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.

To get a little pedantic, those Republican and Democrat politicians that have been reviewed have produced those statistics. It would be challenging and interesting to determine the results for general population on a large scale using fMRI.

It would, though I think that'd be less relevant for search results. I posit that the people writing influential articles and pages are largely either partisan media closely aligned with politicians, or similarly aligned influencers, so the statistics probably still apply.

For that purpose, yes, fact checkers & what politicians say are important. I was just being pedantic about the generalized part of your statement. :) Many people repeat untrue things. Doesn't make them liars if they believe it's true but it's still spreading lies. Hence the fMRI.