In related news, I've read almost fifteen entire words about the new Facebook currency. I think it's either going to be the end of civilization as we know it —after all, a billion adoring customers have already forgiven that company for each of its sins— or its going to be the grinding, historical humiliation that Zuckerberg deserves.

Saif.

I've just googled it and found plenty of stuff about the attacks and arrest....

Yeah, but that's not the same thing. Google is diminishing serendipitous discovery.

What the article is talking about is not the actual search results, but the auto-complete suggestions that you get when you type in the beginning of a search string. It's kind of small potatoes, but it does fit the pattern.

I normally use Bing. (Never would have thought, 15 years ago, that I'd be using a Microsoft product to avoid anti-competitive behavior...) I've been trying to use DuckDuckGo, but I haven't gotten the hang of using its search engine.

> (Never would have thought, 15 years ago,
> that I'd be using a Microsoft product to
> avoid anti-competitive behavior...)

✓

I'll add that I'm starting to use MeWe for social networking, although so far I only have a few friends. They guarantee privacy and don't insert ads into your feed. In some ways it's more capable than Facebook, and in some ways it still needs work. But the UI is stable; they don't change it every other day like Facebook does. And MeWe doesn't do annoying things like making you click on "See more comments" fifty times in order to see all of a long thread.

Also starting to use Infogalactic as an alternative to Wikipedia. Infogalactic doesn't have any standards for what constitutes being "notable" enough to include. This might end up with it being full of trash, but at least it doesn't have a clique of super-empowered editors that use "notability" as an excuse to censor anything that they don't like.

There is a lot of monkey-business with Google search. Last year I think if you searched "american families images" you only got interracial couples--not doing it now.
Autocomplete is very wonky.
I've found Bing to be deficient in many cases but it is good to have an alternative. Don't know how duckduckgo makes money.

Just did it for you. I got mostly monoracial families, but a wide range.... mostly white but some black, Muslim/Middle Eastern looking, asian, and beige could be white or hispanic.

If you think they are manipulation searches for Jussie, just think what they are doing for all their pet democratic politicians, that are in google’s pocket.

Google tailors the results according to the info they have about you.

Open a browser in incognito/private mode and see the difference.

Try google images: 'American inventors'. Was supposedly something they did for Black history month years ago but never turned off.

"f you think they are manipulation searches for Jussie, just think what they are doing for all their pet democratic politicians, that are in google’s pocket. " Isab

Was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, about media manipulation. How one could bias searches not through the algorithm, but in other ways. The way we came up with was, when politicians get accused/convicted of crimes, (so many do, more deserve it) if they are R's make sure Republican is repeated often in the article especially the headline. And if it's a D, never have it appear in the headline, and if you put it in the article, quote a R or two so you can have the word Republican in the article too.
Or as CNN did with the VA Gov. blackface, call him the wrong party.
Then even a fair search engine would ping way more on "Republican accused of" Than "Democrat accused of".

Yep, American inventors... 2 white men, 1 black woman, and a bunch of black men. You are right.

Now try the same thing in Spanish or most other languages NicoleK. You get different answers depending on the language you use.

At this point I'm trying to eliminate all google products from my life. There are better alternatives out there and google has passed my tolerance for creepy and misleading.

Heh I just did inventeurs américains... mostly white dudes and a couple ladies...

Is that because americans specifically search for black inventors though? I can't imagine French people specifically searching for black american inventors. Black French ones. American ones. But not Black American ones...

Ben, what are you using instead of google? I'd like to as well, because of the Saudi slave, I mean wife, tracking app...

This problem is much broader than just google. The whole existence of a "mainstream" (and thus an Overton Window) assumes and requires the existence of news media that are trusted enough for one to form. That condition no longer obtains, and likely never will again.