Most of us have been aware of this for quite a while -- Google search results favor Democrat leaning articles.
It's reminiscent of the era a few decades ago when Walter Cronkite was declared by his media counterparts as the most trusted man in America. Turns out he was a hard core Democrat, although most of us were oblivious to that particular aspect of the main stream media until much later.
But the point here is that the bias permeated the media for decades. Now TV cable added some political competition. But the idea of a medium of some sort trying to sway elections with political bias is still very much alive in the form of the search engines and social networks.
There's a lot of hand wringing over Google, Facebook, and Twitter as reports spread about bias search results and shadow banning. But the truth is, the names and faces have changed. And the methods have changed. But the bias has been there for a long time.
Attempting to regulate them is a bad idea. But it's incumbent on all of us to be aware of what they are trying to do to us and do some independent thinking.
What triggered this post? These links:
YES. BBC: Could Google Flip Elections?
How Google Could End Democracy
Could Google manipulate elections?.
See also: Study: Google Pushes Liberal News in Top 5 Search Suggestions.
P.S. In regard to Google, it's practically inevitable that the msm are structuring their headlines in such a way as to maximize their attraction to the Google algorithms.
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1:13 PM 8/31/2018
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