Hector Martin

Bias conclusions presume both options are equally desirable and the bias is attributable to partisanship and not just page quality. Would it be biased for Google to return spherical Earth results over flat Earth results? No, it wouldn't.

Forgot to address the "desireable" part. A better example wwould be something under question like nuclear vs solar/wind power. How would google decide what kind of pages are more desirable to show for people? I personally don't want google to become the arbiter of "truth"

But they aren't "deciding". They use signals. Sometimes those signals align with an individual's views, sometimes they don't. What we definitely don't want is some kind of dictated "equal representation" nonsense criteria to make results "fair".

For example, it's logical and desirable that Google results should favor true statements. Fact checkers have established that, statistically, Republicans lie more than Democrats. Therefore, if Google favors truth, it would *implicitly* favor Democrats, not due to any bias per se.

How exactly would google know if a claim is true? Who checks the fact checkers? A ton of the giangs use SPLC, a organization that blatantly ignores left-wing violent groups in their hate maps.

Not to mention that in craploads of cases, the statements politicians make are relatively vague and can be interpreted in any number of ways.

And, again, factcheckers aren't unbiased themselves https://imgur.com/gallery/ezyRi