Google actively propagandizing Wu-Flu through search result manipulation

a reply to: toysforadults

Just a disclaimer.... I think this story is definitely worth keeping an eye on... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit worried.

But I see what you mean with Google pushing something while you search something else. Your search term was pretty specific and should have produced results pertaining to that query.

Who's benefiting?

Does anyone remember Y2K?

That's who's benefiting

(For those that dont. Amazon, Walmart, Aldis, Dicks, BP, Exxon, other grocery stores and sporting goods that don't pay google but benefit because they're in the area of those scared enough.)


(I've tried to uninstall google stuff on my phone, knowing they're listening to everything. But when I do my phone acts up. It doesn't like it. Google has intertwined its tenticals into everything. Then I factory rest... google comes back...)

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: toysforadults

It’s almost like you’re say that not everything you see on the internet is real.
Hard to believe that a company that exists to sort and prioritizes information would.....bwhahahaha..
I couldn’t even finish typing that one.

It is as if the things in the real world, things that could affect large parts of the world given it's nature, things that are trending, are a conspiracy !!

*puts Tesla coil hat on*

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: burdman30ott6

They offer more information then every library that ever existed ... It's not googles fault people don't know how to use the internet or use it's algorithms.

Using google isn't hard if you live in any first world nation, you just need to be specific in your wording.
OP could have easily searched "Common cold symptoms".

And branched off from there, instead focused on one particular location on the globe. It's called the 'common cold' for a reason. To be honest, the real conspiracy in all this is why everyone is freaking out about a new strain of the cold virus that is mainly contained within' China's borders...

Do you realize they're estimating the transmission rate to be similar to that of influenza? It might only be ~10,000 worldwide (probably underreported) so far, but that can turn into 3m in 2 weeks, 90m in a month and more than half the world's population in 2 months.

Hopefully what many are calling overreaction works, because 2-4% of the world's population dead is kind of a big deal (and if 3B end up sick simultaneously, that percentage will rise.)

ETA: its not "a common cold" - what people call "common cold" are established viruses, which typically cause very tame immune responses and resolve quickly. They are typically established coronaviruses or rhinoviruses. This one is a novel coronavirus which is quite serious, resulting in a lot of cases of pneumonia.

a reply to: toysforadults

than why is Google showing the Corona virus results on it's front page rather than showing the common cold?

Lots of people are sick and dying, lots of other people are scared and this story has heaps of attention all around the the world. China has to say something, but how is that narrative controlled and why is the common person facing 7 years imprisonment for spreading rumors or talking about subjects deemed taboo by the government?

I've found that Google takes current NEWS events, and elevates them over what the results would show, if there were no big news related to any of the words you type into the search box.

In your case, the word China "triggered" Google Search to put the big Corona Virus outbreak at the top of your search results.

The same search last month would have returned similar results to DuckDuckGo and BING. (IMO)

a reply to: toysforadults

On Goog hive mind you need to set (constrain) the dates to search within or use boolean search terms.



And if you use a different search engine like www.qwant.com you'll get entirely different set of results that actually give you what you searched on, unlike Goog.

This is why I always do a second search on other search engines. Yandex for ex., it's basically the Russian version of Google but without the advertising. Even their image search is much better then google's.
Below an ss of the exact search phrase that the OP used, without even setting filters on English.

go figure .. bill (hell)gates paid for it.