Has our democracy been hacked?

When you enter a phrase in a search engine, you receive the results that are the most relevant to your request, yes? Well maybe not… maybe completely different factors are in play 

An aspiring musician searching for harmonica lessons online probably wouldn’t give much thought to what information comes up, provided they find a suitable teacher. They probably would assume major websites like Google present all the information in a neat, unbiased list, ready to be clicked.

But what if major websites selectively manipulated the information they show us each time we searched online? Are the only factors in play what information is most useful to you or is something else at work?

Cash, as ever, is king. Google delivers adverts through an auction-based system. Pay for an advert and a music school stands a better chance of being at the top of a search page. So a prospective student is more likely to visit the site of a school with deeper pockets over a poorer one with potentially more able teachers. But this is just market forces at work.

Website owners also take advantage of SEO (search engine optimisation) to boost their listings in search results. A few of these techniques include cross-linking – providing links to other useful pages – repeated keywords and constantly adding new content.

These techniques can also be used to promote spam, so search engines such as Google make use of algorithms to detect SEO abuse like duplicating content from other websites. 

This makes it more likely that a would-be harmonica player will find a genuine music school, but it can catch out websites that are simply trying to raise their profile. On Christmas Day 2013, the music lyrics website RapGenius found itself tumbling down Google’s search results simply because the owners had been sharing referral links via Twitter. 

Google also makes sure to tailor content based on sites you’ve visited and/or your current location. Pam Cowburn, Communications Director of the Open Rights Group, which fights to preserve digital rights and freedoms, highlights the dangers of this ‘filter bubble’.

“People only see news stories that reflect their own views and those of their social circle,” she explains. “This was apparent during and after the Brexit referendum where Remainers and Brexiteers appeared to occupy separate spaces on social media.”

Google Shopping’s search engine, Froogle, does allow you to list products in order of price, but it openly admits that merchants pay to be listed in the results, and the filter bubble still applies. 

Skewing the results

This kind of search manipulation is forgiveable to an extent, but what if much more crucial information is being distorted?

An excellent case in point is Hillary Clinton’s recent attendance at the 9/11 commemoration ceremony, which was cut short due to sickness. Both she and her press team were tight-lipped on the subject.

This didn’t stop opponents such as Rudy Giuliani from inviting others to search in Google Videos for ‘Hillary Clinton illness’ – the result being that anyone else typing in the incomplete search term ‘Hillary Clinton i-‘ at the time for would have likely seen an autocomplete search suggestion with the full phrase ‘Hillary Clinton illness’. 

As Nathan Nicholls, Digital Marketing Director at digital agency Switch, points out: “When you start a search on Google, you can find information faster by looking at search predictions provided by Google Autocomplete. There are a number of factors that influence the predictions Google presents, including a user’s search history, geographic location and what others are searching for. Automated filters may also be used to block any offensive or inappropriate content suggestion that doesn’t comply with Google’s policies and guidelines.” 

And what of search engines skewing search results to match their own political leanings. When Google spoke to the Wall Street Journal in June, it denied its autocomplete search field was biased in favour of Clinton, but did admit that it doesn’t allow negative search terms to be coupled with someone’s name – arguably a good thing  for Donald Trump.

This begs the question: can a search engine, particularly one as powerful as Google, ultimately influence the outcome of an election. 

Nicholls is doubtful. “Google is increasingly using a machine-learning artificial intelligence system called RankBrain to help sort through its organic search results. Machine learning is where a computer teaches itself how to do something, rather than being programmatically taught by humans.” 
 
In August, Robert Epstein, writing for Politico magazine, claimed to have run experiments on Google’s search algorithms. He named his alarming discovery the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). 

Epstein says that when he ran his experiment, Donald Trump was in the lead over other Republican nominees in 47 US states. This resulted in Trump appearing in Google Trends, which displays current news stories. Theoretically, this should have resulted in anyone typing ‘Donald Trump nomination’ into the Google search engine seeing a good deal more links to current news stories at the top of their search results. 

In practice, Epstein believes this is actually determined by how Google employees manually adjust results in its search algorithm. He also states Google admits to doing this around 600 times a year. Sometimes such changes are minor, such as a slight adjustment made by the search engine to boost the ranking of mobile-friendly sites. 

Some changes are more dramatic, such as Google Panda – a change to the search algorithm introduced in 2011 ostensibly to stop websites with too much advertising from appearing. This affected around 12 per cent of all listed websites. 

Because the search algorithms Google uses aren’t publically available, there’s no way to be certain that results are being maliciously manipulated. However, no matter how benign, such changes could result in a candidate’s news stories appearing in Google Trends but being forced down when people use the Google search bar itself. 

Honest and open?

Pete Todd, one of the main developers of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, believes there may be a resolution that could satisfy all parties. “Cryptography can be used to prove that a site content selection algorithm is being run honestly. Combined with a public algorithm, you’d have the ability to determine whether or not the content you’re being shown is an unbiased selection. Unfortunately, content selection algorithms are often considered highly proprietary ‘secret sauce’, so doing this would be a hard sell.”

Social media giant Facebook also features trending news stories. Theoretically, these simply reflect the most shared links. However, in May this year, tech website Gizmodo published claims by former Facebook ‘news curators’ about the site’s own secret sauce. They suggested they’d removed stories about prominent conservative politicians such as Mitt Romney, as well as censoring conservative news outlets like Breitbart. 

A Facebook executive denied the claims made in the article, explaining that its digital trending module identified the stories and it was down to the news curators simply to give them an interesting description. 

If Google or Facebook are guilty of editorial bias, they have sinned no more than the newsroom of a print newspaper, which selects stories in line with the paper’s own political stance. 

Pam Cowburn also cautions: “When Facebook got rid of the team that curated its Trending News, a number of fake stories appeared. The internet is supposed to act in a more democratic way, with social media platforms acting as neutral intermediaries. But algorithms have inherent biases as well, even if it’s not obvious what they are.”

As Pete Todd states: “I’m not worried about correctly labelled paid content; I’m worried about incorrectly labelled ‘astro-turfing’ [the practice of trying to make messages from a corporation or political body appear as if they originated from a grassroots movement], as well as what content is hidden from us.”

So, has our democracy been hacked? The commercial interests of a search engine or the political leanings of a social media giant can undoubtedly interfere with the type and quality of information we receive. Clearly, neither Facebook nor Google are facing public pressure to mend their ways. Fortunately, for now, there are multiple search engines, social media websites and alternative news outlets to access unbiased information.