Below is my column in The Hill on the recent notice that this blog is now being formally “reviewed” by NewsGuard, a company that I just criticized in a prior Hill column as a threat to free speech. The questions from NewsGuard were revealing and concerning. Today, I have posted the response of NewsGuard’s co-founder Gordon Crovitz as well as my response to his arguments.
Here are is the column:
Recently, I wrote a Hill column criticizing NewsGuard, a rating operation being used to warn users, advertisers, educators and funders away from media outlets based on how it views the outlets’ “credibility and transparency.”
Roughly a week later, NewsGuard came knocking at my door. My blog, Res Ipsa (jonathanturley.org), is now being reviewed and the questions sent by NewsGuard were alarming, but not surprising.
I do not know whether the sudden interest in my site was prompted by my column. I have previously criticized NewsGuard as one of the most sophisticated operations being used to “white list” and “black list” sites.
My new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” details how such sites fit into a massive censorship system that one federal court called “Orwellian.”
For any site criticizing the media or the Biden administration, the most chilling words today are “I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you.”
Conservatives have long accused the company of targeting conservative and libertarian sites and carrying out the agenda of its co-founder Steven Brill. Conversely, many media outlets have heralded his efforts to identify disinformation sites for advertisers and agencies.
Brill and his co-founder, L. Gordon Crovitz, want their company to be the media version of the Standard & Poor’s rating for financial institutions. However, unlike the S&P, which looks at financial reports, NewsGuard rates highly subjective judgments like “credibility” based on whether they publish “clearly and significantly false or egregiously misleading” information. They even offer a “Nutrition Label” for consumers of information.
Of course, what Brill considers nutritious may not be the preferred diet of many in the country. But they might not get a choice since the goal is to allow other companies and carriers to use the ratings to disfavor or censor non-nutritious sites.
The rating of sites is arguably the most effective way of silencing or marginalizing opposing views. I previously wrote about other sites supported by the Biden administration that performed a similar function, including the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
GDI then released a list of the 10 most dangerous sites, all of which are popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. GDI warned advertisers that they were accepting “reputational and brand risk” by “financially supporting disinformation online.” The blacklisted sites included Reason, a respected libertarian-oriented source of news and commentary about the government. However, HuffPost, a far left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
When NewsGuard came looking for Res Ipsa, the questions sounded like they came directly from GDI.
I was first asked for information on the financial or revenue sources used to support my blog, on which I republish my opinion pieces from various newspapers and publish original blog columns.
Given NewsGuard’s reputation, the email would ordinarily trigger panic on many sites. But I pay not to have advertising, and the closest I come to financial support would be my wife, since we live in a community property state. If NewsGuard wants to blacklist me with my wife, it is a bit late. Trust me, she knows.
NewsGuard also claimed that it could not find a single correction on my site. In fact, there is a location for readers marked “corrections” to register objections and corrections to postings on the site. I also occasionally post corrections, changes and clarifications.
NewsGuard also made bizarre inquiries, including about why I called my blog “Res Ipsa Liquitur [sic] – the thing itself speaks. Could you explain the reason to this non-lawyer?” Res ipsa loquitur is defined in the header as “The thing itself speaks,” which I think speaks for itself.
But one concern was particularly illuminating:
“I cannot find any information on the site that would signal to readers that the site’s content reflects a conservative or libertarian perspective, as is evident in your articles. Why is this perspective not disclosed to give readers a sense of the site’s point of view?”
I have historically been criticized as a liberal, conservative or a libertarian depending on the particular op-eds. I certainly admit to libertarian viewpoints, though I hold many traditional liberal views.
For example, I have been outspoken for decades in favor same-sex marriage, environmental protection, free speech and other individual rights. I am a registered Democrat who has defended reporters, activists and academics on the left for years in both courts and columns.
The blog has thousands of postings that cut across the ideological spectrum. What I have not done is suspend my legal judgment when cases touch on the interests of conservatives or Donald Trump. While I have criticized Trump in the past, I have also objected to some of the efforts to impeach or convict him on dubious legal theories.
Yet, NewsGuard appears to believe that I should label myself as conservative or libertarian as a warning or notice to any innocent strays who may wander on to my blog. It does not appear that NewsGuard makes the same objection to HuffPost or the New Republic, which run overwhelmingly liberal posts. Yet, alleged conservative or libertarian sites are expected to post a warning as if they were porn sites.
NewsGuard is not alone in employing this technique. Mainstream media outlets often label me as a “conservative professor” in reporting my viewpoints. They do not ordinarily label professors with pronounced liberal views or anti-Trump writings as “liberal.”
Studies show that the vast majority of law professors run from the left to the far left. A study found that only 9 percent of law school professors at the top 50 law schools identify as conservative. A 2017 study found only 15 percent of faculties overall were conservative.
It is rare for the media to identify those professors as “liberal,” including many professors on the far left who regularly denounce conservatives or Republicans. It is simply treated as not worth mentioning. Yet, anyone libertarian or right of center gets the moniker as a warning that their viewpoint should considered in weighing their conclusions.
Yet, NewsGuard is in the business of labeling people . . . and warning advertisers. It considers my writings to be conservative or libertarian and wants to know “Why is this perspective not disclosed to give readers a sense of the site’s point of view?”
It does not matter that my views cut across the ideological spectrum or that I do not agree with NewsGuard’s label. Indeed, while I clearly hold libertarian views, libertarians run a spectrum from liberal to conservative. The common article of faith is the maximization of individual rights, while there is considerable disagreement on many policies. Steven Brill is considered a diehard liberal. Would it be fair to add a notice or qualifier of “liberal” to any of his columns or opinions?
It does not matter. Apparently from where NewsGuard reviewers sit, I am a de facto conservative or libertarian who needs to wear a digital bell to warn others.
It is a system that includes what Elon Musk correctly called “the advertising boycott racket.” Musk was responding to another such group pushing a rating system as an euphemism for blacklisting. For targeted sites, NewsGuard is now the leading racketeer in that system. It makes millions of dollars by rating sites — a new and profitable enterprise with dozens of other academic and for-profit groups.
They have commoditized free speech in blacklisting and potentially silencing others. If you are the Standard & Poor’s of political discourse, you can rate sites out of existence by making them a type of junk bond blog.
Yet, the fact that I have no advertisers or sponsors to scare off does not mean that NewsGuard cannot undermine the site.
The company has reportedly received federal contracts, which some in Congress have sought to block. It is also allied with organizations like Turnitin to control what teachers and students will read or use in schools.
The powerful American Federation of Teachers, which has been criticized for its far left political alliances with Democratic candidates, has also pushed NewsGuard for schools.
This is why my book calls for a number of reforms, including barring federal funds for groups engaged in censoring, rating or blacklisting sites.
NewsGuard shows that such legislation cannot come soon enough.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
N.B.: The original version of this column included MSNBC as an example of liberal sites that do not post their own ideological bent or label. I later heard from NewsGuard that they did indeed mark down MSNBC for failing to make such a disclosure, so I removed it from this blog column. I posted a response today on why I continue to oppose rating systems such as NewsGuard.
Did the bombing of Germany help to bring peace to Europe? Could the bombing of Russia help to bring peace to Europe, as well?
^^ Paid military-industrial complex troll. Ignore. ^^
Poor Anon…
You bomb Russia… they respond w nukes.
Ooops!
NewsGuard is awful! It’s a left-wing tool pretending to accurately rate with objective criteria. With a little experimentation one can see that it is essentially a tool to discredit controversial sites that give information that the left doesn’t like. For example, do a search with it on Islam, or islamophobia or jihad and you find that sites critical of Islam get very low rating no matter how much they back up their info with references & links to check. Islam-favorable sites get very high ratings.
I need a laptop PC rating
My current laptop runs windows 10 fine, but is not eligible for the widows 11 upgrade.
Search and find Razor Blade 18 inch laptop. Oh boy, this PC has all the bells & whistles.
Plenty of facets of life are rated, somehow. For example there are restaurant rating guides.
So ths is yet another nonissue inflated by Jonathan Turley.
So what you’re saying is that anything can be rated and no one should criticize the raters?
Your attempt at equivocation is rated a 2/10.
I’m sorry, but your comment is far more irrelevant and useless. So what that lots of things are rated. What matters is how those ratings are used. That’s the issue.
I guess this “Free Speech” thing doesn’t apply in the Houthi sex slave quarters you hole up in.
I guess the idea of “tortious intereference with business relationships” doesn’t apply in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where you “oversee” six-year-olds mining cobalt.
And, of course, the nom de merde you post under…is a nom de merde.
“Plenty of facets of life are rated, somehow. For example there are restaurant rating guides.”
Oh geez there are lot of jokes I could make.
Like your wife rating you in bed.
Hey Oh!
As you can see, some things shouldn’t be rated.
(That’s what she said! )
Doh! Sorry that last one slipped out.
But you get the idea.
We trust some ratings systems and do not trust others.
Generally we trust those systems where the participants rate transactions – like ebay, or Amazon. Or Rotten Tomatoes.
People as a whole, or those who rate their own transactions generally do not have an agenda and generally give us honest appraisals.
When we have profesional raterings – we expect transparency, we expect the raters to establish a track record for unbiased and accurate ratings. And we weight those ratings systems based on their performance – just as they purportedly rate others.
UL, Good Housekeeping CSA, Consumer reports, Michelin are raters. We trust them because they have spent decades delivering consistent relaiable unbiased and trustworthy results.
We USED to trust the media much more than we do today. We no longer trust the media because they have become unabashedly biased.
and they have been wrong so many times.
@John,
Yup until you get the trolls who create fake ratings.
I guess we should take everything w a grain of Kosher Salt. (The grains are bigger)
-G
What happened to Darren? Is he still moderating the comments section?
I see that he’s no longer listed as a guest blogger/contributor.
The inescapable fact is that Kamala Harris is not a “natural born citizen” by the phrase’s only definition in the history of the world.
The ONLY definition of “natural born citizen” at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the advent of self-governance existed in the Law of Nations by Vattel, which was published in 1758 and circulated in the American Colonies by 1762 and with which the American Revolutionaries, Founders, and Framers were eminently familiar.
The American Founders and Framers required the president to be an undefined “natural born citizen” in their new Constitution at the dawn of a new era.
“The circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the Law of Nations,” wrote Ben Franklin.
Blackstone mused only of “natural born subjects” and ligeance to a liege lord or king within, and relevant only to, the structure of an obsolete monarchy and dictatorship.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly, that copy which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the college of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed, has been continually in the hands of the members of our congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author.”
– Ben Franklin Letter to Charles Dumas, December 9, 1775, Continental Congress
________________________________________________________________________________________
NATURAL BORN SUBJECT (Obsolete/Irrelevant)
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357– 58, 361–62
1765
The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors.
_____________________________________________
NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 19
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
_________________________________
“OF THE FIVE, THE ONE THE AMERICAN FOUNDERS MOST FREQUENTLY CONSULTED WAS VATTEL.”
“The Ideas that formed the Constitution, Part 20: Vattel and the Law of Nations”
The Law of Nations
Legal terms of art also appear in what constitutional lawyers call the “Define and Punish Clause” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 10). This provision gives Congress power to “define and punish Offenses … against the Law of Nations.”
The Founders’ Sources of International Law
During the 17th and 18th centuries, five great scholars forged international law into its modern shape. In 1783, the Confederation Congress empaneled a committee consisting of James Madison of Virginia, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, and Hugh Williamson of North Carolina—all of whom were to serve at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. This committee recommended that Congress purchase the works of all five international law scholars.
Emer de Vattel
Of the five, the one the American Founders most frequently consulted was Vattel. Like Grotius, Vattel was both a scholar and diplomat. His principal work, “Le Droit des Gens” (“The Law of Nations”), was published in French in 1758 and translated into English two years later. You can learn more about Vattel’s life at the Online Library of Liberty.
There were four reasons why Vattel was so congenial to the American Founders: First, he was the most recent of the five great authorities. Second, his book was comprehensive and readable. Third, he was a strong advocate for individual liberty. And fourth, he discussed issues that, while not always part of the “law of nations,” were very important to the Founders: the nature of confederations, the superiority of constitutions to legislatures, the need for one and only one person to supervise the executive branch, and so forth.
Vattel was referenced at the Constitutional Convention, primarily in a speech by Luther Martin of Maryland. He also showed up during the ratification debates. For example, at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, James Wilson argued about Vattel with an Antifederalist delegate. In the South Carolina legislature, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney also debated Vattel with an Antifederalist. In New York, Gov. George Clinton relied on Vattel in a speech to his state’s ratifying convention.
– Rob Natelson, Independence Institute . org
Sorry have to debunk this.
Yes, she’s a naturally born citizen.
You could claim her to be an anchor baby for her parents who were in the US on (AFAIK Student Visas.)
Get a clue.
The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.
I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
– The Law of Nations, Emer de Vattel
Nope.
Learn the law.
Jus Soli. Google it if you don’t believe me.
Now I am no fan of Kamel Toe but unfortunately she is a natural born citizen.
Silly me–when I taught high school English, the kids were taught that the first thing they should do when searching the internet for research purposes was click “About” and decide whether they believed the site was responsible/reliable. Here I was thinking it important for students to think for themselves when greater powers could have done it for them.
And if a site was deliberately crafted to feature irresponsible/unreliable/deceptive content, you really think that the site owner(s) would accurately reflect that on the “About” page, instead of including a crapload of back-slapping, disingenuous falsehoods there? I have a metropolitan area bridge for sale, at a special low price this week. Would you be interested?
Margot Cleveland wrote a good companion piece regarding the Professor’s account of his collision with NewsGuard, pointing out a few irregularities indicating that NewsGuard is anything BUT an unbiased arbiter:
Targeting Law Professor Turley Again Proves NewsGuard Is A Powerful Scam
https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/29/targeting-law-professor-turley-again-proves-newsguard-is-a-powerful-scam/
Meanwhile, Google’s search engine has apparently been caught burying information about the attempted Trump assassination:
“Google says it took ‘no manual action’ to hide Trump assassination attempt from search suggestions”
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/google-says-it-took-no-manual-action-hide-trump-assassination-attempt-search
It’s like the assassination attempt never happened — exceot it DID happen.
No. You missed what they said and what they did.
They didn’t take any manual action to specifically block that content.
Try doing Google searches w auto complete on Trump.
You won’t be surprised by the results.
Google, Facebook are at it again.
They know that the FBI, FTC, and Congress will do nothing.
-G
“This is why my book calls for a number of reforms, including barring federal funds for groups engaged in censoring, rating or blacklisting sites.”
I would generally agree with this statement.
However.
How does this compare with blacklisting, or rating sites for security purposes? In business, we block many sites because their content is outweighed by their sketchy security policies. While I don’t want to create an ‘out’ for government regulation of itself I would caution there are legitimate uses for blocking sites unrelated to the political aspects of the content. These security concerns/reasons could be transparently communicated however to both the site owner/host and those on the receiving end of the blacklist.
Thanks for the Article,
Anon E. Moose
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
– Elizabeth Willing Powel
_____________________________
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin, September 17, 1787
_______________________________________
You craven milquetoasts couldn’t.
Dear Prof Turley,
This is all very interesting. I hope you & Gordon can work it out. .. although I think Gordon (‘newsguard’) is playing with a stacked deck.
Fortunately, as the case may be, the ‘ratings’ of no news can be conditioned by anyone but his own self. Put that in your book ‘The Indispensable Right; Free Speech in The Age of Rage’ and smoke it.
For example, I rate the U.S. Congressional response to president ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu’s recent speech at a -39 news rating. Starting at -0- going the other way, hugely consequential and entirely dishonest.. . not to be believed.
*i.e. what Newsguard calls a ‘myth’.
^ Israel derangement syndrome.
And in lockstep the banking industry is punishing conservatives.
So now that Biden has said he will not run for President, what happened to all those anti aging posts?
Who has cognitive decline?
At a Minnesota rally Saturday, Trump confused Representative Ilhan Omar for another Muslim woman of Congress, Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib.
“Ilhan Omar,” Trump began in a rambling speech. “She went to a speech when I was … first running.… This lunatic was in the audience, she started screaming. I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ And it’s the same crazy person that I watch every night. She’s nuts.”
Omar responded to Trump’s remarks on X, writing, “Trump telling dangerous anti-Muslim lies is nothing new. But I have never attended one of his speeches. He is lying again or losing his memory.” Omar continued, “Trump should step aside as his criminal convictions and continued legal troubles have clearly taken a toll on the 78 year old conman.”
Shedding some light on the matter, The Independent reported that it was not Omar but Tlaib who interrupted Trump’s 2016 speech to the Detroit Economic Club prior to her election to the House.
Then a public interest attorney, Tlaib penned an op-ed explaining her decision at the time. “I told Trump that ‘our children deserve better’ and I asked him to provide a better example to our kids. I implored him to read the U.S. Constitution. And then I was grabbed by several security personnel who physically moved me to the exit while I continued to express my concerns,” Tlaib wrote.
Also, isn’t trump the guy that mistook the woman he raped for his former wife in a deposition?
No, he thought she was Tara Reade. His mistook himself for Joe Biden.
That would be hard to do as he did not rape anyone.
I am presuming that you mean that he Mistook a photo of E Jean Carroll for Marla Maples – that is correct – the photo was black and white from an oblique angle and 30+ years old – and at that time Maples and Carrol looked quite similar.
Didn’t they both marry their brothers? Or did they marry each other?
So in another words she acted like a spastic idiot.
So what? They both are.
So Trump conflated one islamic nut job with another.
All of us make mistakes – most of us make minor mistakes often of no consequence regularly.
That is NOT the same as cognative decline.
Trump has taken and passed the MOCA. Though he tries to claim he “aced” it – no one aces it. you are either in the normal range or you are not, if you are not it will bhroadly identify how significant your decline is.
The MOCA is pretty good at testing cognitive decline. My father had Vascular demesnia – he declined much like Biden only faster.
And the MOCA measured his decline step by step along the way.
It is possible that Trump is in very early stages of cognative decline – but if he was the MOCA would have caught that.
As it would have for Biden had he taken it – and I would bet that he likely has been taking it regularly for a decade.
I would note that Trump speaks publicly and extemporaneously for hours at a time many times a week.
A 20 year old could nopt do that and make less errors than Trump makes.
Biden could not take a few prepared questions from cherry picked reporters without screwing up.
Biden is well into cognative decline.
I would note that Harris – who is 60 makes more gaffes than Trump.
She is crazy. But she is not in cognative decline.
NewsGuard is no different than the Mafia coercing payments from local businesses for safety.
NewsGuard should therefore be charged by the DOJ under the RICO statutes.
Where has the mafia been lately? Haven’t heard much about those guys and their families and offspring…where ever could they be? Hmmmm….
“Given NewsGuard’s reputation, the email would ordinarily trigger panic on many sites. But I pay not to have advertising, and the closest I come to financial support would be my wife, since we live in a community property state. If NewsGuard wants to blacklist me with my wife, it is a bit late. Trust me, she knows.”
-=-
This is a bit deceptive.
Turley, you’re not a professor of law?
You’re not writing and selling books?
You don’t get paid for your time on Fox? Or your other articles?
While you pay for the right to publish your blog… sans advertisements… your other work pays for this site as well this site is used to help increase your visibility and frankly… is advertising for you and your other work. Its used to help establish your brand.
Please post an admission and correction on this topic.
As to you and your wife… I think those of us men who have been married longer than 25yrs know and appreciate your situation.
-G
Brown shirts are quite smug.
You really think Newsguard’s was asking Turley what he does for a living? YOU are the one who is being a bit deceptive. They are rating his site, not his personal life, so their question can only be asking for the identity of sponsors to his site. He doesn’t have any, by his choice. But that bothers you (for some unexplained reason) so you demand that he identify who pays him for other things he provides, such as his legal educational services to his university.
You provide a perfect example of why most people don’t find your arguments persuasive. They are thinly-disguised personal attacks unrelated to any universal principles that could benefit everybody.
Poor Anon.
If you read the article, they were asking him about how he finances his WordPress site which they are reviewing.
But you knew that. That was the point of his quote. I was merely showing that it was a false argument because he pays for this site from his other earned income and that this site is a business expense because he’s establishing his brand.
There was no attack on Turley other than poking fun of someone who’s been married for at least for 25yrs.
(Clearly something you’re not because you didn’t recognize the joke.)
[Free clue. Show me a man who’s been married for at least 25yrs and hasn’t been in the doghouse for no real reason…]
-G
“If you read the article, they were asking him about how he finances his WordPress site which they are reviewing.”
And why is that their business ?
This is a common fallacy of the left.
The credibility of a source has nothing to do with where it gets its money.
I just checked out their website.
It is a sca- er, um, a business.
You pay them to “evaluate” your site. They tell you how to be “better.”
Or, in the good professor’s case, they are going to “rate” his site and then, do what exactly?
He does not have any advertisers. As he noted, he pays NOT to have ads on his WP blog.
So, if they give him either a good rating or a bad one, no one cares. As many have noted, they assume the mantel of self-anointed guardians of the internet.
Who are they?
No one cares.
Does anyone think that is going to change the amount of web traffic to his site, just because they say so?
No.
They should be ignored.
The only appropriate response to them is short and sweet: GFY!
The success of the idea for financial health ratings companies is because the current and near term financial health is dependent on recent financial performance available per legal requirements. Outside discussions constrained to fundamental laws of physics, current events are fast unfolding with the basic truth taking surprising turns. Take the reporting on COVID for example. It was well nigh impossible to rate the veracity of news sites when high and supposedly expert governmental officials freely gave their opinions that eventually were shown to be wrong. The sites that were right would have been tagged as providing misinformation and the ones that were seen as correct would eventually be seen as wrong.
Perhaps what might be helpful to the consuming public is, not if a site is conservative or liberal – I think the public can figure that out, but rather if the site or person’s predictions have a good track record of coming to pass. So when the Secretary of the Treasury tells us that the inflation we are seeing is transitory, one should know what is the reliability of that prediction. That is does this person have a good record for predicting things like inflation trends?
“Google feature omits search results for failed Trump assassination; Big Tech accused of election manipulation”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/fox-news-tech/google-feature-omits-search-results-failed-trump-assassination-big-tech-accused-election-manipulation
“Google users searching for the attempted assassination of former President Trump were miffed when the desired results failed to populate on the search engine. Instead, the website autocomplete feature omitted the results of the July 13 shooting, drawing criticism from social media users who accused the Big Tech giant of trying to influence the presidential election.”
Google has been an unreliable search engine for quite a few years now. Subjecting it to anti-trust action needs to be at the top of the agenda when Trump gets reelected. There should definitely be an SEC investigation. This is the equivalent to a multi-million-dollar off-the-books contribution to the Harris campaign.
Google is now claiming that there was no human intervention that led to those results, as if that exonerates them. All that means (if true) is that they have managed to imbue their AI engine with an immutable left/collectivist bias. “AI’ doesn’t truly mean “Artificial Intelligence”, it means, rather “Artificial Insanity”.
I just did a generic (I never log in to Google) for “Trump” “assassination” “attempt”, and there were 31 pages of results listed. So, if there was no “manual” (their original word used in responding to the issue) intervention that resulted in the previous omission of search results, are we to assume that there was likewise no “manual intervention” that resulted in a correction shortly after criticism of Google was brought to bear? Or should we just conclude (some of use have been there for years) that the clowns that run Alphabet/Google are lying sacks of freshly defecated fertilizer?
I don’t understand why this is an issue at all. They are giving their opinion on this site. So what? They have the free speech right to do that. It is not “censorship” to criticize someone.
You have a point there sammy ole boy. Just as the democrats can say they can and will help people in order to get elected and then line their personal pockets and sell-out the nation to their financial buddies around the world at the expense of the very people they said they would help is simply free speech.
good boy sammy, have a treat.
Problem is that it pretends to be objective & accurate when with a little experimentation one can see that it is essentially a left-wing tool to discredit controversial sites that give information that the left doesn’t like. For example, do a search with it on Islam, or islamophobia or jihad and you find that sites critical of Islam get very low rating no matter how much they back up their info with references & links to check. Islam-favorable sites get very high ratings.