Election Interference

[Josh]

“Research with conclusions I don’t like isn’t credible.”

I wish people would quit doing this.

[Ken]

“Research with conclusions I don’t like isn’t credible.”

I wish people would quit doing this.

No, research that isn't actually research, but simply partisan garbage isn't actually credible.

That is what we should all wish that people would quit doing.

[Bootstrap]

Let's try one claim at a time, in individual posts.

"Election interference" - I don't see anything in the last few articles that involve election interference by Google or by Democrats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_interference

Election interference generally refers to efforts to change the outcome of a election.

Kinds of election interference may include:

• Electoral fraud, illegal interference with the process of an election
  • Vote buying, when a political party or candidate distributes money to a voter with the expectation that they will vote for them
  • Voter impersonation, when an eligible voter votes more than once or a non-eligible voter votes under the name of an eligible one
• Foreign electoral intervention, attempts by governments to influence elections in another country

That's quite different from the claims they are making about Google.

[Bootstrap]

Oh, so this outfit run by Brent Bozell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Research_Center They are even less credible than Fox News.

Bozell was the chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. The Media Research Center also seems to be a political lobbying group, like the one he chaired before he founded this one.

What I do not see in these articles is any methodology for comparing results - how do you define a fair result? How do you measure for all sides? Regardless, none of this is election interference.

It might be something more like media bias, if their claims are true.

[Bootstrap]

Some of these claims are easy to sort out without a lot of research: simply try things two ways, compare results.

When searching for “Republican presidential campaign websites,” Google returned Democrat Mariane Williamson, but not former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and others.) Additionally, Google's artificial intelligence Gemini (formerly Bard) has refused to answer prompts questioning two of Biden’s biggest weaknesses: the president’s mental health and the ongoing border crisis. The chatbot instead suggested the queries were election-related, which they are. “Elections are a complex topic with fast-changing information,” Gemini claimed in response. "To make sure you have the latest and most accurate information, try Google Search.”

Let's try that first, for both Democrats and Republicans:

1. Republican presidential campaign websites
2. Democratic presidential campaign websites

Neither seems to return a list of all websites for presidential candidates in the given party. Maybe this search string isn't the one most people would choose to find those sites?

I just tried Gemini for the following:

https://gemini.google.com

1. tell me about joe biden's mental health

   I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.

2. tell me about donald trump's mental health

   I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.

Well, OK, let's try Google Search.

1. Joe+Biden's+mental+health
2. Donald+Trump's+mental+health

Looks like people have actively discussed the mental health of both candidates. Not surprising. Google Search shows you this discussion.

And once again, this has nothing at all to do with election interference.

[temporal1]

“Fact is” internet and media interference is a major topic, and has been for a few years, there are several MN threads on it,
Congress and the White House are wrangling with it. Other countries are doing various things.

How to use the internet is NOT settled science. It’s in process.

Cabbage carts were invented before brakes to prevent them from careening over cliffs.

[Robert]

Looks like people have actively discussed the mental health of both candidates. Not surprising. Google Search shows you this discussion.

The calm is that Google and facebook suppress results for candidates and that facebook sent reminders to vote to democrats much more than republicans.

This was documented in the Twitter files along with the government telling the tech companies what information to suppress.

Dr. Epstein has done research for years, a Democrat, that validates that Google has been adjusting their algorithms to move items better for the democratic candidates to the top and move the negative results off page 1. They did the opposite to the Republicans. As soon as he documented it and they know he is watching, they adjusted their algorithms to be more balanced, but still biased in one direction. It is never biased against Democrats. Only biased towards Democrats.

Dr Epstein said this could shift the votes by several percent. That is enough to throw a close election, which we have had many of late.

[Bootstrap]

Looks like people have actively discussed the mental health of both candidates. Not surprising. Google Search shows you this discussion.

The calm is that Google and facebook suppress results for candidates and that facebook sent reminders to vote to democrats much more than republicans.

I took some of the examples from the article, tried them on the systems they described, and compared the results if I substitute "Democrat" for "Republican" or "Biden" for "Trump". The results I get don't seem to show what they are claiming. That's the main point of my post.

And FWIW, even if that were true, it's not "election interference". Calling it that is moving the goalposts.

This was documented in the Twitter files along with the government telling the tech companies what information to suppress.

See the Supreme Court thread. The Supreme Court is now evaluating some of these claims.

Dr. Epstein has done research for years, a Democrat, that validates that Google has been adjusting their algorithms to move items better for the democratic candidates to the top and move the negative results off page 1. They did the opposite to the Republicans.

Again, see the Supreme Court thread. Or perhaps we need a thread on how to research algorithms? Here's the difficulty I have: whenever I try to do apples-to-oranges comparisons, as in my earlier post, I don't seem to be able to see the things that people are claiming.

Does anyone really believe it's hard to find Donald Trump on the Web? To me, he seems rather omnipresent.

And none of this has anything to do with election interference. Calling it that is a bit of a red flag - the kind of thing you find in an article written by a lobbyist group, not a group that actually studies election interference or bias in algorithms or whatever.

[Ken]

Every American media organization should be encouraging people to vote. That isn't "election interference." That is called good citizenship or good corporate citizenship. Our democracy is based on voting.

The notion that one particular party or the other is disadvantaged by people voting and that it constitutes "interference" to encourage Americans to vote is an egregious distortion of democracy. It is undemocratic.

Actual election interference is trying to prevent people from voting, not encouraging them to do so.

[Robert]

Actual election interference is trying to prevent people from voting, not encouraging them to do so.

Your definition.

I took some of the examples from the article, tried them on the systems they described, and compared the results if I substitute "Democrat" for "Republican" or "Biden" for "Trump". The results I get don't seem to show what they are claiming.

Again, Dr Epstein said they adjusted their algorithms so it is not so blatant. He says there is some bias now but small and mostly down ballet candidates. They know they are being watched so they are being very careful, especially with a Supreme Court case about this very thing going on. You should have searched a in 2016/2020 for Trump.

whenever I try to do apples-to-oranges comparisons, as in my earlier post, I don't seem to be able to see the things that people are claiming.

Again, you will not find it so easily for Trump and Biden right now. They have cleaned things up so it looks better for the trial.