Studies indicate Google Et al reflected 'very dramatic bias' in Election

[keehah]

Could not find the previous Robert Epstein posts/threads (other than his wife being arkancided) I wanted to post a recent WaPo article with


Fox: Dr. Robert Epstein: Study claims Google reflected 'very dramatic bias' in 2016 election search results

Google allegedly offered search results during the 2016 election season that manipulated voters in Hillary Clinton's favor, according to researcher Dr. Robert Epstein.

The study looked into "politically oriented searches" from a "diverse group of American voters," Epstein said in an interview airing Sunday on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

"In 2016, I set up the first-ever monitoring system that allowed me to look over the shoulders of a diverse group of American voters -- there were 95 people in 24 states," he said.

"I looked at politically oriented searches that these people were conducting on Google, Bing and Yahoo. I was able to preserve more than 13,000 searches and 98,000 web pages, and I found very dramatic bias in Google's search results... favoring Hillary Clinton -- whom I supported strongly."

Regarding the specific results of his study, Epstein claimed the findings showed what he called a sizable bias.

"That level of bias was sufficient, I calculated, to have shifted over time somewhere between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary without anyone knowing that this had occurred," he claimed.

In response, host Mark Levin asked how such bias could materialize.

Epstein said people searching Google for politically relevant or election-related information will see search suggestions pop up as they type, and also see a number of top searches on the first page of their results. He claimed the alleged bias manifested itself largely within those two areas.

"We now know that those search suggestions have a very, very powerful effect on people and that they alone can shift opinions and votes dramatically and then search results appear below," he said.

"The point is if there's a bias in them -- which means if a search result that's high up on the list, if that takes you to a web page that makes one candidate look better than another -- if you're undecided and you're trying to make up your mind, what we've learned is that information posted high in Google search results will shift opinions among undecided people dramatically because people trust Google."

judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Testimony.pdf

Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat
Testimony by Robert Epstein, Ph.D. (re@aibrt.org)
Senior Research Psychologist, American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology
Before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Tuesday, June 16, 2019, 2:30 p.m...

I am here today for three reasons: to explain why Google presents a serious threat to democracy and human autonomy, to explain how passive monitoring systems can protect us both now and in the future from companies like Google, and to tell you how Congress can immediately end Google’s worldwide monopoly on search. My plan for ending that monopoly was published just yesterday (Monday, July 15, 2019) by Bloomberg Businessweek (Epstein, 2019d). I am attaching a copy of my article to my testimony and respectfully request that it be entered into the Congressional Record...

Earlier study by the researcher:

PNAS: The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections

Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson
PNAS August 18, 2015

Significance

We present evidence from five experiments in two countries suggesting the power and robustness of the search engine manipulation effect (SEME). Specifically, we show that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) such rankings can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation. Knowing the proportion of undecided voters in a population who have Internet access, along with the proportion of those voters who can be influenced using SEME, allows one to calculate the win margin below which SEME might be able to determine an election outcome.

Abstract

Internet search rankings have a significant impact on consumer choices, mainly because users trust and choose higher-ranked results more than lower-ranked results. Given the apparent power of search rankings, we asked whether they could be manipulated to alter the preferences of undecided voters in democratic elections. Here we report the results of five relevant double-blind, randomized controlled experiments, using a total of 4,556 undecided voters representing diverse demographic characteristics of the voting populations of the United States and India. The fifth experiment is especially notable in that it was conducted with eligible voters throughout India in the midst of India’s 2014 Lok Sabha elections just before the final votes were cast. The results of these experiments demonstrate that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) search ranking bias can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation. We call this type of influence, which might be applicable to a variety of attitudes and beliefs, the search engine manipulation effect. Given that many elections are won by small margins, our results suggest that a search engine company has the power to influence the results of a substantial number of elections with impunity. The impact of such manipulations would be especially large in countries dominated by a single search engine company.

Recent research has demonstrated that the rankings of search results provided by search engine companies have a dramatic impact on consumer attitudes, preferences, and behavior ; this is presumably why North American companies now spend more than 20 billion US dollars annually on efforts to place results at the top of rankings. Studies using eye-tracking technology have shown that people generally scan search engine results in the order in which the results appear and then fixate on the results that rank highest, even when lower-ranked results are more relevant to their search. Higher-ranked links also draw more clicks, and consequently people spend more time on Web pages associated with higher-ranked search results. A recent analysis of ∼300 million clicks on one search engine found that 91.5% of those clicks were on the first page of search results, with 32.5% on the first result and 17.6% on the second. The study also reported that the bottom item on the first page of results drew 140% more clicks than the first item on the second page. These phenomena occur apparently because people trust search engine companies to assign higher ranks to the results best suited to their needs, even though users generally have no idea how results get ranked.