On the day of the 2024 US Presidential Election, one point of contention that went viral stemmed from Google’s search results for ”Where can I vote for Harris” looking different and linking back to Kamala Harris’ campaign, unlike searching for “Where can I vote for Trump”. Google was quick to explain how the issue was the result of there being a county called Harris County. What that incident also highlighted was just how unfamiliar many people still are with how the digital world works, how susceptible to manipulation digital platforms are, and how, if you are not a famous name that is impacted by a search result, these platforms are unlikely to take any action to address it.
Some searches carried out on search engines and social network platforms provide results that have no connection to the search, even as top suggestions. Despite that these platforms can be manipulated on the back end to influence what information populates, the real culprit behind the “inconsistent” internet experience is “user personalization”.
Digital searches carried out by two people over different digital platforms regularly receive different results, depending on personalization, location, and search history. Even things like device settings, user settings, or previous interactions influence search algorithms, or they can be deliberately manipulated on the back end of every digital platform. Search engines and social network platforms have a limited number of ways to generate money, and they incur major upkeep costs to be able to preserve all the data that has been posted on their platforms. Nothing about anything that occurs over the internet is “free”, even though there are no pay-to-access requirements for these platforms; the end-user ends up being both the customer and the product.
A platform that personalizes search results for a better “end-user experience” can affect how much money advertisers may spend over the platform. Most people who lack familiarity with technology tend to lack the awareness of this reality because they assume that the internet has remained unchanged since its introduction. For those who understand how things get suggested to users, though, they realize there is a narrowing of perspectives influenced by whoever ends up spending the most money on search engine optimization (SEO) and boosting services.
An argument can be made that there is very little neutrality about what appears over the digital world, influenced completely by digital know-how. Social network platforms like X have made their algorithms publicly available. Nothing is secret about how X’s algorithms prioritize information, yet they are still susceptible to influence and manipulation. Or perhaps it is time for a hard truth, that the era of “neutrality” over the digital world is bound to disappear altogether, and that complaints about “digital interference and manipulation” are the result of people having figured out how to make the digital landscape work for them.
The Digital Dilemma of Correcting Faulty Algorithms.
Back in 2023, I received a message from a reader telling me how when they searched my name, “Alek Golijanin” followed by words like “Ottawa”, “Athabasca”, and “journalist”, the search results were connecting my name with the name of another “Alek” from Toronto who carried out a terror attack. One of the places sub-links were popping up was underneath the link to my landing page on The Voice Magazine website. There were other stupid suggestions, but there was no mention of the famous “Alek Golijanin” (Erin Brockobic) from Toronto, a person who shared the same name as me but who was a member of the LGBTQ community and participated on the reality TV show, Drag Heels (2018), a documentary about drag shows.
After reporting the wrongful information to Bing multiple times, they had different excuses as to why the issue was persisting or reoccurring, before they eventually fixed it. One explanation was that it was a problem with “The Voice Magazine” (we checked, and it was not). Another was that it might have to do with my internet activity (impossible because I only watch educational stuff, vintage Comedy Central shows, and trashy reality television snippets). On these occasions, the algorithms were populating sublinks to “Alek Minassian” videos under top results for “Alek Golijanin” and nothing related my Toronto doppelganger, “Erin Brockobic”.
Another message I received from a reader in 2023 related to how searches over X (formerly Twitter) were effectively “shadow banning” all my posts from the “Top” section, for specific searches “Alek Golijanin” and “@AlekGo”. Either random accounts that were tweeting at me would show up or a blank section with nothing at all. A lot of fake-looking accounts, but nothing about me. As a premium X user, paying a monthly fee to have access to the best version of X, reaching out to customer support solved nothing because their explanation was that they were careful about interfering with their algorithms.
All of it was happening at a time when the criminology articles that I was writing were showing up as “featured snippets” chosen by Google’s AI-powered assistant. Articles that I was writing were being recommended over articles from the Globe and Mail, the CBC, and CTV. And then other articles were getting reshared over social network platforms. Although the glitches have largely been resolved, those algorithms inconsistencies limited my ability to build upon the momentum.
If the end-user experience is the main priority for tech companies, then why is nothing being done when algorithms are identified as being faulty? If something related to search results is faulty, then why is there any dilemma about correcting those faulty algorithms or anything that is incorrect and may appear over the internet? If humans wrote the algorithms upon which these digital platforms exist, then why would there be any issue with repairing faulty algorithms? Perhaps another hard truth may be necessary, a correction, that the end-user is a product first and a customer much later. Because society can no longer ‘function’ without the services that these digital platforms provide.