So you would agree that since search is entirely technical, then search results by definition cannot present political bias?
Personally I disagree with that claim, but if you feel that search is a wholly technical problem, I'd expect you to agree.
And that doesn't even deal with the obviously political: laws like the right to be forgotten, or other forms of censorship like removals of content due to copyright. How to engage with those is inherently political.
> As a user I want back the documents I’m looking for
Of course! But converting from a search query to an ordered list of documents requires choices about ranking and filtering to be made.
If I search for "irs" do you include spam phone numbers attempting to steal my identity? There's distinct value to not returning garbage results, but how you do that is going to be called political by some people. And choosing not to do anything is going to be called political by others. There is no non-political choice, despite what you keep implying. Like, given a search query, you can't tell me the objectively correct set of results to return. If you could, you'd be very, very, very rich.
In the absence of that objective, perfect, "true" result, any choice is political in some way or another. Pick an algorithm and I'll happily explain to you a failure mode that is "political".
Sadly, a lot of people genuinely believe that everything is political. I recently expressed hope for the "no politics" guideline of HN be more strictly enforced and was told that "not talking about politics is politics". Frustrating to deal with this mindset...
I'm certainly one of those people. What is the boundary between "politics" and "not politics?" Who gets to decide?
Your employer probably has more effect on your day to day life than your government does. Why would you be allowed to debate what the latter should do but not the former?
> I'm certainly one of those people. What is the boundary between "politics" and "not politics?" Who gets to decide?
It's common sense. Anything that revolves around government, elections, laws, etc.
> Your employer probably has more effect on your day to day life than your government does. Why would you be allowed to debate what the latter should do but not the former?
I meant the exact opposite (I forgot that politics could be taken to mean "office politics" or "company politics"). Getting involved in government politics or activism is your role as a private citizen, not as a company employee. Regarding "company politics" (work hours, office arrangement, project management methodology, managerial decisions, coffee machine model, etc.), I guess it's up to your employer to decide what is up for debate.
>>It's common sense. Anything that revolves around government, elections, laws, etc.
Go ahead and google 'Taiwan' and then 'Canada' or 'Japan'. Taiwan (in the right sidebar thing) is listed differently compared to the others. They're listed as "Country in $X" - Taiwan is not.
That's political. Or is it not? It's "just search", sort of.
I don't see where you're going with this. I never claimed that Google was not political (your example wasn't very convincing though, it simply reflects the fact that Taiwan isn't widely recognized as a country). Also, a more charitable interpretation of the comment you are referring to would be that "search doesn't have to be political".
Your initial comment was "Sadly, a lot of people genuinely believe that everything is political"
Taiwan being a country or not, and what shows up in a google search about it, isn't political for you, or for me, or for many people around the world. It may be very political for the people who live in Taiwan (or China).
Nearly everything is political to someone. So it's not very easy to draw a hard line between political or not. A "no politics" rule is very difficult to enforce in a meaningful way for that reason.
That could be the case if the distribution of views were evenly stratified, but they are not. Even the application of very simple mechanics can subtly amplify the views of the majority.
I specifically do not want results manipulated to be more politically correct. It makes sense that the most popular results would be first. I want that.
It's very possible that they are not being manipulated, simply that most people who use the internet are more left/right wing. That's the amplification of the majority.
Personally I disagree with that claim, but if you feel that search is a wholly technical problem, I'd expect you to agree.
And that doesn't even deal with the obviously political: laws like the right to be forgotten, or other forms of censorship like removals of content due to copyright. How to engage with those is inherently political.