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Thetexashammer

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HOOK'EMHOOAH

HOOK'EMHOOAH 1610

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

I'm a big believer in free speech.

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies. And they censor speech. They are not a neutral platform. They bias toward the left. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

A corporation isn't a person, first and foremost. So trying to assign constitutional rights to them is asinine as they are not and should not be afforded constitutional rights the same way a citizen is guaranteed them under the Constitution.

The companies you named created programs and are free to moderate those programs and platforms however they see fit as it is their property. It's the same as a hospital telling someone they can't smoke on their property. The property in question above is that of a virtual nature, however that doesn't change the fact that it holds real value and the owners retain control of it. It in no way infringes upon the rights of anyone as they aren't government entities. Furthermore, as @SubliminalHorncorrectly pointed out any other corporation, entity, or private citizen may at anytime create a competing virtual space. However, even if no one ever decided to actually create a competing virtual space specifically for conservatives like yourself, the fact that there are already competing virtual spaces for which anyone may sign up and use them, none of them may be convicted of holding a monopoly over the market. It's pretty apparent to me that you just want to bemoan the sinking ship you presently did yourself on by trying to attack others instead of fixing your own problems.

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Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, relapse98 said:

Is he supposed to just click his heels and have a platform exist? I'd imagine there is a severe lack of skills.

Bear with me, hopefully this won't turn into manifesto-length, but let's take a look at the guy.  Alex Jones certainly has, or at least had (before the divorce), the resources to build a social media platform (and arguably InfoWars.com is one) but let's back up for a moment.

Alex Jones isn't some blogger who spent 5 minutes setting up a Blogger.com or WordPress.com blog and then got booted because he didn't know the rules.  He's had his own website since 1999, well before Facebook or twitter or YouTube existed - check out his state-of-the-art 1990s website design: 

https://web.archive.org/web/19990508121330/https://www.infowars.com

InfoWars is still in operation, and isn't going anywhere, particularly since he's under a court order not to delete anything from it (but like a dumbass he had his crew delete some stuff, so that could put him in criminal jeopardy).

Just so we are clear, nobody is denying him a platform - he's still got a popular platform (InfoWars) that has been around for 19 and-a-half years.  Because of his hosting setup, he decides what gets posted on InfoWars.com - he designs the TOS (and he's booted many a person off of it, which is ironic, but mostly hypocritical).

Over the past several years, particularly with his Sandy Hook obsession, people have been telling him that he's crossing way too many lines.  He gave no fucks, and in fact took it upon himself to play the martyr, and was even daring companies to kick him off.   It was argued many times that he had been violating the TOSes of several popular social media platforms, but they tolerated him (even when they didn't tolerate others) because of the traffic and publicity.

When he began to be booted off various platforms, did he take stock of the situation and say "wow, I'm crossing lines, and I'm being held accountable for it!"?  No, he didn't.  

He was down to one last major platform, helmed by a CEO who carried water for Alex Jones, who, at various times, even followed some of the same people/alt-righters that Jones did.  He was, on some level, either a fan of of Jones or some of Jones's views, because he was willing to overlook things and give Jones all kinds of chances, and said CEO did so very publicly.

Jones couldn't help himself though.  You had that CEO who had been carrying water for Jones being called to Washington, and Jones being in Washington, could not resist being an asshole multiple times, even to said CEO.

Well, that turned into a manifesto.  End Part 1.

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Posted
Posted (edited)
13 hours ago, relapse98 said:

Is he supposed to just click his heels and have a platform exist? I'd imagine there is a severe lack of skills.

To finally answer your question: Jones had the resources to build his own social media platform (he had to sell his $3.5 million Lake Travis or Lake Austin house in his divorce though), but as I said, InfoWars was basically a social media platform of sorts (it predates what we call social media by several years).  Jones had reasons not to build such a platform though (more on that in a moment).

Keep in mind: Jones used social media platforms to drive traffic to InfoWars.  Sure, he made money on YouTube, but his bread-and-butter was InfoWars.com and its direct advertising (which he didn't have to share with Google) and commissions/profit sharing (male vitamin supplements, prepper supplies, gold and silver, etc.).  

Social media platforms did not define Jones's existence on the internet, they were merely a way for him to move people back to InfoWars.com.

It doesn't take billions to build a social media platform, by the way.  In fact, a lot of gruntwork has been done, and there are a lot of open-source resources/frameworks available for building out such sites.   There are a bunch of small social media platforms launched on a fairly frequent basis, that nobody ever hears about, from small companies, even individuals, but they don't take hold for various reasons.  They are launched on barebones budgets, thanks to open source software/frameworks being made available by the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, WordPress, Microsoft, etc., all of which use that software/frameworks for their own infrastructure.

As a matter of fact, Twitter is a big contributor - https://twitter.github.io and large chunks of their code are freely available - https://twitter.github.io/projects.html

All Jones needed to do was hire some software engineers to pull the proper bits together, and polish the interface - he's not starting from scratch, and he could keep it very simple, like twitter.  He doesn't have to buy a ton of hardware or anything either - there are plenty of scalable cloud service providers (Amazon.com being one of them), so that you can start small and scale up as needed, so that your hardware costs don't run away at the beginning.

But that would have required Alex to sink his own money into it, and that would bring up a couple of issues/questions for him

  1. Will it provide additional revenue for him?
  2. Will it take away from his personal wealth?
  3. Will it drive traffic to InfoWars?
  4. Will it help his competitors?

The answer to #1 is hazy - would an Alex Jones-led platform pull in enough people who aren't already fans of InfoWars to bring in advertising bucks?  The answer to #2 is clear, initially it would eat into his personal wealth.

#3 and #4 are most important though.  How would it drive additional traffic to InfoWars versus what he already brings in?  Would a Jones-led social media platform bring non-alt-righters and non-InfoWars fans into its user base?

And what if it helps bring awareness to Jones's competition?  That could potentially eat into his InfoWars.com revenue, and might offset any revenue a new social media platform might generate.  Jones does not like competition.  He will try and use them as long as possible, but at some point he will probably turn on them (witness the QAnon drama).  Remember, he thinks he was the first one to do this, and arguably, he was the OG conspiracy fanatic when it comes to building up an actual brand on the internet, long before twitter, etc.

He's come along way from being boxed in on Austin Public Access by Reverend Ricky and UT RTF students doing movie reviews to buying multi-million dollar homes in some of Austin's most prime real estate.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26495

Posted
Posted (edited)
15 hours ago, Thetexashammer said:

I'm a big believer in free speech.*

The reason that "software" is so rewarding (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) is that it leads to natural monopolies**. Everybody uses Microsoft Office, so you have to use Microsoft Office. WordPerfect need not apply.***

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are natural monopolies****. And they censor speech*****. They are not a neutral platform******. They bias toward the left*******. A morally confused media makes both Type I errors and Type II errors. So they are aiming for a "legal" coup d'etat via the 25th Amendment of impeachment*********, and they ignore the real threat to our democracy, the leftist hegemony**********. 

We need a level playing field. We don't have one. Fin.

* Literally nothing in your long posting history indicates this

** I've been in the "software" business for 20 years, and an English speaker for 44. I don't know what this sentence means.

*** This example is terrible. Wordperfect lost for a number of reasons, a combination of being undercapitalized at key times, displaced at the low end by MS-works and being late to market on Windows. But the main reason was that they got acquired twice in 2 years by indisciplined corporate parents (Novell and Corel) and lost their position with the business customers who used them due to sales disruption while microsoft was aggressively pushing office as part of their corporate offering. Also - Office was and is better.  

**** No they aren't. Google is currently dominant but facing significant challenges, and the other three are as well. You tube is a niche feature of Google. Twitter is a niche company. Facebook the product is groewth constrained and making up for it by buying challengers that do well with key demographics leaving facebook, like Instagram.

***** There are terms of service under which private companies grant you a license to use their platform. In return you abide by their rules and give your consent to certain things by way of consideration. When people violate the rules and get caught they wind up losing access.  That's not censorship. 

****** They certainly aren't neutral to their corporate strategic objectives or terms of service. What are they supposed to be neutral about?

******* Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc are biased toward the American political left? That's rich. See above. Also, take a look at your own facebook feed, which I suspect is not littered with left-wing political propaganda.

******** Let me see if I have this right. Are you saying that Google, YouTube (separately, because they are Google), Facebook and Twitter are colluding to use their "natural monopoly" power in a conspiracy to influence the Cabinet of the executive branch to remove the president via they 25th amendment through ... search results? 

********* booga booga booga!

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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HOOK'EMHOOAH

HOOK'EMHOOAH 1610

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Posted
26 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

This is not satire. This is the Facebook entry from the self-styled conservative alternative to Wikipedia, Conservapedia.

 

First, indeed.

Second, they make a claim that "one survey says something." I take issue with the fact that they didn't cite the source and also a goddamn survey can be found that says anything. It's a fucking survey. Surveys aren't hard science and fall in right along with human memory in terms of being a useful source of proof. It may be slightly higher, but not by much.

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Bozo_Casanova

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Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

It doesn't take billions to build a social media platform, by the way.  In fact, a lot of gruntwork has been done, and there are a lot of open-source resources/frameworks available for building out such sites.   There are a bunch of small social media platforms launched on a fairly frequent basis, that nobody ever hears about, from small companies, even individuals, but they don't take hold for various reasons.  They are launched on barebones budgets, thanks to open source software/frameworks being made available by the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, WordPress, Microsoft, etc., all of which use that software/frameworks for their own infrastructure.

 

Incidentally, I thought about writing an extensive paragraph about TexasHammer's incorrect use of the term "natural monopoly", which normally refers to capital intensive industries like utilities where the barriers to entry are nearly insurmountable and margins are relatively low.  Calling Facebook or Microsoft word or any software a "natural monopoly" would be like calling Friendster or Prodigy or LotusNotes a "natural monopoly". Facebook and Microsoft are just dominant market leaders at the moment. fast growing challenges and potential disruptions exist. 

But the rest of his post was so ludicrous that I didn't think an basic business vocabulary lesson was the best use of his limited attention. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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sidis

sidis 9832

Posted
Posted

texashammer once told me on the old site that we should be friends with bashar al assad because tsu sin (whoever the fuck that is) said 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and he would help us fight iran.

dude literally said that.

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Bama Llama

Bama Llama 1450

Posted
Posted
On 9/6/2018 at 10:16 PM, TwiceHorn said:

WP kicked the shit out of Word for many, many years.  I still prefer its editing mode.

I've been lawyering since 1985, drafting and revising a never ending stream of documents.  I used WP as long as I could. Only interested in efficient, SIMPLE, basic word processing.

I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the hell that is Word because some, then most  then fucking ALL of the non-pdf docs I received via email were in Word as was the email itself.

WP worked just fine for me, TYVM. And so what if the dude is 100?  Good for him for giving a shit.  Sure Trump and Friends are dangerous opinionated assholes.  But I really REALLY hated the way Word ruined my simple Wordperfect docs.

I'm over it now, but want us to have open minds.  Just because my hands are incapable of any motion that will result in a vote for a Republican candidate for national office has nothing to do with it.

By the way Donald, when exactly was America last great?  1865? 1959?  1991? 1975?  Why not just drop the "Again" and do something truly great?  Okay, enough.

 

 

 

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On 9/6/2018 at 10:27 PM, jimmyjazz said:

So where is the proof that FB, Google, and Twitter are censoring right-wing content?

That's what i wanted to ask.

FB and Twitter are member driven.  You follow/ friend who you wish and go from there...

Google?  There is little doubt they manipulate search results.  IDGAF.  If I don't like it, I can use another search engine/ browser.

 

and even if they ARE censoring it, they are private entities.  If the gov't was censoring content, thenit would be a different discussion.

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Bozo_Casanova

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Posted
Posted (edited)
30 minutes ago, slorch said:

Google?  There is little doubt they manipulate search results. 

What does that mean, "manipulate"? They have a search algorithm, that's what produces results. I ran a search marketing software company from 2011-2013 and gamed both paid and natural search algorithms for a living, so this is an area of interest for me.

I have seen zero, ZERO credible evidence that there is a ideological bias in favor of the American political left built into the code or that human beings acting on a political bias are intervening to override the code.

 

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Posted
Posted (edited)
2 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

 

That you have "little doubt" is sad, because you seem to have a belief that is not based in facts. 

I overstated / mis-stated my opinion on this.  I should have said, even if they do manipulate results, it doesn't make a shit to me.  If it becomes noticeable, I'll move the fuck on.

Edited by slorch
can't spell for shit.
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bad_teammate

bad_teammate 13218

Posted
Posted
On 9/7/2018 at 1:29 AM, Mole said:

I'm not sure if it's the cultural rot around our political discussions (yay team), the madness or Alex Jones, or just the way the issue was framed here, but I can't seem to understand why this issue is so easily laughed off. 

Name the supposed victims. Be specific. Give names.

Who is being silenced?

Be specific.

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Bozo_Casanova

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Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, slorch said:

I overstated / mis-stated my opinion on this.  I should have said, even if they do manipulate results, it doesn't make a shit to me.  If it becomes noticeable, I'll move the fuck on.

Actually, I think I misread your post and was editing accordingly you remove that sentence. my bad, seriously. 

 

 

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26495

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Posted

BTW - on the google algorithm - The only real "bias" in google's algorithm that I see is a bias against techniques used to stop marketers from gaming the algorithm (such as keyword stuffing, meta data tricks, low quality backlinks, etc), and a bias towards content that actual human beings want to see. Bing/Yahoo not only function a little differently internally but also serve a different audience, which would heavily influence results even if the algos were the same, which they aren't. 

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bad_teammate

bad_teammate 13218

Posted
Posted

The reality is that right-wing politics are unpopular.

70+% do not want Roe overturned

60+% do not want tax cuts for the rich

70+% support Medicare-for-All

As Bozo mentions above, the right-wing over-representation on social media and in searches has a lot to do with them using tactics to make themselves seem larger than they are, including foreign nationals posing as Americans online.

Conservatives are looking out realizing that no one actually likes them and they think that's only because they're being cheated.

No, motherfuckers, your politics are inhuman and hateful. The people you choose to lead you are disgusting, criminal morons. We fucking hate you legitimately.

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Posted
Posted

60% don't want tax cuts...LOLz.

 

Of course they don't...why would they give a fuck?  Because they love the country more, right?

 

Just not enough to pay anything in...LOLz.

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Posted
Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I feel like you left out a few important words from his post.

the part about "those who are not us need to be taxed because we loveth the country so much?"

 

Aside from BT just making that shit up for his post( no citations or links)   i guess we just all can go Google or foxnews mode, right?

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1 hour ago, bad_teammate said:

The reality is that right-wing politics are unpopular.

70+% do not want Roe overturned

60+% do not want tax cuts for the rich

70+% support Medicare-for-All

As Bozo mentions above, the right-wing over-representation on social media and in searches has a lot to do with them using tactics to make themselves seem larger than they are, including foreign nationals posing as Americans online.

Conservatives are looking out realizing that no one actually likes them and they think that's only because they're being cheated.

No, motherfuckers, your politics are inhuman and hateful. The people you choose to lead you are disgusting, criminal morons. We fucking hate you legitimately.

I've seen it stated elsewhere that many conservative/right wing policies & initiatives are unpopular and only supported by a minority of the populace.  If that is the case (I'm not arguing that it isn't), then why is the right wing so good at getting what it wants?  Are they more clever, do they understand the game better, are they more ruthless, more corrupt?  If one side represents less than 30% of the populace and yet maintains equal or greater influence than the other 70% in a democratically elected republic, then there must be a reason for this disparity.  

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TommyGufano

TommyGufano 6021

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Aphelion said:

I've seen it stated elsewhere that many conservative/right wing policies & initiatives are unpopular and only supported by a minority of the populace.  If that is the case (I'm not arguing that it isn't), then why is the right wing so good at getting what it wants?  Are they more clever, do they understand the game better, are they more ruthless, more corrupt?  If one side represents less than 30% of the populace and yet maintains equal or greater influence than the other 70% in a democratically elected republic, then there must be a reason for this disparity.  

gerrymandering and appealing to the portion of the population that actually votes.

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Chult86

Chult86 335

Posted
Posted
On 9/6/2018 at 11:27 PM, atomheartbevo said:

I'll use an example I used elsewhere (Alex Jones thread).  Let's say you own a billboard company, and you've got a billboard along a heavily-trafficked highway intersection. The person(s) who owns the land that you are leasing for your billboard happens to own the land for miles up and down the highway, and your's is the only billboard in that stretch.  

Nobody else can put their message up on that part of the highway.  You have the monopoly on that part of the highway.

I come to you with a bucket of cash, and say I want a billboard bitching about high taxes and some proposition.  You're cool with it, maybe even agree with it, but either way it's not too controversial, you take my money, and I get my big-ass sign on the highway.

A few months later, I come to you with a bucket of cash, and say I want a billboard telling everybody that the "Goddess Balal is coming to earth in two months to take the True Believers with her!"  You get antsy. You want the money, you don't really care about my cult and you know that it's fake, but you're worried about the image of your billboard company being associated with a billboard that will be mercilessly mocked on the internet.  You try and shunt me off to a smaller road somewhere, with a billboard where your brand is not very pronounced (if at all).

I bitch, but I still have the opportunity to get my message out there, just not to as many people.

A few months after that, I say I want a billboard back on that piece of heavily trafficked highway.  It says "Bill and Janice Smith of Bum Fuck, Oklahoma did not have a son who was murdered, and they did not bury their son because he was a crisis actor.  HIs murder was faked by the government and anti-gun nuts.  Bill and Janice Smith are damned dirty liars."

You spend a few minutes on Google, you see that their child was a victim of a mass shooter, and you see that my fans have been harassing them, and that I'm constantly calling them liars and actors.

You are going to tell me to go fuck myself, and that you don't want my money or the inevitable lawsuits that will occur.

I can bitch all I want that you have a natural monopoly and that you are censoring me and infringing on my free speech.

But the reality is that because you are not the government, you are not censoring me or infringing on my free speech - nothing (and nobody) is stopping me from taking my message a few miles down the road to another billboard company, or even buying some land down the road and building my own billboard.

Hell, I can rent an 18-wheeler, paint my message on the side, and drive it up and down that highway.  You can't stop me.

I'm sorry, remind me again how much you pay per month to use Google/FB/Twitter?

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26495

Posted
Posted
I've seen it stated elsewhere that many conservative/right wing policies & initiatives are unpopular and only supported by a minority of the populace.  If that is the case (I'm not arguing that it isn't), then why is the right wing so good at getting what it wants?  Are they more clever, do they understand the game better, are they more ruthless, more corrupt?  If one side represents less than 30% of the populace and yet maintains equal or greater influence than the other 70% in a democratically elected republic, then there must be a reason for this disparity.  

They really aren’t successful in western democracies. They are often temporarily and partially successful rolling back recent expansions of Liberty and inclusion to deny specific populations of specific things but it almost never lasts.
Thats part of how “right wing” is different from “conservatives”. Ideological reactionaries undermine democratic institutions. Conservatives protect them, even when they enable social change.
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Mole

Mole 4333

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

Name the supposed victims. Be specific. Give names.

Who is being silenced?

Be specific.

We're the victims being drawn into an addiction that fundamentally distorts our understanding of the world. Whether or not there's a partisan element to this manipulation is mostly irrelevant.

This issue has been unfortunately framed in ideological team terms. Within this framework, it's impossible to really have a meaningful discussion. The question for me isn't an ideological one but the changing way that we develop an understanding of our world. The reality is we are being filtered through fewer and fewer corporations.  I don't expect Google or Facebook to have any particular ideology other than profit, just like my ISP's ideology is likely only profit. Somehow we recognize the dangers when our ISP controls the flow of information but it's being ignored when the primary platforms for distribution are involved. Or rather, team rooting interests shift depending on the results of the control. Short-term team victory trumps all. There's been a cultural shift in how we get our information and it isn't a positive one. The madness that we've seen over the past several years, which is widely discussed on this board, seems so self-evident that I can't understand why this particular element of it is dismissed in partisan terms. The madness isn't a bug; it's a feature.

I get it. They shot down your boogie man, and yeah Alex Jones sucks. So your team scored points and that must be celebrated because "go team", but there's something much bigger going on here that isn't healthy. And you can celebrate your partisan gotcha that I won't name names because that is the wrong question to be asking. 

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Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

Yes

I have a hard time believing that they are significantly more clever or understand the game any better.  

 

32 minutes ago, TommyGufano said:

gerrymandering and appealing to the portion of the population that actually votes.

Why would the right have an advantage over the left with gerrymandering?  It seems they could both utilize this tactic.  The portion of the voting population makes sense.  I guess the claim is that even though the total population favors more progressive laws, they are more evenly split among the voting population.  It seems the left more frequently pushes "get out and vote" campaigns (seems that way to me at least, but I could be wrong about that), presumably for this reason.  

 

5 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:


They really aren’t successful in western democracies. They are often temporarily and partially successful rolling back recent expansions of Liberty and inclusion to deny specific populations of specific things but it almost never lasts.
Thats part of how “right wing” is different from “conservatives”. Ideological reactionaries undermine democratic institutions. Conservatives protect them, even when they enable social change.

Well however we want to define the various right political groups and their level of success, the general point here is that they are a long term formidable opponent despite having lower overall support among the public (again, assuming this is true) in a democratically elected republic.  I know they are often presented as fading and temporary, but they yet again managed to make a recent surge despite their unpopularity to take control the house, senate, and executive and are on their way to packing the supreme court.   That's an awful lot of success for such an unpopular political group in a democratically elected system.   

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Bozo_Casanova

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Posted
Posted
Well however we want to define the various right political groups and their level of success, the general point here is that they are a long term formidable opponent despite having lower overall support among the public (again, assuming this is true) in a democratically elected republic.  I know they are often presented as fading and temporary, but they yet again managed to make a recent surge despite their unpopularity to take control the house, senate, and executive and are on their way to packing the supreme court.   That's an awful lot of success for such an unpopular political group in a democratically elected system.   

You’re conflating conservatives with Republicans. The GOP isn’t a Conservative party. It’s got conservative branding and has some conservatives who support it.
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14 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:


You’re conflating conservatives with Republicans. The GOP isn’t a Conservative party. It’s got conservative branding and has some conservatives who support it.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are some initiatives that are claimed to be very popular (over 60-70% public endorsement), yet the group that is against those initiatives are pretty good at blocking them and the group that is pushing those initiatives are comparatively not very successful at getting them passed.  For example, Roe v Wade/abortion rights was not voted in as law, and it's not immediately clear that it would be despite having public support.  Let's assume the SC overturns Roe v Wade (I think it is doubtful, but let's assume the hypothetical).  How confident are you that the democrats and/or the comprehensive pro choice coalition could get it passed as law?  How long would it take?  They may be successful, but to me it does not seem a given - I presume the left believes the same, otherwise there wouldn't be so much hand wringing over the issue. If a group struggles to get a +70% public supported law passed, then it seems they are being outplayed in the political game.

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atomheartbevo

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Posted
Posted
 

I overstated / mis-stated my opinion on this.  I should have said, even if they do manipulate results, it doesn't make a shit to me.  If it becomes noticeable, I'll move the fuck on.

I've been doing the web development game for almost 15 years both personally, and professionally at times, and the SEO (search engine optimization) for nearly that long, and still have a couple of my own sites that I keep updated (and I'm currently doing some book marketing).

I know it seems like Google, etc. manipulate the results as a whole.  It really does seem like it, but there's a lot more going on when people feel like search results have been manipulated.  

First, there are times where they actually do manipulate the results, but it has nothing to do with political bias.  Those times are when a human being says "this site must be removed from our index" and that human is usually a lawyer, and what happens is that the site in question has either done something illegal/criminal in nature (fraud such as credit card stuff, malware distribution, kiddie stuff), or has engaged in DMCA/copyright violations (torrenting/hosting the latest movies, etc.). You may even see a reference in the search results with a link to the body who filed the claim against said site.  What that means is that law enforcement or a copyright holder has contacted Google to have those results removed.  There are also websites that have active malware, and Google will throw up warning signs about those sites as well (in Chrome, etc.).

Beyond that, what a lot of the claims of political motivation/manipulation boil down to is this: "I wrote an awesome article explaining why Obama is a Kenyan and Hillary killed Vince Foster, but why isn't my article in the top of the search results when somebody searches on Obama born in Kenya or Hillary killed Vince?"  

When Google displays results, there is a lot going on for a website to be in the top of the results.  First, Google's search algorithms take into account certain technical things, such as following best practices for website structure and design.  Things like was your website created in the past 10 days or the past 10 years (newer sites rank lower because they aren't as established), website speed (have too many shitty ads slowing it down, you will rank lower), mobile awareness (if your site sucks on a phone or tablet, you'll get dinged), security (secure vs non-secure connections), etc..  

There are also practices that people try and use to game Google's algorithms - clickbait titles, stuffing "keywords" in various places, etc., and Google automatically penalizes that stuff.

From there, it's going to boil down to whether you and your site are considered "authorities" in the subject matter.  If you are putting out regular articles that are getting linked by other, more established/popular websites, then you are going to rank higher in Google's search results.  

If you are putting out sporadic articles that are being linked to by spammy websites and social media, you're simply not going to make it in the top Google results.  Even worse if you are aligning yourself with spammy websites or doing things like copying large chunks of the NY Times and throwing in a couple of sentences of commentary - you're going to get dinged and not make it high in Google's results.

I've seen a lot of alt-righters complaining about this lately, and the problem for them is they are new to the game and aren't following established and well-known practices.    Some of them also engage in practices they think will help, when in fact it will ding them in Google's eyes.

Most of the sites you see at the top of Google's results are there because Google's algorithms determined they have authority - that's why a search on Sean Hannity will return Hannity.com as one of the top results (occasionally Wikipedia entries might rank higher for some people), or it's why you'll see an official twitter account for some celebrity rank high or highest when searching on them.

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Posted
Posted
55 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

[Aphelion]Five thousand words that don’t address the argument.[/Aphelion]

Not only did I not address any argument, I did not even know there was an argument to address.  

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bad_teammate

bad_teammate 13218

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, Mole said:

The madness that we've seen over the past several years, which is widely discussed on this board, seems so self-evident that I can't understand why this particular element of it is dismissed in partisan terms.

I dismissed it in partisan terms because it was presented in partisan terms.

If you want to get into the danger of filter bubbles in general, that's fine, but this entire thread is about how conservatives specifically are being actively oppressed. That's bullshit and it's not happening that way.

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HOOK'EMHOOAH

HOOK'EMHOOAH 1610

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

I dismissed it in partisan terms because it was presented in partisan terms.

If you want to get into the danger of filter bubbles in general, that's fine, but this entire thread is about how conservatives specifically are being actively oppressed. That's bullshit and it's not happening that way.

No, racists are having their access to social media and similar networks revoked for their violation of the end user terms of service. Those same racists just so happen to also be conservative and many of them Republicans. Dont get that shit confused.

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bad_teammate

bad_teammate 13218

Posted
Posted
Just now, HOOK'EMHOOAH said:

No, racists are having their access to social media and similar networks revoked for their violation of the end user terms of service. Those same racists just so happen to also be conservative and many of them Republicans. Dont get that shit confused.

Conservatives: "Sure, all the Nazis and racists are on my political side, but it's not because of the politics! It's a coincidence!"

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Degenerate Gardner

Degenerate Gardner 4085

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:


You’re conflating conservatives with Republicans. The GOP isn’t a Conservative party. It’s got conservative branding and has some conservatives who support it.

Part of me agrees with you.  The other, less generous part of me, says that enough conservatives stood with the GOP that they enabled the Trump presidency.  The conservative-Republican distinction is largely academic if you end up at the same place eventually.  "Conservatives" own the GOP and vice versa.  I'm not sure the terms can ever shed the Trump era stain.

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Yuk

Yuk 1538

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, slorch said:

Nazis are not conservative.

 

racists are everywhere, not just where the leftists deem it to be so.

They are not conservative.  But they were and are certainly "right wing".  Nazism and fascism in general was a right-wing response to Communism at the time.  In particular it was the fear that communism could naturally take over democracies just through voting with no revolutions needed.  See Spain, Italy, Germany.

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