Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias 133
Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ — each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports at Cnet that along comes Blekko, whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' Categorization lists are applied by appending a 'slashtag.' The query, 'climate change /conservative' will give you politically slanted results, for example. 'Climate change /science' will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept — that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed — gets some traction, writes Needleman. But 'Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.'"
Bias? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
politically biased searches for the win! (Score:4, Insightful)
Obamacare fiscal implications /liberal = Will save us trillions!
/neo-con = We'll find them on every street corner!
/catholic = Condoms don't prevent AIDS
/bloomberg = We need tougher gun laws because criminals follow them
/howard dean = YEEEEEEAAAAAAH!
/conservative = Fox News
/liberal = MSNBC
WMDs in Iraq
Sex education
Gun control
How to give a concession speech
Unbiased news
Unbiased news
Unbiased news = No results round.
Like left-right.us (Score:3, Insightful)
This looks like a professional heavyweight cousin of Left-Right.us [left-right.us], a relatively simple Google hack I posted some weeks back. Very cool.
(though I still like seeing the results side-by-side.)
Unneeded? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I want to further specify search keywords to add bias to my search in Google, I can. Unless Blekko is *really, really* good at this, I'm not sure I see how it will end up better than google with the same keywords without the slash?
I suppose it's an interesting *idea*, but the devil will be in the detail of getting the filtering to be really good, better than bing, yahoo, or google with similar searches.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all we need... (Score:3, Insightful)
More confirmation bias.
Re:Bias? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see how this is a good idea.The people who hate NPR (liberal) or FOX (conservative) without ever listening to either, already have plenty of places to get their bias quota. We don't need any more mind numb drones for the political classes.
Are you suggesting that NPR promotes the left as FOX promotes the right?
Have you actually listened to NPR, or are you just assuming that the FOX propaganda regarding NPR is true?
The problem is people confuse what bias is (Score:4, Insightful)
I mention this in another post.
So Fox news is NOT biased. No, really, they aren't. The reason is they know exactly what they are doing. They don't think they are perfectly in the center, they don't think they are trying to be equal. They know they are supporting republican causes and agendas. They may not admit as much, bu they know it. It is an active, purposeful stance. It is not bias.
Bias is when you are trying to do something, but don't (at least not completely) because you are predisposed for or against something. So bias in the media would be something like a story not getting reported on because the editors decide it "isn't news" because it tells a narrative they don't like. They aren't actively working to suppress it, they just don't like it and thus decide it isn't news worthy, not realizing what they are doing.
You do discover bias in new media, no surprise it happens in all human endeavors. Fox News just isn't a good example because they are actively working towards a stance. It isn't bias if it is your actual goal.
Re:One problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:politically biased searches for the win! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:politically biased searches for the win! (Score:1, Insightful)
Would you report much about a group specifically opposed to your quality of reporting other than to make them look crazy, when you are paid based on ratings / agreeing with the boss's agenda?
I am somewhat amazed though that they tried to tie them to pot, probably trying to make them look like "a bunch of dirty pot head liberal hippies" I guess...