If you"re a social media user and you"ve been online over the last day, you"ve probably seen SourceFed"s video indicting Google for altering search results in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, the facts presented in the video are completely true. The suggested searches in Bing and Google are entirely different and Google"s results are far more favorable to Clinton.
But that"s why we reach out for comment before throwing around accusations.
Google provided a very simple explanation to Buzzfeed:
Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name.
The statement seems to be entirely accurate, as we get the following results when searching for "Charles Manson cri":
And when we check Bing:
The video has been shared over 12 million times in under 24 hours, so the question of who might be altering public opinion might have an entirely different answer.
Google"s Matt Cutts took to Twitter to say the following:
Certainly, it helps to reach out for comment. With that in mind, we"ve reached out to SourceFed to see what the site has to say. We"ll let you know if we hear anything.
Source: BuzzFeed