Home › Blogs › JustinHart's blog ›

Cuil Biased Already

Submitted by JustinHart on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 12:20
in

Today, the Internet world is very excited about Cuil, the alternative to Google founded by Anna Patterson, the elusive gal behind Google's success in many ways.  Patterson jumped ship to start Cuil.com, claiming groundbreaking changes in the way you can search the Internet. 

Couple of pointers:

1) Don't misttype Cuil.com

2) Don't bother searching for John McCain

3) Obama seems to be their candidate of choice

As of 1:00PM EST, no results for poor John McCain.  Boy, that was the quickest flat run to the left I've ever seen for a Silicon Valley start-up.  Congrats!

Am I being too critical?  How about Mitt Romney?  Nope.  Mike Huckabee?  Nope.  On the other hand it might be a technical glitch: Hillary is missing. Then again, they may REALLY be in the tank for Obama!

So what is the problem?  Cuil suggest:

  • a typo. Please check your spelling.
  • your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
  • too many search terms. Please try fewer terms

I guess I should just stick with "Obama" as the "common substitute" for all my searching needs

Screenshot:

Cuil is biased!?

0
Your rating: None

Comments

Pull over the Bias Bus...

Submitted by DevilsAdvocate on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 12:40.

because at 1:26 Eastern, cuil returned healthy results lists for John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, organized by category, complete with purrty pictures.

Out of curiosity, what leads you to believe that Obama is "their candidate of choice" or that they're "in the tank?"

There's a technical glitch,

Submitted by Tom Readmond on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 12:53.

There's a technical glitch, maybe because of heavy traffic on their first day.  I had that result for several searches, some of them non-political, then repeated the exact same search and got far more results than I would from Google.  I also had a large number of results on a search and when I clicked to go to the next page, it told me it had found no results.  I'm pretty sure this is just a technical glitch.

Two Pics Of John McCain Hugging Bush

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 16:46.

When you type John McCain in the Cuil (horrible name btw)  search engine, two pictures come up on the first page of John McCain hugging Bush, and neither of these pics are on the respective websites they cite.

This is the famous picture the left thinks is going to put Obama in the White House, where McCain committed the horrible act of embracing Bush.

Obvious bias by someone in Cuil.  I'm sure if you type in Barack Obama the picture of him dressed as a Muslim "accidently" comes up.

Please tell me you guys are

Submitted by Lisa on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 17:44.

Please tell me you guys are kidding. You're actually trying to suggest that an automated indexing system has been programmed with a deliberate bias toward Obama?

The reason all indexed search engines return results favoring Obama is because Obama, his campaign, and his supporters have done a superior job of harnessing the power of the internet to get pro-Obama messages out there.

Why is that so hard to believe?

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 18:33.

Liberals are incapable of separating anything from politics.  They are always trying to slip in their propoganda at every opportunity.  Since the MSM is composed almost 90% of liberals, you tend to get news through a liberal lens, even when it's a news story that has nothing to do with politics.

Have you ever notices these "sleights" never cut the other way?  You'll never see an "accidental" bias against liberals.

It's not a conspiracy, it's just a bunch of people working independently at getting the "truth" out that happen to work at these outlets.  To think this sort of "monkeybusiness" would never happen is absurd.

Please just answer the

Submitted by Lisa on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 19:36.

Please just answer the question for me. Are you or are you not suggesting that the architects of cuil deliberately programmed a pro-D bias into their index and/or ranking algorithm?

Way overthinking this

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 20:49.

Am I suggesting the architects of a website purposely programmed a Liberal bias into their ranking algorithm, of course not.  I'm not even sure how it's possible to program a political bias into a search engine.

Am I suggesting that one of the many liberal programmers working for Ciul could go in the system and have a little "mischevious fun" on a few specific searches, and change what "should" come up?  Absolutely.  You can't possibly tell me with a straight face that it's an impossible scenario.

I didn't say the scenario you

Submitted by Lisa on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 21:14.

I didn't say the scenario you posit was impossible. And it truly is possible to design an algorithm that gives Democratic-friendly sites priority in the rankings.

I just don't think either one is probable in the slightest.

Here's a little math humor for you

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 21:35.

which I stole from Megan McArdle's geek jargon comments - which, I suppose, says something about how perverted my brain is that it would want to spend the past 10 minutes wrapping itself around the kind of shit I used to hear over beer bongs in the dorm (sigh):

Hey, you'll love this. It's the best math joke I know.

"The Axiom of Choice is obviously true, the Well-Ordering Theorem is obviously false, and as for Zernicke's Lemma, who can say?"

Ok so if that one has you rolling on the floor, it just gets better:

Willie was a chemist
But Willie is no more
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4

Ok but wait - this one's gonna kill ya:

While speeding along the autobahn, Werner Heisenberg is pulled over by a cop.

"Excused me" the officer asked in a surly tone "But do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

"No" retorted Heisenberg, "But I know where I am."

Hehehe!  Is that sick or what?  You've now exhibited a 100% mortality response, haven't you?

sorry...that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with politics. The whole probability/algorithm thing made me do it.  :-D

 

Very good

Submitted by Lisa on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 21:52.

I heard that earlier this week was annual "pi approximation day." I don't know about you but that seems like a terribly irrational holiday to me.

LMFAO

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 22:02.

Heh.  You're just going to encourage me, you know.  Not a good idea at all.

Check around

Submitted by Jeff Roberts on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 21:38.

I think it's easier to create biases through outlets than you think.  Google for instance has had several instances that smacked of bias, from the ads they accept and reject, to the news sites and blogs they list in their searches.  Add that to the fact that political donations from Google's management and entire workforce have been overwhelmingly to liberal causes and candidates.  98% of contributions to be precise, went to Democrat candidates.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/14/technology/google_democrats/index.htm

  I'm sure that's an organization that's going to bend over backwords to make sure conservatives get a fair shake.

Here is a few additional articles on the subject:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/10/youtube_google_and_the_liberal.html

http://kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com/2006/05/googles-liberal-bias.html

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05050402.html

It's not a stretch to think hijinks like these can and do happen.  In fact, it's a stretch to think they DON'T happen.  Liberals can deny these biases all they want, but it won't make them go away.

 

Um...

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 22:00.

Just to circle back through all of this since I took a detour, we know the following:

  • Google consists of Lefties
  • Google consists of Techies
  • Lefty Techies are better at exploiting the Internet than Republican Luddites

Am I missing anything?  Now you can frame the efficiency of search engines manned by liberal staffers as "liberal bias" toward their candidates but you can also frame the inefficiency of conservatives to exploit technology as "conservative bias" against change, progress, and exploiting technology. 

Part of the issue is generational in that young, hip, smart, savvy techies most often tend toward "liberal bias".  People usually tend get more conservative as they get older, get married, raise kids, pay mortgages and save for the future.  By that time they're too busy changing diapers and mowing the lawn to give a damn about the latest high-tech developments unless, of course, they are Patrick.  Patrick is one of the few Republicans I almost know who gives a damn about diapers, the lawn and high-tech developments.  Now with the realization that technology-driven conservatives like Patrick are in the minority and with Lisa offering the opinion that we're doing a crap job of exploiting technology, the question now becomes one of...now what?  That's my take on it, anyway.  Ball's in your court?

 

Leeeeeesa!

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 19:43.

There you are!  We've missed you!!  The RaBBiT formerly known as GOP Rebel  here.  I decided to revert to my stage name so as not to be branded as a racist, homophobic secession proponent.  Hope the LSAT's went well, are going well, or are about to go well. 

Curiously, I was just reading about spiders around the time of your post.  To wit:  Spiders are too dumb to recognize frames and foreign language.  Given the selective nature of spidering, it's not a bad idea to register at least all key pages of your site.  You can analyze your server's access logs to see when you were visited by spiders and what documents they requested.  A helpful Perl script for this purpose, called BotWatch, is available at http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~sxw/robots/botwatch.html.

I like this link.  Anybody who names their domain after Dr. Who's Time Machine is ok in my book.  And speaking of books, come visit on Facebook!

Awesome namechange. Now no

Submitted by Lisa on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 20:26.

Awesome namechange. Now no one will badger you with questions like, "Where are your Rebel friends now!!?" or accuse you of being a Rebel without a cause.
Yeah, I thought I'd stop by and see what's going on here at TNR. I was actually looking for you...no wonder I couldn't find you! Sneaky name change and all.

You're absolutely right that it's important to be proactive in making spiders and bots work in your favor, especially when it comes to the ones indexing for the search engines. That's what I  mean when I say the search engines are passively biased toward Obama...because Obama is out there wtih a team of people specifically hired to boost his positive Google returns. This is not so much cheating as this is just the new reality. McCain (and anybody else) would be wise to follow suit.

Yah, we had a discussion about this a few weeks back

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 21:12.

in the context of Stoller/Open Left and the topic of GoogleBombs.  Here's a bit of history on that subject, which of course continues to reinforce your premise. 

As for Grand Moff Tarkin and all my Rebel friends, here's my response to that nob: 

If you strike me down you hoser, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine! So take off!

Heh.