{"id":214061,"date":"2019-11-21T10:45:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T16:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=214061"},"modified":"2019-11-21T18:27:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T00:27:57","slug":"wall-street-journal-google-altering-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wall-street-journal-google-altering-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Journal report: Google execs altering search results on abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A recent report<\/a> from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has revealed that, despite claims to the contrary, Google executives and engineers actively alter the search engine’s results in favor of big business and executives’ opinions, using blacklists and auto-complete to determine which web addresses appear at the top of the search. One of the common search topics the search engine seems to have modified the results for is the term abortion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Google holds an astounding 90 percent of the market share for all search engines, including Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing. It is so widely trusted that it’s become a verb rather than a name in the English language, and it is the most highly trafficked website in the world, helping its parent company earn over $30 billion in annual profit, according to WSJ. Basically, Google holds the power to inform the world and therefore control what versions of the truth it uses to answer the 3.8 million queries typed into the company’s search bar every minute<\/em>.<\/p>\n

According to the report from WSJ, when Google first began some two decades ago, it was built on the idea that search algorithms would do a better job than human beings in wading through the information available on the internet and spitting out the best results for the search users. In both private meetings and during congressional testimony, top Google executives have said that algorithms are objective and autonomous. They are meant to be “unsullied by human bias or business considerations” according to WSJ.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0ORWELLIAN: Abortion supporters lobby Google to ban pregnancy center ads on searches\u2026 about pregnancy<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“We do not use human curation to collect or arrange the results on a page,” reads the Google blog<\/a>. Yet the corporation\u00a0doesn’t share<\/a> details about how exactly the algorithms work, which leads to obvious concerns.<\/p>\n

WSJ found that Google “has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged.” They’ve done so as a result of pressure<\/a> from businesses as well as the influence of outside interest groups and governments. And WSJ said that Google’s interference with authentic search results based on algorithms has “increased sharply since the 2016 election” including — despite denials — using blacklists to prevent particular websites from showing up in the search results.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

BREAKING: A new @WSJ<\/a> report shows #Google<\/a>'s pro-abortion manipulation of search results<\/p>\n

% of 1st-page results for "abortion" that direct to Planned Parenthood's website:<\/p>\n

Google: 39%
Bing: 14%
DuckDuckGo: 16%https:\/\/t.co\/LMpGY7wd27<\/a><\/p>\n

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) November 15, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n