Is Google Influencing Elections?
Google's search engine is used by everyone that has access to the internet, but do we know the real effect that this search engine has on us? Recent research done by Robert Epstein has shown that Google's search engine does in fact have an impact on the way humans think about everything. For people that do not know on Google when you search for a common item, the websites at the top pay to be at the top. They do that in order to drive up traffic for their company. Thus in turn making them more money from ad revenue from their webpage, and maybe the person will buy a service or good from them while they are on their site. My point is that your search results are biased in their results, for lack of a better word. That is why if you are looking for the answer to a question you should use search browsers like duckduckgo or brave. When you search a question in those search engines they give you search results based on relevance, rather than who paid the most to be at the top.
In a recent study done by Robert Epstein his results showed that on Google's search engine users clicked on the first result from their search 91.5 percent of the time. That has led to what we have seen in recent years, companies paying massive amounts of money to get their website to the top of Google. In a recent podcast Robert Epstein stated that Google has been having an influence on elections for longer than we have known. He detailed how people on the fence, politically speaking, are generally the people that look up political questions, generally speaking. Then based on a set of factors, google profile (search history, website history, etc.) what corporations paid the most to have their website at the top of Google. All of those factors plus more all play a role in the results that you get, and Robert Epstein described how all these factors play a role in the way people vote, think etc. I will link the study at the end of this blog, but it is extremely compelling evidence that Google's search engine influences the way people think about politics.
So the question becomes, do you think the Google search engine plays a role in the way elections play out?
link to google's search engine study
Hi Nikolai,
ReplyDeleteI was aware businesses could pay more to be one of the first results to show, but I did not consider this when it comes to searching questions. With that being said, I definitely think that Google's search engine plays a role in how elections turn out - considering that most people are the most familiar with using Google to find information. This is dangerous to our society because Google is filtering the information that is exposed - limiting one's ability to compare sources and discern the truth.