[mgkimsal]

"If you believe in a free and open internet then you have to agree this is wrong."

I don't have to agree. Perhaps it was 'wrong' before that Breitbart ranked as high as they did earlier.

I can still go to Breitbart.com - no one is stopping me from going there. No one is stopping them from setting up their servers, hosting their content, and doing all that stuff. They don't get as much 'free' exposure via google as they used to. Other sites now get more visibility. So what? If BB kept their 'visibility' in the search index, every search result they show up in is taking space from a different site that might have shown up instead. Why are they owed anything from google? Google changes their algorithms, and there's more content to compete with too.

If we make some sort of assumption that google's algorithms get modified or perhaps simply adapt to the audience's searches, perhaps... there's less appetite for Breitbart content and ideas across google's user base, and them ranking lower years down the road isn't some grand left-wing conspiracy, but a company serving the needs and desires of its users?

[DlSGUSTING]

I see where you're coming from. In my opinion the search engine shouldn't take a stance when it comes to politics, though. They claimed they only step in when it's illegal content or copyright, but I haven't seen any evidence of them removing left-leaning sites in this fashion.

I can't prove that what Google did specifically targeted Breitbart but if it was just changes to the algo then we should have seen other popular sites with similarly dramatic drops in visibility. I'd love to see other examples if they do exist

[AstralStorm]

If a search engine should not take a stance, then who also should not? Publishers? (Incl. YouTube, which takes some big stances.) Libraries? Social media? Governments?!

Everything is political in some form after all.

[thu2111]

Impressive mental backflips.

Appetite for stories doesn't drop overnight like in those graphs. You're in denial - Google is censoring search results to try and manipulate your mind.

[mgkimsal]

Look at the graph in 2012 - it spiked UP a huge percent in a very short time. Then again in 2015 - looks like visibility doubled in 6 months. Was that 'deserved'? Was that 'censoring' other sites?

[thu2111]

Doubling in six months is entirely normal behaviour for websites, that's not even especially fast. Viral growth is something seen many times, especially for news sites which can easily grow several multiples in 24 hours if something interesting is happening.

For traffic to drop to zero overnight when nothing much is happening, and especially for election related terms, is unheard of.

Look, elsewhere on HN there is a story about how Facebook banned Breitbart because they posted a video of doctors talking about COVID, and they banned Trump for saying children aren't infectious: a claim widely made by many scientists. Tech companies are utterly untrustworthy when it comes to Breitbart. They want to erase it from the internet because it's conservative and those firms have hired far, far too many extreme leftists who loathe anything conservative.