Andreas Ekstrom presents his dreams and beliefs on the unbiased clean search result. The idea that when you search something on the world wide web, you will get an unfiltered unbiased answer.
I've personally used google my entire life and have never given my search results a second thought. If I do not get the answer I'm looking for, I simply revise my search and try again. I never knew that google may be changing my results.
Andreas presentation was not about whether or not google almighty strength should be quelled or not, but rather just the fact that their influence exists means that our searches can be manipulated for the better or worse.
We are told not to judge or show bias towards anyone. But how do we put our own judgement aside, to let others form their own opinion.
He goes on to show how the personal bias of the google coders influenced the results of the search results during large public events. He google searches images for Michelle Obama and Andres Behring Breivik. In 2009 people attempted to make a mockery of the new first lady of America. They twisted an image of her and made her into a monkey. Google reacted and removed every trace of the image. They rewrote code and erased it. In 2011, again people made a mockery of someone by twisting the image results of them on google. Google did nothing this time. This time, it was the image of a terrorist who massacred children. His image was replaced by dog poop on a sidewalk. There was no mass rewrite of code to remove the images.
Here is the example of a personal bias. Googles personal bias.
Should google treat the two incidents the same? Should they have to give the same services to everyone? Whether or not the person is honorable and deserves such privilege?
No matter your answer to these questions, the point that Andreas is attempting to make is that in this day and age it is difficult to take our personal opinion and separate it from fact. He starts by talking about how we can google facts that are typically universally accepted, such as the capital of France or the chemical make-up of water. If we search these things we will get a factual answer. He says that the problem comes when we search things that are not necessarily factual, rather subjects that have many answers.
When we search these types of questions, we are typically greeted by many different answers, many of which are based on personal opinions. As we have found out from other parts of his video, sometimes these results are altered and controlled by someone else based on what they want someone to see when they search that question.
Andreas thoughts drift to whether or not we will ever be able to separate our personal bias and opinion. Such as thing would allow us to have an unaltered result. He ponders this and then presents the question to us. His audience. For us to form our own opinion on.
You can watch his TED talk here, https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_ekstrom_the_moral_bias_behind_your_search_results#t-316937
I've personally used google my entire life and have never given my search results a second thought. If I do not get the answer I'm looking for, I simply revise my search and try again. I never knew that google may be changing my results.
Andreas presentation was not about whether or not google almighty strength should be quelled or not, but rather just the fact that their influence exists means that our searches can be manipulated for the better or worse.
We are told not to judge or show bias towards anyone. But how do we put our own judgement aside, to let others form their own opinion.
He goes on to show how the personal bias of the google coders influenced the results of the search results during large public events. He google searches images for Michelle Obama and Andres Behring Breivik. In 2009 people attempted to make a mockery of the new first lady of America. They twisted an image of her and made her into a monkey. Google reacted and removed every trace of the image. They rewrote code and erased it. In 2011, again people made a mockery of someone by twisting the image results of them on google. Google did nothing this time. This time, it was the image of a terrorist who massacred children. His image was replaced by dog poop on a sidewalk. There was no mass rewrite of code to remove the images.
Here is the example of a personal bias. Googles personal bias.
Should google treat the two incidents the same? Should they have to give the same services to everyone? Whether or not the person is honorable and deserves such privilege?
No matter your answer to these questions, the point that Andreas is attempting to make is that in this day and age it is difficult to take our personal opinion and separate it from fact. He starts by talking about how we can google facts that are typically universally accepted, such as the capital of France or the chemical make-up of water. If we search these things we will get a factual answer. He says that the problem comes when we search things that are not necessarily factual, rather subjects that have many answers.
When we search these types of questions, we are typically greeted by many different answers, many of which are based on personal opinions. As we have found out from other parts of his video, sometimes these results are altered and controlled by someone else based on what they want someone to see when they search that question.
Andreas thoughts drift to whether or not we will ever be able to separate our personal bias and opinion. Such as thing would allow us to have an unaltered result. He ponders this and then presents the question to us. His audience. For us to form our own opinion on.
You can watch his TED talk here, https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_ekstrom_the_moral_bias_behind_your_search_results#t-316937
That's a nice summation of his argument and you correctly point out that he doesn't really make a value judgment about whether google's bias is a good or bad thing. That's big question: where do community standards end and censorship begins? Tough question.
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