and Fox.
I keep hoping, day after day, that all these right wing autocrats get their comeuppance but alas, the Congress has about as much power as the Roman senate did under Caligula.
We are being deluged by a non-stop attack on everything we were taught was sacred. We're essentially in a non-shooting civil war, it seems.
Even worse, a distinct minority political party controls every lever of power, from the presidency to the ballot box, and it's led by a would-be dictator.
27
@Bob Burns Your last paragraph is exactly why we must get rid of the electoral college. In this day and age, we don't need to give a few states more power over the majority.
Google uses algorithms. If you read the NYT, WSJ, CNN and WaPo in your news feed on Google news, then it appears more overall for everyone. More people are reading news sources that are actually RELIABLE and trusted sources. There is no way I’m going to click on Foxnews or Breitbart for real news. Maybe Trump’s base relies on cable TV for news instead of reading lengthy articles.
8
If you want to see where Trump is going with this, look to his benefactor, Vladimir Putin. This past April, Putin declared a full-scale war on the Russian internet. Putin was already attacking Internet companies, but in April had state institutions mobilize to block access to Russia's most popular messenger app, Telegram. The creator of Telegram, Pavel Durov, known as "the Russian Zuckerberg," is famous for setting up the Russian social network Vkontakte. Within a short time it was the most popular social network in Russia. Putin began dismantling it in 2014. Durov resigned as CEO of Vkontakte rather than give in to Putin and the FSB and turn over all personal data Ukranian Euromaidan protest organizers and their Russian sympathizers, and all anti-Putin protest organizers and sympathizers in Russia. Dorov's conflict with the FSB and commitment to defending user privacy made Telegram even more popular. However, Putin had was just starting. Since Durov had created an app that defies oppressive governments which seek to spy on their citizens, Putin had the Russian Duma pass legislation making it mandatory for all messenger apps to hand over their encryption keys. On April 16th, Putin's had the Russian communications censor, Roskomnadzor, block 18 million IP addresses. Since many of the IP addresses belonged to cloud services run by Google, Microsoft, and Google, Russia's online services went down. This how Putin is taking over Russia's Internet. It's what Trump wants to do.
10
@Robert B Maybe that's what they talked about during their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki.
1
Trump’s entire schtick revolves around naming real problems, then demagoguing them to death with wildly misguided, ridiculously angry rhetoric. As outlined in this commentary, there are numerous issues with big tech requiring examination. Search results returned under “Trump” is not among them. It’s no different than immigration and the loss of blue collar jobs to foreign competitors, both are problems needing real solutions. Trump’s answer is always to take the most virulent path, stoking maximum anger and division. Forget about compromising on a balanced solution, designed to bring the undocumented in from the shadows. Don’t even think about holding reasonable trade negotiations, especially with your closest allies. Yelling and drama is always the only answer. After all, it gets you on TV virtually all of the time. When you’re as addicted to hearing your own voice as much as Trump, reality and reason simply don’t matter.
6
I don't know, when someone like Limbaugh toys with the idea of a fairness doctrine, if he's playing with a full deck. He, like other strange children of the Reagan Administration, was born half formed. He is an ideological gimmick masquersading as intellectually whole, emotionally whole (whatever that means.) Michelle's article is excellent.
6
Trump has a long history of changing negative reports about himself using the National Enquirer and others. He will keep up the assaults on all types of media until someone gets killed as a result of his attacks. And to think he is President of the United States and can act this way to harm Americans. Where are the Republicans in Congress when we need them to speak up and protect us?
3
How’s this for a start? Suggest all right wing MAGA folks who feel Google is biased to just stop using it? In essence a boycott.
Let’s see how effective that is for these hate mongers. Perhaps they can convince VC firms to bankroll a politically correct conservative search engine for their distorted version of reality
Even make it easy to use for functional illiterates like trump to use
Maybe even ‘ billionaire’ trump can bankroll it by putting his money where his mouth s
Right. I am not holding my breath
That’s right stand up to the bully
It’s about time we started to
6
How is this not in the same class as a move to start book burning?
8
Maybe King For Life, Donny cannot grasp the fact that the rest of the world remains convinced he is a pariah, a demon and the devil incarnate whose, every action reinforces that opinion.
4
Thanks for this article. The likes of Alex Jones are rightfully banned
2
Their should be biased on all issues involving right/wrong and moral/immoral as much as we accept biased that 2 2=4. Prior to cable news and the advent of AM Talk Radio, the 3 channels (ABC, NBC and CBS) which informed Americans would be deemed biased because they weren’t offering unsubstantiated trash to viewers who freely welcome it because it’s what they want to hear. Is Google based? I hope they understand 2 2=4 and are proud of it.
1
Trump just wants state-owned media and is all about censorship and making 325M Americans sing his praises whether we want to or not.
Well, you can't sing the praises of someone violating the Constitution, suppressing votes, and ignoring 60% of Americans while working toward making America a country run by a small Trump-selected group of wealthy old white males in power.
No-one is censoring Trump and his 6000 tweets but more people are tired of listening to his hate-filled vision of America under Trump.
The only Trump song I want to sing is from the Sound of Music; 'Goodbye, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu'.
5
As a tool for billions of people to express ideas and counterpoint, the Internet is a splendid gift to humanity -- even when its use is sullied by Trumpty Dumpty and many of his GOP congressional lieutenants.
After all, the most splendid feature of the Internet is that it's two-way: Every time Trumpty and his derelict trumpeters use it to spew lies, bigotry, and hate, we -- of the civil-minded majority -- use it to rebuke them.
Platforms like Google (these engines of discourse) are just what our Republic needs these days to counterattack despotism -- and keep it in check in real time.
7
What I find so ironic is that the tech industry IS a white male dominated industry that has produced an internet that's hostile to women of all races & Black people of both sexes. Trump & the GOP should love it.
2
I suppose Trump will go after Merriam Webster for not providing a sufficient amount of appropriate adjectives to describe how truly great Donald J Trump is.
8
Orrin Hatch now wants an investigation into Google, even while he has been mute on the Mueller investigation into a corrupt president. This GOP party is beyond corrupt. Enemy of the people? Thy name is the GOP.
17
Who would have thought we liberals would be spending our days defending Google, Jeff Sessions, and the intelligence community. Trump is a disaster artist who has turned everything upside down.
10
Let's be clear: the tech titans are "liberal" libertarians. They appear liberal in their inclusive rather than divisive social outlook, but they are one-hundred percent libertarian in their economic outlook—no government regulation, resist all taxation, and pay employees both tech and non-tech the bare minimum, which will get lower and lower as vast numbers of foreign tech workers continue to be imported here. Why do you think they’re all so pro-immigration?
Except for a tech entrepreneur named Dan Price at Gravity Payments, who made the news a few years ago because he decided that a fair minimum wage for all his employees was $70,000 a year, they’re all capitalist vultures dressed up in liberal sheep’s clothing. Believe me, if the intelligent, educated people comprising their work force leaned predominately right, the titans would all be right wingers. It just happens that most intelligent, educated people have a social conscience, so they shrug and go with that. Makes them look like nice people.
All this high-minded “do no evil” stuff disappeared long ago, once they hit the big-time. Donald Trump? Secretly, they all love him and the tax breaks he gave them. Oh, the irony, that Trump is attacking them now.
The reason nothing good comes up in a Trump search is that there is nothing good to say about him, except at Fox Fake News. Will they start tweaking the algorithms to placate Trump?
We're about to find out who these people really are.
8
@CF - Your generalizations are nonsense. Those algorithms at Google and Facebook have only one objective: to drive advertising revenue. Whatever the political leanings of the programmers might be, their efforts are measured in traffic and dollars generated.
2
Trump's attacks on the Google and other tech driven social media platforms are not for the fairness in reporting or transparency but as the part of the right wing conservative plan to so pressurise the tech giants as to make them comply to also accommodate their spurious disinformation campaign to blur any distinction between the fake news media and the mainstream news media. In short, to extract a forced compliance from the tech companies to also give space to the Conservative propaganda to incite and confuse the public.
5
Conservatives have been playing the victims of the liberal media for decades, even as the GOP controls both Congress and the White House and Fox News is the most watched cable channel. This is pure propaganda designed to confirm the Right's paranoia and motivate them to support GOP candidates and issues.
Trump has taken this strategy to new levels, challenging the veracity of facts and legitimate journalism. A free press and verifiable truths are the lifeblood of our democracy. We cannot allow this assault on facts and the press to continue.
16
That there is a liberal bias in Big Tech is laughable. However, I think the danger here is that the tech companies probably do need antitrust enforcement. They also probably think it may come sooner rather then later. There is evidence of anti-competitive (monopoly and monopsony) conduct from all of the five big tech companies. I could go on about all the issues, but you can search for that yourself.
Thus as Michelle warns, but I think is worth emphasizing, is that Big Tech has great incentives to placate the Right to avoid regulatory enforcement. To me this is the real danger as Big Tech will be free to continue to monopolize while actual disinformation increases.
We all end up losing.
5
What's next from this administration, The Department of Information? Who will head it, Hannity, Limbaugh or Jones?
77
I don’t believe anything from Trump because he is a proven liar. Donald Trump is “Fake News” .
129
@David DeFilippo
All of Trump's tweets that have false facts (FAKE NEWS) should be deleted
1
Trump wants affirmative action for conservative media. how ironic
80
And we didn't think Trump has a sense of humor.. For the king of bias to post such an ludicrous statement..then again it is Trump unhinged...
26
Who knew Michelle Goldberg was a fan of monopolies?
2
Trump is s duplicitous racist misogynistic politician who will do and say anything that promotes himself.
40
I am no expert, and Google deliberately keeps its analytics algorithms secretive in an attempt to prevent people from gaming the system. Put simply, organic search results are connected to volume - the more visitors or hits a particular site or url gets, the higher it will rank with Google. Mainstream media such as the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other respected NON-"Fake" news sites undoubtedly get more traffic than fringe "news" such as Infowars. The reality that the fringe sites plus Fox deliver more truly fake news than mainstream media is a side issue when considering how Google ranks results. I suppose this is another fact that is fake news though!
25
Stop being robot terminals for digital media. Live in your own present - not the one that your screen is devising for you. Throw away your foolish devices and smell the pollution, see the injustice, watch the planet bake.
Then maybe do something about it.
11
The right wing has become so far right that they are going beyond the horizon. I have to chuckle when I see such mainstream conservatives as Bill Kristol on CNN, denouncing our current president.
Fortunately, I do not subscribe to any social media sites, so the only daily barrage I get is from the news. Michelle, you made me spit my rice crispies onto my screen when I saw that InfoWars is considered more mainstream than Time magazine, according to Dobbs and PJ Media. Holy cow.
21
First, it’s not the job of google to make the President look good or bad. They are neutral and they are doing there job.
Second, infowars os in no way media outlet but someone spewing misinformation and at opinions but no news.
Finally, I did go to another search engine (bing) and type in Trump news and came across a web site by that title that was so filled with propaganda style articles of Fake new that the President would be overjoyed. I’m wondering if he thought he should he should find this easily with Google. It was about the 6 th hit.
2
@Dawn
functional illiterates and functional tech illiterate (aka trump) cannot get to where you describe. they'd have to think first...not in their job description...
This man needs a real job to occupy his time, oh wait a second he has one.
11
Google can defend itself far easier than others oppressed by this administration.
4
Michelle G. writes, "Essentially, conservatives want to create a world where objective information and right-wing disinformation are treated equally." Pasting these two separate issues together in one sentence is a sign of hackneyed corporate journalism. This is a worthy piece for opinion pages but unworthy for factual evidence and discovery. Some might call it biased.
3
@Gene, that's why it is on the opinion page. Because it is her opinion.
7
@Lynn
you mean he's got to actually read the title of the page? that's almost asking too much....
1
Perhaps Google, et al should simply incorporate “Fair and Balanced” into their logo, seems to work for Fox News.
12
We have to accept the condition that the president before his term or terms are done will have attacked everyone but the Pope. He won't do that likely because Catholics vote.
We also have to accept that the vast majority of Republicans follow their simple dictum of being "all in" for the president which simply means that anything he does, has done or will eventually do will be acceptable to them generally, regardless of its impact on the country as a whole as well as the world. To them. like with the president, it is all about winning - the country be damned. Years ago two coaches, Red Saunders and Vince Lombardi, coach of the Green Bay Packers had this quote, "Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing." But that was in the context of motivating their sports teams not running the country.
The president, for his part, is "all in" for himself and acts more like a ringmaster at a circus who will say and do anything that can get the "circus" performers including the animals to jump through all his hoops. So as a result we have, as illustrated by his attacks on Google, the tech industry and of course his own justice department and the FBI, an impasse where a large part of the country and mostly all of the Republican party and his supporters will be following this circus. It's not likely that the founders of the USA could envision the demise of the country happening this way.
16
@Tom osterman. Oh, but you forget that he has attacked the Pope. Nothing and no one is exempt from his wrath.
1
@Joan R.i must have missed that. Thanks for letting me know. Was it in connection with all the recent priest scandal in PA?
@Tom osterman
hardly this is a man that said he would molest his own daughter if he had the chance
Actually, Trump has dominated the media with a formula.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Democrats and critics seem to be clueless on Trump's formula.
I think the formula goes something like this"
1) Trump uses the power of NO to turn the media ON, daily.
That is, he negates people and facts, constantly and it works.
(Note that NO and ON, have the same letters, in reverse).
2) Trump claims to be a KNOW - IT - ALL, as he invents truth.
The result is that Trump bosses everyone else, around, all the time.
The BOSS, Trump, is always right, because he gets coverage.
Trump takes aim at Google and he wins with media attention!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Google, you're fired!"
6
@Harry Pearle
If the Democrats want to win the House, they might remind voters, over and over, that Trump has a formula for dominating the media.
I suggest the formula is about the power of NO.
===================================
My fear is that if Democrats just ramble on and on, without repetition, they will lose the House race. But if they keep repeating some anti-Trump mantra, they have a chance.
2
I don't know how we got to a point where the minority right wing in this country has total control of the federal government and is doing everything in its power to stomp dissent. And to what end? Just power for power's sake? Small minded men with shriveled hearts and an insatiable thirst for riches - somehow they make the rules these days. Beyond lordship, I can't figure out what these foul people actually want.
Why on Earth should these companies listen to the right wing at all? Google is first and foremost an information company. You use their computers to find information on other computers. The fact that these fascists are aiming to control how companies deliver information is the most glaringly obvious reason that they should not be allowed to do so.
The left wing is this country has its problems. We are fractious, obsessed with identity. But compared to what is shaping up to be, by any moral or historical definition, a stark evil...
24
@Dan Is the left wing (your term) actually obsessed with identity or has the corporate media framed the Democratic Party as both left wing and obsessed with identity and you, along with quite a few others it seems, bought into this lazy shorthand?
3
It is no coincidence that Trump is going after Google at this particular juncture. Over the last two weeks his problems have been rapid fire and relentless. Manafort and Cohen both guilty. His CFO and his buddy at the National Enquirer granted immunity. New York State’s AG filed charges against the Trump foundation. The judiciary ruled against him regarding terminating federal workers and emolument lawsuits. He relentlessly castigated his own AG. He reluctantly cancelled Pompeo’s North Korea trip. He found out that the White House Counsel (McGann) met with Mueller for thirty hours. He was petulant and disrespectful when McCain died. The hits just keep on coming.
What kind of search engine would discard stories about these events? They are all recent, important and true. Anyone would expect them to pop up. Had Obama been president when similar things were going on Trump himself would have been in overdrive hollering the news from rooftops!
I have read many stories during this same time period regarding the strength of the economy, the continued low unemployment rate and Trumps continued high level of support among Republicans. These are positive stories.
Mr. Trump is rally-addled in terms of his perspective. When not playing golf or watching TV, he flies to some hangar or auditorium where his base is waiting to chant his favorite slogans. Those crowds are his “GOOGLE” as he hears only love in their hooting and stomping and extrapolates that to the world at large.
31
When you get right down to it, this is nothing more than another assault on the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- something that this president can't stand unless it is outright in favor of everything he says or does.
To say that Google and other Big Tech companies are not "friendly" because they follow a different narrative, is by no means a reason to call them 'fake' in an effort to shut them down.
And nor are they totaly without blame for their practices.
After all, it was Facebook that helped to put this president in office with all those phony Russian accounts, and Google has no problem overstepping the boundaries of its users privacy.
Still, this administration is clearly working from a set of double standards that in the end all boils down to one thing: censorship.
And that seems to be the only way Trump can see to "make America great again".
7
The scariest part about all of this is that removing Trump, the entire Freedom Caucus and all other far-right politicians from office won't solve uneducated America's media bashing. If Fox News suddenly disappeared, some other mob of right-wing hacks would fill the gap of exploiting the intellectually lazy.
I spent 37 years working at reporter and editor positions at major daily newspapers. I can't tell you how often people -- close friends, even -- would lecture me on the pervasiveness of "the left wing media".
They would basically call me a liar when I would tell them I worked with as many conservative as liberal colleagues. Yes, I would say, I am a liberal but I defy you to find one news-pages piece I have ever written that would betray that. Ditto for conservative colleagues.
I would take those who had sufficient attention spans through the news gathering process and explain newspaper hierarchy – which, these days, culminates with conservative business types having the final word from their seats in the chain's board room.
They didn't believe me because they didn't want to believe me. Trump did not give rise to these people, they gave rise to him.
54
Early last year I was convinced that Trump not only emulated Mussolini’s style but that he was, indeed, an unprincipled fascist. The news media needs to defend itself and make the public understand that this is a threat to our democracy - while it still can.
19
So the Gospel according to Rudy is “The truth isn’t the truth, “ easily applicable to Fox. But Fox owes its existence to the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press: The right to circulate opinions in print (no “media” back then) without censorship by the government. Now our Congressional squirrelheads wallowing in the Oval Office swamp of a fake president are denouncing the fake 1st Amendment, wanting to censor the media.
Confused? George Orwell explains it masterfully.
25
Translated, Trump's assault on Google and other social media -- the same ones who spread his lies to the masses -- is designed to make them even more slavish in spreading the unreality bubble of his creation. What is even more ironic is a patholigical liar telling us only he can be trusted.
7
Soon the mainstream media, the right wing media, social media, and the search engines will be tested like never before. In the near future, we will program the human mind in a computer based on a "survival" algorithm, and this program will provide irrefutable proof that we have tricked our minds with ridiculous beliefs about just exactly what is supposed to survive - creating brains that de facto now work for our destruction. All media will be challenged to promulgate the truth that will initially offend so many. It won't be easy or quick, but this will be part of our long journey back to reason. See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
“ Tech “ is a Fact and Science based field, populated by intelligent and intellectually curious persons. The MAGA crowd is the anthesis of THAT. Period.
8
After you’ve finished reading this column, go read Ben Rhodes’ opinion piece in today’s paper. It’s all of a common vein. Consider, for example, that 41% of Republicans in 2016 agreed with the statement that Barack Obama was not born in the US.
So, the bottom line is that the Right has exclusive rights (pun intended) to conspiracy-theory mongering and creating false equivalencies at every turn and, most importantly, now wants to suppress ANY media outlet, including Google, from promoting and spreading truthful news and discussion.
This’ll be a good one for the majority-conservative SCOTUS before long. How do you reconcile going after Google when you have Fox News peddling their garbage day in and day out? I’m sure they’ll figure out a way, though.
15
First: Why are media entities that are not rightwing considered to be leftwing, or socialist when they are just news? Second: The news sites that have the most content will deliver the highest results. CNN, NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, etc, collect and aggregate massive amounts of content, much more than Fox and others. Many people do not understand how search works, which makes them easy intellectual prey for comments like Trump is putting out.
4
I think the conservatives are not using Google correctly. Google is gear to try to give 'accurate' information. Google 'orange' and there is a very high probability that you will get a picture of a real orange, not a rhinoceros. For our conservative friends, try googling 'right-wing conspiracy news about president trump', Oops, tried it and got article debunking their conspiracies. Maybe 'right-wing conspiracy news about president trump that right wing people believe are true'. Darn, it still didn't work. Google keeps giving me accurate information from reliable sources. Maybe just 'right-wing news'. This works, gives me all the sites for updated conspiracy theories so I know what to think based on the finest right-wing news sources. So to our conservative friends used Google properly, they would find what they want.
5
A couple of points: (1) anyone who relies on social media or a search algorithm to determine his or her view of the real world is a fool. (2) Orrin Hatch has lost it. And by "it" I mean not just his intellectual capacity, but conscience and integrity as well.
24
The price of liberty is vigilance! Keep up the great work Ms. Goldberg!
22
We do not need “fair and balanced” social media companies.
6
Who told him? He doesn’t read or use computers.
14
For less unfavorable news, have less unfavorable actions. MAGA-Make Orwell Fiction Again!
5
Tech ingredients for page placement (algorithms) isn’t a secret. You can google how to get a better page rank. People follow this and optimize results for a living. It’s a whole industry.
The bottom line is we have a verifiable vulgarian as president of our once great nation. These times are like the “Train to Busan” hopefully we will survive the onslaught and prevail.
3
The attack on the media continues. The right wants to control Google and other media/tech giants joining China. And that says it all! It's what a totalitarian regime does. And in the new Trumpublican Party that's what they seek. Under the guise of right-wing conservatism they continue to undermine the Constitution and its 1st amendment and to turn the democracy called the USA into the autocracy of Trumpistan.
5
I certainly don't share the neo-fascist leanings of Rush Limbaugh but the idea of breaking up the Google/Facebook conglomerate might not be such a bad idea.
Ms. Goldberg failed to mention that in its last algorithm adjustment Google blocked searches that just so happened to reduce traffic for nearly 200 progressive news sites.
Those sites just happened to be the same ones excoriated in a WaPo article, citing unnamed sources accusing them of spreading "fake news."
These cites included Truthdig and their noted former Times journalists Chris Hedges and the very well respected investigative journalist Robert Parry and his Consortium News. Truthdig and their team of fine professional journalist were also on this leftist hit list.
These progressive journalists saw the search traffic diminish overnight by as much as 60%, all as a result of Google's so-called "fake news" filtering. And of course, with that decline in traffic there was a decline in advertising revenue.
But according to Googles mathematical robots, well sourced and documented articles critical of the government are no different than made up tweets, unfounded rumors and outright lies.
And despite all their technical acumen, these tech giants can't tell the difference. Or maybe they can?
The old saying is that power corrupts. And too much corporate power and the money that comes with it almost guarantees corruption.
So let's not embrace these tech giants as our friend just because the right sees them as an enemy.
3
@drspock: Google's mathematical robots? Do they sit under tables and sort search results with 12 tentacle like arms faster than the aliens in "men in Black"? Could we hire them for the post office or Amazon?
2
@drspock
"breaking up the Google/Facebook conglomerate might not be such a bad idea."
It's a good idea. All concentrations of power corrupt.
Google's algorithms, built around crowd-sourcing, will elevate mainstream views by default, but a simple turn of a knob will bias returned information right or left.
It's Google's AI programs that control the knob adjustment and calibrate the results specifically to your personal profile, which is continually updated.
I like facts and am sick of the ridiculous shrieking coming out of the government office previously held by rational, thoughtful occupants. Is there anyone more pathetic than the bully on the playground?
3
George Orwell called it Newsspeak.
6
I watched the 2018 Movie "Shock & Awe" yesterday. I found it interesting that at that time in history, our news papers were accomplices to the Bush/Cheney administration in their lies about Iraq and their Pre-emptive war based on bogus claims. The NY Times and Washington Post were guilty and have apologized for their part in telling the American People the lie. I fear history will repeat itself if we do not support and defend our Information Outlets in all forms, Google being one of them.
2
Perhaps the reason Trump can't find any good news about him online is because there isn't any. Everything this vile man does or says is contemptible. Why would he expect anything good?
So of course Trump whines that Google and other such search platforms are liberally biased. A five year old child is better behaved. Looking after a well behaved child can wear one out. Looking after a petulant egotistical man-child is a nightmare.
6
Imagine (as John Lennon famously sang) if, in our Orwellian world, the labels were turned by denouncing Trump’s liberal (“open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values”) way with core Republican values à la the late great John McCain, to suggest that Foxy News and Infowarts, etc, are much too liberal in their representation of facts. Thus, the conservative news and social networking platforms (NY Times, Washington Post, Google, etc.) are therefore much further to the right.
The reasons conservatives ideas aren’t popular is because their ideas stink. There is no equality of popularity.
6
Trump has tried all his life to control everyone and everything around him to his liking, but even with the aid of the Peckers and the Cohens and Fox News sycophants in his corner, up to now this MO has proved expensive in secret payoffs and under-the-radar deals.
Now with the help of a cowed Congress he believes he sees an opportunity to make his, the overriding narrative, by bending the Internet to his will, and the best part is that it would be free. He must be stopped now before he does to the Internet what China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes have done to the Internet- made it nothing more than a tool of the State!
4
The president is free to resign. I can guarantee the news about him would noticeably improve.
29
Tell it like it is: there’s a plethora of “bad news” articles about DJT and this Congress because, quite simply, DJT and this Congress are bad and they do bad stuff.
3
“so that almost all stories & news is BAD.”
ALL news and ALL stories about Trump ARE bad, befitting of a contemporary antichrist seeking absolute power by, among other evil actions, abolishing Truth itself.
At this point cataloging his daily sins is necessary, of course, but of little use until we finally just see, admit and proclaim that Trump is a mentally-defective, sociopathic, evil human being compulsively abusing all other beings, a plague of a man, unrelenting in doing as much evil as possible to other living beings, and the Earth itself, every single day.
His end will be a day of national celebration.
7
Strangely we are fighting to reverse Trumpistan's ruling against net neutrality.
2
The ultra-righties constantly moan about the liberal press / media. That's how the center has moved so far to the right. This falls directly into that whole thing..... Beautifully articulated by Ms Goldberg .. she's the best.
9
"Tech companies want to make money and avoid regulation; despite their libertarian bent, they’ve been perfectly willing to go along with the demands of authoritarian regimes in other countries."
Thank you Michelle Goldberg for pinpointing the president's highly dangerous attempt to force search engines to provide equal balance between fact and fiction.
Isn't the purpose of a Google search designed to help readers check objective facts and verifiable information quickly?
When the president doesn't like his search results, he says he'll "regulate" Google. Isn't this simply censorship? Isn't this the first step towards shutting down the free press in an atempt to stifle critics?
If the president can force private companies to promote his gaslighting, he'll alter the state of "truth" itself. It's essentially what the Catholic church did in silencing Galileo to ensure the masses weren't "tainted" by scientific fact and modernity.
But it's also tin-hat stuff, a calculated and devious attempt by this president to move America further into a phony Orwellian world where conspiracy equals truth.
Democracy can't survive without a shared reality.
503
@ChristineMcM
TRUMP! Committing high crimes daily!
1
Trump has the absolute power to change the number of unfavorable reports about him and his behavior.
He just has to change his policies and behavior.
668
@david
"He just has to change his policies and behavior." He'll never change. Trump is not only Putin's puppet, he's also incorrigible.
1
@david
A truer statement has never been stated.
1
The First Amendment is a one-way street for trump. He blocked people on his twitter feed because he did not like what they said. The Court made him "un-block" certain individuals and now trump is throwing a tantrum...reverting to his "victimization" playbook because he knows intuitively he is losing the ratings war. And above all else, to trump, it is all about the ratings.
33
There is some reality to the right's claims of the tech companies and similar platforms blocking many right-wing postings. This alleged anti-conservative bias is actually aimed at those people and organizations who tell lies, peddle fictitious stories and crazy conspiracy theories. The blocking of such heinous material is not anti-conservative but is actually pro-truth. The Trump administration's attacks on the tech industry are therefore part of their overall strategy of replacing actual reality with their fictions and lies. SAD! SCARY!
19
Google isn't rigged - its demographics. For 40+ years conservative media including Dobbs and DJT have been preaching from the same hymnal- be scared real scared. In the 1980s they correctly believed that the conservative media's audience was white, over 50 and they could scare them into voting against their own interest.That was then this is now and their audiences have aged out but conservative media has never changed. Demographics changed everything. Calling an African-American candidate a monkey by a Trump candidate doesn't sell well now. Everyone had 8 years of that and are tired of the old playbook. Google's search engines aren't driving the searches but the people using Google.They are younger, more racial diverse and much more teck savvy than the conservatives. The audiences' demographic shift is telling the conservative media that they are just not into DJT or the conservative media's message. The Google searches requested are just demonstrating this fact.
38
@Jena It not just young tech savvies, it's also international. The whole world uses Google. Most outside the US are not favorable to the current administration.
2
Fake this and fake that and everyone is out to get him. What paranoia, how delusional, how irrational....that person is getting more and more unhinged every day. He's working overtime trying to become an authoritarian. We have news for him, it won't work. He will be brought down before that could ever happen.
18
"Trump and his allies, however, aren’t after transparency; they want to cloud the civic atmosphere with even more bad faith and paranoia."
And that's the crux of the matter. For years Clear Channel bought up radio stations and shoved Limbaugh's spew down the throats of anyone who switched to the AM dial on their radio. No one on the left went after them for fouling that nest.
This is just more distraction. And, oh yeah, the braindead Orrin Hatch couldn't find Google on a laptop since he's still in the buggy whip days of the 1800's.
15
I am continually taken back at social gatherings where attendees with college degrees---some with professional degrees---state facts and relate "news" that are demonstrably false. To make matters worse, those standing around listening to these obvious falsehoods, shake their heads in agreement, and then, add to the mountain of falsehoods with more "facts" and "did you hear that..." By the end of the evening I feel like I am living in the twilight zone.
15
Whatever the "rigged" aspect is or isn't, the concept of any entity either ranking or omitting any speech is scary.
Currently the accusation is the suppression of conservative views. Ridiculing this accusation is extremely short sighted. In a few months time the screening or responsible algorithm can change and screen liberal or centrist views.
These in house screenings need to be extremely objective or each search needs to be identified as advertisement related results. Noe, its the conservative view. 12 months from now it can be the liberal view.
Very slippery slope. Its an assault on the first amendment. Be careful what you wish for.
1
Trump’s rants against Goggle and Facebook aren’t the most interesting or societal story concerning many of the high tech companies. The right’s rants will come and go and at best make their way to the scrap heap of history.
The real story if how each of us is tracked by these companies. They pretty much know all your behaviors-they tout their knowledge of us to advertisers. They sell data down to what kind of underwear we wear to the highest bidders.
That’s the real story.
2
It should be clear by now that conservatives are now targeting internet media companys because they have not been able to force them into reporting the news or facts the way they would like it reported.
After years of going after main stream news papers and network news for a supposed liberal bias ie: reporting the truth "and having mostly won the battle they are now going after these internet media companies to make them tow the " conservative " party line or else... of these things are dictatorships made which we seem to be heading towards if we Americans cannot stop this attack on our country.
4
Michelle,
I know you were tasked to pen something (anything!) against Trump and that's OK. No surprise there.
But when it comes to Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the entire social media, it is not 'trumpian' to speak out against them.
They are a curse, an indelible blotch, as they are single-handedly responsible for not only the destruction of the Internet, the started out as a promise to be the most democratic, open forum and source of information accessible to all, but also the dumbing down of the already impressionable and gullible audience, led to believe that concealed ads targeted at them are actually the truth.
3
The National Enquirer occupies pride of place in every supermarket in America; most shoppers give its headlines a glance as they wait in line. And Trump has spent years paying them off to suppress stories about himself. How is this not rigging the media?
45
Perhaps real news sources could closely (accurately) attribute every false, crazy and politically inspired story to the same few nut-cases who put this stuff out there. Then we could simply dismiss them as "DisInfoWars" trash. It would make it easier to identify and then discount their lies.
And special care could be taken to juxtapose fake right-wing propaganda with the truth--using photos, quotes and historical facts that are still universally accepted. It could be done in a "neutral" way: For example: Mr. McConnell says that the Senate is more productive than ever. This year they held (small number) of hearings and passed (small number) of laws. In 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected, they held (large true number) of hearings and passed (large number) of laws. Data from the Senate record book.
While the Trump voter seems insane to me currently, if he saw the facts set out like this, it might get past Trump's smoke screen. Might. It's better than treating Alex Jones as if he were Walter Cronkite.
5
That The Donald and his co-conspirators are crying out about freedom of information should confirm that they are doing a good job.
The Donald is on the wrong side of every moral argument. The "man" has no character, no morality.
A con man fears the truth and the light of day more than anything else.
Oh, those poor 37% - what conspiracies will they grasp onto once the Dishonest Don flees DC before impeachment?
5
No fan of Trump here. But the problem, Michelle, is that Google (and Facebook) did actually, perhaps unwittingly but in reality, engage in widespread viewpoint discrimination. Against conservatives. That is a real problem, not a fake problem.
I don't like the President's rage tweets any more than you. But viewpoint discrimination on supposedly neutral tech platforms will backfire and hurt the progressive cause. You need to understand that.
11
@Ted Morgan
"That is a real problem, not a fake problem."...
Actually, the real problem is the extent to which the "problem" is seen through the "rose colored glasses" "of eye of the beholder.
5
@Ted Morgan: I disagree. Conservatives tend to be older and less familiar with the latest platforms. This automatically results in what appears to be a progrssive bias. But if you'd specify your Google search terms to include specifics to indicate you want a conservative POV, this would give you results from a conservative POV. And if enough users do this, Google would have more "conservative" search results. It's not unwitting or deliberate, it's simply how it works.
9
@Ted Morgan They have also been discriminating against liberal sites. Too bad the liberals don't have their own media outlets with a direct line to the President. That link is more dangerous to our democracy than any changes in search algorithms that may not be as favorable to the President as he likes. We're well on our way to Fascism.
4
This is Trump's assault on the truth and Google and Facebook are mere bystander casualties. Twitter, whose CEO's ideas of fairness are cooky, didn't get a mention. I think we all know why.
Social media should have been regulated as soon as they got really big. Facebook to a greater extent than Google is doing our society and others a lot of damage, in ways we can and cannot yet appreciate. These Silicon Valley geniuses are great at coding, but not so much when it comes to ethics.
If anyone still has a right to complain about searches, it is people of color and marginalized groups, who when one searches in search engines, invariably turn up in contexts that are highly discriminatory.
Trump doesn't know how searches work, nor does he care. His aim here is to propagandize and agitate. Anything to turn people's attention away from the looming demise of an administration that was ill-gotten.
Social media needs regulation and supervision. Trump and his band of white supremacists aren't the ones to do it.
Vote! Get these people outta there!
===
What Trump Is Doing While We Aren't Looking
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
9
I don't get it. The originator of a search picks the words for the search. If he is pro-Trump he might use different words than if he were anti-Trump. Google has no role in that.
19
Trump doesn't get it either.
4
As you point out, these are not benign companies. There are real reasons for demanding more transparency about how they vacuum up and then sell or use our data. Republicans have no interest in that issue, since it fits with their philosophy of putting corporate interests ahead of the interests of ordinary citizens. For them, "transparency" is just a club to accomplish their real goal.
Not so ironically, the Trump administration and the Republican party, including the FCC head Ajit Pai, have successfully waged a war on Net Neutrality. The overall result will likely be suppression of alt-left viewpoints, far more than suppression of alt-right viewpoints. If they can browbeat Google into actively biasing its searches rightward, BINGO.
I'm no leftie, but is it clear that the decades-old whine that the media are left-leaning is a lie. During the Vietnam war, for example, almost 90% of newpapers endorsed Nixon in both of his elections. Yet the fact that a few outlets like the Times covered the uglier aspects of that war became fodder for accusations that the media were not only lefties, but treasonous. The drumbeat has only gotten louder since then.
Many people don't want a free press. They apparently would rather be lied to. If we are not careful, they, and we along with them, will get what they want.
78
@Charles
" it clear that the decades-old whine that the media are left-leaning is a lie. During the Vietnam war, for example, almost 90% of newpapers endorsed Nixon"
The fact that you back up your claim that the media doesn't have a leftwing bias by referring to an event over half a century ago is telling.
@Tara Pines
His point, that clearly soared well over your head, is this:
The US, it's political parties and media is mostly center-right on an honest evaluation of the political spectrum. This march rightward started back in Vietnam, with Nixon and has steadily continued.
Look at this newspapers support of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hardly a leftist approach.
The fact that many different media companies are criticizing the current President, does not reduce down to bias alone. Trump's own actions and words give many a reason to criticize and that can be wholly independent of your personal feelings for him.
2
It is this type of right wing pressure that lead most media outlets in 2016 to but as much focus on the bogus accusations against Clinton as they did to the real issues surrounding Trump, with perhaps dreadful results. The media still today often tries to offer a balanced viewpoint in attempts to avoid this criticism. The suggestion of the headline "Democrats and Republicans disagree on the shape of the earth" is frightening close to what happens.
40
@Jerry in NH
Oil Company scientists starting telling their bosses that burning fossil fuels could create global warming back in the 1970s so the oil companies made their gear stronger for worse weather and started hiring fake scientists to go on TV opposite of real scientists and claim that any affect by pollution on the weather is impossible. This went on for decades, with the Networks, then Cable News, all playing along.
2
Who cares if the government regulates a media company that bends
over backwards to accommodate repressive governments elsewhere?
Better to educate our public that those companies are *not* the
"town square" and have nothing to do with freedom of speech and
the press. So, the first contribution toward this, Times, is to stop calling Twitter and Facebook the "de facto town square."
8
Never has it been more important to be careful making judgement calls when it comes to news sources. In addition to NYT and others, I've found well-vetted content on foreign media sites. You would be surprised how good European correspondents in the US are.
62
@JohnKIncluding, I would venture to say, the RT - Russia Today. I include their news report in my daily binge of PBS and mainstream. I find their sources and reporting to be well-informed and fair.
First, stop expecting 'truth' from Internet search sites. Such sites can be one source, but all sources must be correlated these days. The endless Right Wing caterwauling about the 'liberal' media has had the effect of producing a 'false equivalence' factor in what is considered 'main stream' media outlets (NYT, WaPo, Wall Street Journal, etc.). As Paul Krugman explains, we now have print editors and television news producers that, should Republicans declare tomorrow that the earth is flat, would hedge their bets against relentless Republican complaining by giving up the headline: Democrats and Republicans Disagree About the Shape of the Earth. This has the overall affect on the public of making Republican excesses into mild assertions. Thus, the parable of Creationism becomes a legitimate counter argument with four hundred years of scientific inquiring known as evolution science. No matter how outrageous and unfounded claims from the Right, they afforded some introduction into the so called 'debate'.
56
@alprufrock
Yes and that is how the right moves the entire conversation to the right, while Democrats follow them along like puppies. It has been so effective that they have left a good portion of the country, who aren't swayed, unrepresented.
1
The Birther Liar In Chief wants more 'fair and balanced' search results of his Birther Lies, Pizzagate, 'Benghazi', and Infowars conspiracy theories so he can feed Trump Nation his Recommended Daily Allowance of lies.
The late German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt, who was an expert on the nature of power, authority, totalitarianism and the Third Reich said:
"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie — a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days — but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."
Donald Trump only life skills are the ability to destroy facts and to foment hatred as he flushes America down his psychological black hole.
Americans need to forcefully reject this sociopath on November 6 2018.
339
@Socrates
Unfortunately, capitalism is dominated by liars, because lying short-circuits the market, delivering profits where none should be.
So the liars keep making up bigger lies, the best liars believe their own lies, and soon they are lying about corporations and why governments charter them, and they are lying about what government is and what it is supposed to do, and soon they are saying, "the government is the enemy,' and "drown it in a bath tub." Corporations are the saviors that you must bribe with tax dollars (they don't want to pay), and cuts to all social programs because most people (We the People?) are just lazy moochers.
So the lying spins out of control, until 90% of the Republican Party is enthralled by a lying salesman, in way over his head.
Markets and money are going no where fast, but there is no reason why we should be giving tax breaks to capital. Humans are the important thing in the economy. Not machinery and not the people that own the machinery, who keep getting bailed out by our government, which they claim to hate. Global bankers get trillions in net interest and other scams straight from the federal reserve, and they use the money to lobby for tax cuts. But they are salesmen with lies repeated by thousands of people they pay to repeat those lies.
Markets really don't care about people. Markets care about money. One billion dollars. One billion votes.
To counter markets, you need democracy. Equality under the law. One person. One vote.
2
I am teaching students about the importance of understanding respected sources, so if Google gets assaulted by the presidents, my students will still understand what sources to use.
31
The Re[publican Party takes every opportunity to destroy Democracy. Their constant attempt to stifle voting rights of minorities in almost every state is almost laughable if it weren't so despicable. They carried gerrymandering to extreme after the 2010 election. It has taken 8 years to get the courts to start demanding they be more balanced. That's one of the reason they are so serious in getting Republicans in all levels of judgeships. The ending of the fairness doctrine in the media was their crowning achievement that permitted them to have their own bias machines. Fox News, Sinclair broadcasting , are examples of how they used this.
They are masters at using the uninformed and fear to mobilize a base of Know Nothinfgs agaion.
105
@tom
Yes, they openly say that "the government is the enemy."
"The government" is Our Republic, Our representative democracy. The government represents We the People, and we have authorized our Representatives (sworn to uphold the Constitution) to Tax and Spend on Our behalf, organize militias for the common defense (not offense all over the world), to promote the General Welfare (general meaning everyone, not massive tax cuts for the rich) and Justice and Tranquility (not Law and Order violently creating injustice).
If the Democrats rallied around the Constitution and what it says and actually went back to Taxing and Spending (instead of borrowing and subcontracting) to Promote the General Welfare to make the lives of We the People better, the Republican Scam would have no legs. Democrats have to give up trying to be the other party of the rich and go hard on the Constitution which is a Left Document. (You can tell it is a left document because the Right is against almost all of it.)
This all-out attack on the Constitution by the Party of Trump is a real danger, and it creates a real opportunity for the rest of us to recommit to our Founding Documents which have proved effective at making us all more equal, despite its inherent flaws and periodic major setbacks.
2
You mention that Alex Jones and Infowars were positioned near the center of the spectrum that Lou Dobbs used as "research" while Time Magazine was to the left.
There's a strip shop church next to the Starbucks I go to on Sunday mornings (strip shop churches spring up regularly around here and I keep wondering how they get people to attend), and I've noticed several of the members vehicles, including the minister's pickup, have Inforwars stickers. This op-ed made me wonder -- and I'm not being sarcastic -- how they would feel about being told they're in the center.
Somehow, I get the sense that they wouldn't like it.
21
We'd all be much better off encumbered with google glasses; from which we would stay informed -- thru social media bias.
What American wants to wear the Country's finances in the mirror, about town, the globe? BREAKING NEWS: "Americans do wear their country's finances, wherever they go". While dealing with the main causes of the debt would be very simple, the politics were tax and borrow dependent, and now have become addicted to printed money. For the time being, President Trump has changed the mindset from broken to rebuilding. Until Americans can muster the courage to confront their political weaknesses, the President offers a course of action that every American can wear with pride, wherever they go. MAGA!
Right now, our main political weakness is Trump and Trumpists. Something to do with their ranting about getting rid of "tax and borrow," while de facto taxes on nearly all go up to pay for $2 trillion of giveaway to the wealthiest. And debt climbs.
And they're plannng to pass out another $100 billion soon. Of which you will be getting zip.
6
@Jabin
That is incorrect. The less you tax, the more you have to borrow. The GOP tax plan insures that the deficit will increase rapidly over the next few years. This is not something I would label “rebuilding”.
By the way, “MAGA” now means “My Attorney Got Arrested”.
That is all.
9
@Evan Benjamin great one!
3
The asymmetry between the two sides of the political spectrum and respect for objective reality - facts - is overwhelming and must be constantly and aggressively (ALL CAPS?) reported in every possible way, literally for the sake of civilization itself. And it is not too much of a stretch to link this asymmetry to magical religious beliefs found much more on the right than left.
23
I think the spate of reassurances from google et al. that they aren't skewing the results misses the point. The point is, google skews their results all the time; you can pay for the privilege. And if they happened to choose to skew results politically, what law would prevent them from doing that? Aren't they free, by nature of their "person-hood" to "say" anything they want?
It's a complicated question, because if we want actual truth on the internet via regulation, then we'll end up with a Ministry of Truth, and we all know where that goes. Meanwhile, anyone with a modicum of discernment should know that internet search results must be read critically.
51
@Scott D. Carson. "The point is, google skews their results all the time; you can pay for the privilege."
No, you can't. Perhaps you are confusing the advertising that appears at the top as search results? Perhaps you have been convinced by the burgeoning search-engine-optimization (SEO) industry they have a fast track to rocket your site to the top of the heap?
Well, it ain't so. Google is ruthless with people and websites trying to game the search algorithm. Their whole business model depends on it.
3
Google is driven by the profit motive, not by a desire to convey full reports for search topics. That is the key defect of Google that will give Trump an edge. If he wants more favorable searches to rise to the top, he has only to make that profitable.
Google already practices this bias in searches for information about commercial products where pages of lauds and product peddlers eclipse solid information about any product you are thinking about buying.
12
The right-wing, led by Trump, has expanded its de-legitimizing efforts beyond the "mainstream media" into internet companies and even law-enforcement agencies.
The first step to fighting this is to call it out, as Ms. Goldberg is doing here, and use correct terminology like "right wing" and "disinformation." The right has for decades relentlessly labeled, smeared, accused, and attempted to de-legitimize anything that stands in their way, and it's about time they were called on it.
147
If Silicon Valley does not want to be regulated into giving preferences to right wing lies and conspiracy theories, then the answer is simple: Make sure that Democrats win in November.
I say that with a wink, but at the same time... they contributed to Trump's election by not policing themselves adequately in the last election. So in compensation, hadn't they ought to favor the other side this time around? Just to balance things out?
40
This is the line in the sand. Trump and his right wing band of fascists, are trying to legitimize the false propaganda that keeps them in power. These media companies do not have to participate in spreading their lies.
As I recall, the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech. Corporations now have civil rights concerning how they spend their money on political matters which is protected under the First Amendment. That means an information distribution company can distribute whatever information it wants just as a media company like Fox News can create whatever information it wants. Both are exercising their first amendment rights.
So if the fascists don't like their Google results, they should start their own right wing search engine and compete in the marketplace. That's the right wing solution to everything. The market.
The growth of Google shows us how this works. Google has been tremendously successful because it provides what people want. Obviously, they want the truth. They want real news, not fake conspiracies peddled by Fox.
The market has spoken and the people want the truth. Now the fascists want to pressure the truth tellers to spread their lies. That's why I call them fascists. Because they are.
549
@Bruce Rozenblit, something very similar to your suggestion already happened. Conservatives decided they didn't like the content of Wikipedia, so they (the son of Phyllis Schlafly) created the farcical "Conservapedia" to provide a conservative viewpoint to reality. Of course, reading through it is like being on another planet. It's ranking? In the U.S. it sits at #29,663 compared to Wikipedia's #8 ranking.
3
@Bruce Rozenblit I think there needs to be a contest to name the new right wing search engine...
1
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
Eric Arthur Blair
26
If conservative views are suppressed, why is it that conservatives control most of the country and we all know what their viewpoints are? They don't want their voices heard, they want to be the ONLY voices heard. Conservatives have been whining and complaining victimhood my entire adult life and it is beyond tiresome.
422
@BillFNYC
Maybe you should look at from the view that when reasonable conservative viewpoints are suppressed there remains only the unreasonable ones already held.
2
@BillFNYC
Yes, and since they make it very clear what policies they prefer, why don't we check them against the Constitution too see if they follow the mission.
Let's start at the top.
We the People? No, we worship the really smart people, the Creators of Wealth, while we get paid little to work.
A more perfect Union? No we prefer divisions by class, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, anything we can think of really, preferably applying militarized law enforcement. If you call us out for dividing our Union, we will call you PC and accuse you of identity politics. Lol
"Justice" or "tranquility?" No, we prefer "law and order," because you can impose law and order in a way that is far from tranquil and get results that are not just. And that's just the way we like them.
Common Defence? Well, that's what we say, as an excuse to wage a continuous offense against large portions of the world with bases in most of the rest. Standing armies with little congressional oversight!
Promote the general welfare. Of course. We constantly demand more tax cuts for the owners of the machinery that replaces you. This is good because someday real soon these tax cuts are going to trickle down on you, and even better, when we steal Social Security, you won't be a moocher anymore.
Congress is specifically given the power to tax and spend. That is supposed to be what congress does. They are the representatives of We the People. But Republicans would rather borrow, and spend, lie and steal.
1
@BillFNYC
This is so true! Trump, Pence and the rest of them are nothing but complainers. Spoiled brats. In literally all situations when they don't get their way, they whine and cry that they are being treated unfairly. They project that they are the underdog, being treated unfairly, whining like an uncontrolled child. Sadly, the media cow-tows to this so Trump and his band of junior high thugs keeps pumping out the lies.
1
Simply put:
A lot of bad stories about Trump come up on Google searches . . . or from any other big search engine because;
"There are a lot of bad stories about Trump" !
As scandals unfold on a daily basis faster than Trump can say; "Fake News . . . Witch Hunt" - all that is left for him to attack are the search engines themselves.
He has already done a tremendous disservice to the world and American people with his constant attack on "any" media which does not fawn over Trump.
"Does Google tag and track it's users" - Of course they do. "Does Google tailor search results based on this practice" - Of course they do. . . .
So ! As a very experienced researcher, I use many search engines and a wide variety of search terms. Results do vary as to the hierarchy of the results, however, multiple results do bear out a commonality of repeated to hits. Of course you can use a variety of free VPN's and repeat searches without the geo-tagging . . . guess what similar results. Bring Trump into the equation and park all reality at the door. Simply put, Google does not pander to Trump like Fox and Sinclair does.
The balance of favorable versus non favorable stories about Trump is quite accurate by ratio - as - no one before him has: Lied More Often - Abused the Power of his Office - Help Destroy Education - Work tirelessly at discrediting our Justice System - and has pretty much became the laughing stock of our dying planet . . .
90
Since our president apparently doesn't read newspapers -- and never has -- he doesn't know that their function is to inform and criticize (not necessarily in that order). A lot of people idolized President Obama, but NY Times and the rest of the "liberal" press took plenty of journalistic shots at him for his performance while in office. If Trump perceives the press as a negative force in his presidency, he might stop to think about why most Americans don't like him. It's not because they're reading newspapers. Most people don't. It's because they're watching the sad spectacle of a president who makes a sad spectacle of himself every day with his ludicrous tweets and rants.
227
There’s no way that the US gets one version of news and the rest of the world another. How would they do that?
4
Is Trump interested in free speech or punishing Silicon Valley companies for not being sufficiently pro-Trump? After his tirades (and tax assaults) on Amazon/Jeff Bezos, need one ask?
33
A minority of media does not examine what Trump publicly states or questions many of his opinions. Why should the majority of media have to take the back seat for not challenging the President?
This minority is covered by Goggle fairly. The President wants to stifle the media who accurately cover the news.
3
The paranoia of the Right is insatiable!Fox News, their favorite , parrots their agenda from morning to night.Now they are on a crusade to badger the tech giants to run their story lines non stop.They are the epitome of “fake news”- news which has no basis in fact.They have plenty of access to opinion expression both in print and on the radio.They are entitled to opinion but not to dictating their terms to Tech that they need a lot more prominent coverage to spread the party line.
38
"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up"
- Lily Tomlin
Ms. Goldberg, you are not cynical enough.
Even "a world where objective information and right-wing disinformation are treated equally" would never be enough to satisfy "alternative facts" and "truth isn't truth" conservatives.
In Trump's world, in conservative talk radio, in many G.O.P led congressional committees, on web sites where the thug Alex Jones is considered more centrist than Time magazine, on the #1 cable news show ... everywhere conservatives control the content, the story is all too often the same:
There is right-wing "information" and everything else are lies.
26
"There’s a real danger that tech companies will give in to pressure to accept the right’s notion of fairness,..."
Do you mean, like the tech companies acquiescing to dictatorial states and their demands that troublesome material be blocked?
7
Hey Google: you really want to Don't Be Evil? Show Mr. Trump what bias against him really looks like. Your employees all want to, and a bunch of other tech companies will follow suit.
13
Here is what I believe is the most chilling sentence in this op ed:
"Right now, Google is considering offering censored internet searches in China in order participate in that country’s lucrative market."
This is proof that in a global economy businesses are borderless and, therefore, unwilling to acknowledge that the suppression of information within some nations is acceptable as long as the limited speech takes place in a "lucrative market". Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil". Squelching free speech seems to defy that motto. If Google really wants to live by their motto they should insist that every county they serve allows free speech to its citizens even if Google's shareholders lose a "lucrative market".
38
In short: "Erase tank man!" "NO." "But money!" "Ok."
1
"Sure enough, on Thursday, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to look into Google’s 'anticompetitive conduct.' Among other complaints, he cited reports that Google has 'decided to remove from its platform legal businesses that the company apparently does not agree with.'”
I would point out to Senator Hatch that Google is a private company and as such, can show or not show content on it's platform as it sees fit.
There are search engines other than Google and browsers other than Chrome; I believe that the usual argument from Mr. Hatch's party is that regulation is unnecessary, as if the consumer found Google's practices objectionable, we would migrate to those other platforms and thus Google would be taught a stern lesson by the marketplace. So, why not in this case?
276
@Cwnidog
This is an obvious point which I am surprised has not entered the discussion more widely. I do not see any compelling legal basis for the federal government to regulate the content that Google, Twitter and other news platforms provide. Anti-trust is very, very weak. These are ideas, not material goods. These companies operate in free space, the frequency-dependent platforms which are regulated by the FCC. I find it alarming that people are accepting at face vale Trump's blatant attempt to intimidate these companies by implying that he has the authority to take actions against them. And there are the Republican lap dogs - Hatch and Scalise in this case - backing up his demagogic posturing. God help the American people - how did our ability to think for ourselves become so compromised? If you don't like the Google, Twitter, et al - don't use them!
9
@Cwnidog Brrilliant, thank you.
4
@Cwnidog: Agree with you, but then Orrin Hatch has been a sleazy sell-out since way back in the days of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Many of us still vividly remember what he said about Anita Hill.
5
It's laughable to assert a left-wing bias on social media. How often have I scrolled through a series of ten or twelve ugly political Facebook reposts from my cousin Skip--photoshopped pictures of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with untrue and incendiary claims, and fawning support of Trump. I refuse to do politics of any kind on Facebook, so there would be no "algorithm" to suppose that I might be interested. Where is this trash coming from? (P.S. I finally unfriended Skip.)
191
@Anne W. - the discussion is not about social media posts. It's about google, and other, "news" searches.
@alan Anne's right. Trump has gone after Facebook as well, calling it "anti Trump".
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@alan From the editorial: "It was part of an escalating right-wing assault on various technology platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which conservatives are accusing, in timeworn fashion, of liberal bias."
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This is scary. Combine this story w the article by Ben Rhodes today in NYTimes and this situation is very scary.
What to do? How do we combat false equivalency?
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