Google said it fixed a “bug” that caused conservative websites to disappear from their search results on Tuesday, but a former tech giant engineer said the flaw may have inadvertently exposed an internal list targeting certain news outlets.
“It appears to have revealed the existence of another blacklist that is disproportionately targeted at conservatives,” Mike Wacker said in a message to the Mediaite website.
“The flaw is that the sites on this blacklist disappeared from Google’s search results, but the existence of the list largely depends on the design. And that begs an important question: Why was this blacklist created in the first place, and what else is it used for? Wacker questioned.
For several hours on Tuesday morning and early afternoon, users were unable to access multiple websites in Google search, including Breitbart, Drudge Report, Bongino Report, and National Pulse.
Occupy Democrats, a left-wing populist website, also disappeared, but the New York Times and Washington Post did not appear to be affected.
“Today we noticed a problem that affected some navigation and site searches: operators. We investigated and have since fixed the error, “Google said in a statement on Twitter.
Contrary to what is speculated, this did not point to particular sites or political ideologies. Today’s problem affected sites that represent a variety of content and different points of view, “he continued. “Our rating systems do not index, rank or rank content based on political bias, as we have explained on our site How Search Works.”
But Dr. Robert Epstein, who studied Google’s influence on elections, agreed with Wacker.
“A person or algorithm at Google is likely to add ‘breitbart.com’ and other URLs to one or more of the company’s blacklists,” Epstein told Mediaite. “So maybe after a setback, someone removed those URLs from the blacklists.”
Wacker, who was fired by Google in June 2019 after writing an article claiming that “outrage crowds and witch hunts dominate his culture,” said blacklisted sites “are being penalized.”
“And the flaw was that the penalty was accidentally set so high that these sites were effectively removed from Google search,” Wacker said. “I have found that many people tend to combine algorithms with AI since they are both automated, but AI is not as objective and mechanical as algorithms.”
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