Search Engines and Post-Truth

I had a rather mindless question this morning: In Harry Potter, what is the first name of  the namesake of Hufflepuff house? So I went to Google, and typed simply hufflepuff. Here’s what I got.

“Ah,” I thought, “Helga.” But then I looked at the google page. Stylistically, it looked awkwardly familiar. The layout, the references, the “similar links” appeared to be no different from what Google provides for living souls.

Uncomfortably, I typed “Haile Selassie”. Google quickly responded.

My queasiness has not subsided much. Most people know that Helga Hufflepuff is fictional and that Haile Selassie was an Ethiopian emperor. Well, sadly, far more people know Hufflepuff than Selassie. But that’s another matter.

The point is that truth and fiction have precisely the same online frame. If you come into the frame with knowledge, you are able to understand the picture. But how is someone who does not enter with knowledge make sense of all this?

Honestly, I don’t know.

 

 

Google: The Propagandist’s Best Friend

A disturbing article from The Guardian.

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

In short: the search algorithms used by Google (and other search engines) are exploitable and are being exploited. Type in a few keywords and bam! Google sends you to the propagandists. Try it. Type “are Muslims” into the Google bar. You’ll get autosuggest. Pick the first one. A predigested, politically abhorrent world will be spoon-fed to you.

Some of it is banal. Google emphasizes American pop culture (as does Wikipedia, but that’s  a story for another day.) The world has become subservient to American commercial interests mainly by search engines looking out for the big guys.

But this is democracy. This is is freedom. This is global cooperation at stake.

Read the article. It says what I need you to hear.