arXiv: Digital Gatekeeping: An Audit of Search Engine Results shows tailoring of queries on the Israel-Palestine Conflict. “To examine the extent of this tailoring, we focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict and developed a privacy-protecting tool to audit the behavior of three search engines: DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. Our study focused on two main questions: (1) How do search results […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/10/digital-gatekeeping-an-audit-of-search-engine-results-shows-tailoring-of-queries-on-the-israel-palestine-conflict-arxiv/

#Israel #Palestine #SearchEngines #WebSearch

'Our study focused on two main questions: (1) How do search results for the same query about the conflict vary among different users? and (2) Are these results influenced by the user’s location and browsing history?

Our findings revealed significant customization based on location and browsing preferences, unlike previous studies that found only mild personalization for general topics. '

https://arxiv.org/html/2502.04266v1

UK data regulator criticises Google for ‘irresponsible’ ad tracking change https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/19/google-advertisers-digital-fingerprints-ico-uk-data-regulator #Dataprotection #Searchengines #Advertising #Technology #Regulators #Alphabet #Business #Internet #Privacy #Google #UKnews #Media

Search Engine Land: Perplexity expands publisher ad revenue sharing program. “Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, is broadening its publisher program. It added outlets like Los Angeles Times, Adweek and The Independent. Participating publishers will share ad revenue and access performance metrics, with notable absences including The New York Times and Dow Jones, which are in legal […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2024/12/06/search-engine-land-perplexity-expands-publisher-ad-revenue-sharing-program/

""Some of the starkest examples looked at how Google treats certain health questions. Google often pulls information from the web and shows it at the top of results to provide a quick answer, which it calls a Featured Snippet. Presch searched for "link between coffee and hypertension". The Featured Snippet quoted an article from the Mayo Clinic, highlighting the words "Caffeine may cause a short, but dramatic increase in your blood pressure." But when she looked up "no link between coffee and hypertension", the Featured Snippet cited a contradictory line from the very same Mayo Clinic article: "Caffeine doesn't have a long-term effect on blood pressure and is not linked with a higher risk of high blood pressure".

The same thing happened when Presch searched for "is ADHD caused by sugar" and "ADHD not caused by sugar". Google pulled up Featured Snippets that argue support both sides of the question, again taken from the same article. (In reality, there's little evidence that sugar affects ADHD symptoms, and it certainly doesn't cause the disorder.)""

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241031-how-google-tells-you-what-you-want-to-hear

#Google #Search #SearchEngines #PostModernism #Rhetorics #AlgorithmicBias

Research PSA:

ChatGPT is not Google, people.
Even Google is not Google.

I am finding relevant hits for my searches on the 8th page of Google Books. And then along comes someone like "ChatGPT told me about this folktale..."

Doesn't exist.

#AI #research #searchengines #ChatGPT #StorytellingPSA