How the Internet Filters Reality

[HiTempguy1]

It's been pretty interesting reading about the James Damore Google lawsuit (he's the guy that penned the internal memo about Google suppressing political views/toxic culture against men and specifically white men). But more importantly, some interesting things are starting to crop up about just how filtered the internet experience is if you use a lot of tech based companies access points to get information.

Some background info:

https://www.wired.com/story/james-da...arrass-google/

https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-j...es-339f3d2d05f

Just to get this out of the way, I honestly have no problem with what Google did in regards to Damore. They are a company, they should be allowed to hire and fire whoever they want. My opinion of this stretches to everything though, including "protected" status individuals. With a non-government owned company, you should be able to hire and fire whoever you want. Same with some of the controversy over YouTube lately (that's a whole other discussion about anti-competitive and predatory pricing, which allows a company to gain marketshare while losing money), YouTube can censor/kickout whoever they want.

But onto the meat of the discussion. It's too bad the comment came from Jordan Peterson, but it still doesn't make it any less relevant. He recently made a suggestion to search bikini into Google images (just bikini) and do the same search in Bing. The result isn't drastic, but you all will notice the difference right away.

Now, while this is sort of a "whatever" type of experiment, there also recently were some articles up about Steven Crowder having a conversation with an Amazon Echo and asking it political and societal questions that are quite open for debate. There was a bit of an uproar over it even in regular news about the responses the Echo gave, with most claiming the responses were rigged/gamed. I don't know if I believe that the conversation wasn't rigged, I put it at about a 25% chance of being rigged, 75% chance of being honest.

Even Salon shows the kind of answers you get:

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/12/ama...-lives-matter/

All very interesting stuff. On top of all of this, to quit using these internet based services would practically require you to stop using the internet, or at the very least cause you to expend large amounts of money with little to show in return for doing so.

I think this all is slowly leading to a large crackdown on internet based companies. Bloomberg has been posting a lot of articles lately about 2018 will be the year internet based companies become regulated. Edit- I also think that you will start to see people being much more selective in what services they use, and an understanding that their personal data has value that shouldn't be given away so easily to "pay" for these services.

For the most part, you could speak with your wallet whether you supported a company or not in the past. It has been increasingly difficult to do so with the way modern retail and purchasing has gone.

[ZenOps]

Yup, you can severely curtail eyeball presence on search engines by just using keywords. But you can also gain more eyeballs that actually matter in the same way (not the unwashed masses)

Nuke Guam.

[Xtrema]

Alt-Right:



Replace Reddit with Youtube/Google.

[Brent.ff]

The day Zenops responds to me with a "yup....", will be a day of deep inner questioning..

[Masked Bandit]

So I did the bikini search in google vs. bing and nothing jumps out at me. What am I missing?

[rage2]

Bigger boobs on Bing.

[HiTempguy1]

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So I did the bikini search in google vs. bing and nothing jumps out at me. What am I missing?

Fat chicks. Oh, sorry, "plus sized beautiful women".

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Bigger boobs on Bing.

Nope.

I found it very interesting though. Obviously, you expect different search engines to give different results. But when you type "bikini" into a search engine, what do you expect? Not behemoth sized women

It just goes to show how much media shapes our worldview. Its like people who get all their news from CBC and think that what they report is factual news. No different than the stuff being spouted by the Echo/Alexa, you expect these sources to be relatively bias free. You ask the device to give you results, not THE definitive result. By doing so, you largely place your trust in a corporation.

Now if you agree with the result, then obviously you'll have no problem with it, because "ya you cisgender racist white misogynist, whats wrong with any of this?"

[Feruk]

So what's the solution? How do you monitor to ensure results returned are not bias? I'm not sure I'd trust government regulation any more than I would free market forces in ensuring what comes up in my Google search isn't bias. Given Facebook's recent election controversy, I do agree something has to be done, just not sure how.

[rage2]

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So what's the solution? How do you monitor to ensure results returned are not bias? I'm not sure I'd trust government regulation any more than I would free market forces in ensuring what comes up in my Google search isn't bias. Given Facebook's recent election controversy, I do agree something has to be done, just not sure how.

You use your own biases to determine if the results are biased because it doesn't fit your narrative, then rant about how xxx search engine is a (left or right) wing shithole.

[googe]

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Fat chicks. Oh, sorry, "plus sized beautiful women".



Nope.

I found it very interesting though. Obviously, you expect different search engines to give different results. But when you type "bikini" into a search engine, what do you expect? Not behemoth sized women

It just goes to show how much media shapes our worldview. Its like people who get all their news from CBC and think that what they report is factual news. No different than the stuff being spouted by the Echo/Alexa, you expect these sources to be relatively bias free. You ask the device to give you results, not THE definitive result. By doing so, you largely place your trust in a corporation.

Now if you agree with the result, then obviously you'll have no problem with it, because "ya you cisgender racist white misogynist, whats wrong with any of this?"

I typed bikini into both and see no plus size or behemoth women. I believe they try to cater to what they infer about user preferences based on search and browsing history. So if you are seeing large women from your computer, you might have just outed yourself.

[HiTempguy1]

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I typed bikini into both and see no plus size or behemoth women. I believe they try to cater to what they infer about user preferences based on search and browsing history. So if you are seeing large women from your computer, you might have just outed yourself.

I figured this argument would come about. But no, I like my women skinny, not a closet fatty chaser here. Nice try though.

I think a lot of people are in denial in this thread that have commented on their search results. I believe one is a full blown fatty lover But that's alright, something that a couple thousand people tried and agreed was occurring isn't actually happening, just #fakenews

[Tik-Tok]

Just tried it. For Google images, 3/52 on the first page showing would probably be considered plus sized models (though none a "behemoth" IMO), on Bing I got 1/52 plus size, and 2/52 were CGI women, lol. I think that was the first time I've used Bing for anything but maps in a decade.

[J-hop]

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I figured this argument would come about. But no, I like my women skinny, not a closet fatty chaser here. Nice try though.

I think a lot of people are in denial in this thread that have commented on their search results. I believe one is a full blown fatty lover But that's alright, something that a couple thousand people tried and agreed was occurring isn't actually happening, just #fakenews

So I googled that and yea I get the same thing as others mentioned, 90%+ flat stomached stereotypical models.

No offence (and you shouldn’t take offence as this was Jordan peterson’s example) but I think it’s a bad example that doesn’t illustrate the point. Plus sized models are a hot topic right now. Plus sized bikini models have no doubt been searched 1000x more now than they were even 10 years ago. Google no doubt uses those analytics to return results it determines to be relevant. Driven externally not internally. On top of that it is a fact that there are many more plus sized bikini models than there used to be.

In that regard it isn’t filtering reality, it’s showing you an exact reflection of both what is popular in a hit count sense and what is actually going on (more plus sized models). In this example it’s doing a decent job. As I mentioned I maybe see 10% (if I’m being really generous to Jordan’s point) non stereotypical flat stomached models. That makes sense, the minority of bikini models are plus sized and the minority of people searching are looking for plus sized bikini models. It would actually be filtering reality if you did NOT see a single plus sized bikini model. Suggesting that it’s following some internal SJW narrative in this case is a red herring IMO.

I get what you’re saying and I did listen to Jordan Peterson’s talk where he brings that up and unfortunately I think it’s a really bad example to illustrate the point

[HiTempguy1]

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Google no doubt uses those analytics to return results it determines to be relevant.

You are correct, but those analytics would also show that the search (if that is the case) would be 1% of searches. Now of course, the term bikini itself probably isn't searched very often as its not very descriptive.

People aren't SEARCHING for fat chicks in bikinis. You can argue this all you want without having access to their data, but I stand by that statement. So it is indeed following a SJW narrative, as google is falsely boosting these images being shown when they aren't in demand.

I think its a great example, and the tech industry has shown that it is enforcing liberal values in its various results and products.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...minist/551291/

This just came up. I'm ignoring that its The Atlantic. The article itself is bullshit, but the changes to Alexa are documented.

[Tik-Tok]

Or maybe if you're just searching "bikini" you're likely a woman looking to buy one, so they want to target that audience.

Google "hot chick bikini" and see if any fatties show up.

[rage2]

My Bing results look pretty normal to me.

[Xtrema]

Google return all the places near me where I can buy bikini.

Bing returns actually what old google would, more academic results.

Picture wise, Bing is hotter to me.

EDIT: Bing is fucked up. One of the suggestions is 9th Grade Bikini when you search bikini on Bing image. Click on that and it suggests 5th grade next.

Is Bing the defacto search engine of pedos?

[J-hop]

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You are correct, but those analytics would also show that the search (if that is the case) would be 1% of searches. Now of course, the term bikini itself probably isn't searched very often as its not very descriptive.

People aren't SEARCHING for fat chicks in bikinis. You can argue this all you want without having access to their data, but I stand by that statement. So it is indeed following a SJW narrative, as google is falsely boosting these images being shown when they aren't in demand.

I think its a great example, and the tech industry has shown that it is enforcing liberal values in its various results and products.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...minist/551291/

This just came up. I'm ignoring that its The Atlantic. The article itself is bullshit, but the changes to Alexa are documented.

Really? With all the media around fat shaming, body acceptance, plus sized models being promoted in the news lately you don’t think these searches are being made?

Hell there was recently a thread with two or three pages of images of plus sized models in bikinis and people debating them.