Google’s Search Algorithm Could Steal the Presidenc
10th August 2015
Imagine an election—a close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.
In other words: Google’s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency. “We estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,” says Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and one of the study’s authors, “that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.”
As Steven Hayward says:
I have no idea if there’s much to this, but beyond the techniques of “data mining” implied here, it should be filed away that Silicon Valley, and Google in particular, leans to the left, and even when not consciously left, tends toward an authoritarian elitism that is troubling. If Google could swing an election, there’s no doubt which way they’d swing it.
August 13th, 2015 at 16:19
Wake up for fuck sake. Every election has more electronic voting machines. Electronic “voting machines” can be rigged very easily. So there’s no reason to believe your vote is the vote you cast. Voting is a suckers game; it always has been. So don’t forget to vote in November, next year. The Koch brothers are counting on you.
After the 2004 election a local candidate in MS lost the election to her opponent. Afterward she went to the warehouse where the particular machines for her district were stored, after the election. She and a local newsman checked the machines by checking-off her name on the ballot. When she received her receipt for voting, it showed the other candidate on the receipt. More than a few machines showed that malady. She never did anything about it, that I know of. It was just swept under the rug. America, what a country.