As a matter of fact, I have a Google account and have my searches
personalized. That means that supposedly Google keeps track of all of my
searches and certain preferences I have specified and returns results
tailored to my interests. At Google news I have specified the word
socialism as a category of news for me. What that means is that every
time I visit the web site while logged in Google news does a search of
its news database for the word socialism and then ranks the results
according to my personalized preferences. The category of socialism
appears on the news page right alongside the prefilled categories like
national, local, tech, science and so forth. When I click the socialism
tab a lot of the stories I get are right-wing diatribes accusing every
slightly liberal politician of being an evil socialist. But among those
kind of results I also find articles from the radical press. Lately the
articles from the radical press have become fewer and fewer. Sometimes
the entire page of results is nothing but right-wing vitriol against
so-called socialists who are not socialists at all. I find that I am
having to think of other search terms and do my own search to get the
kind of news stories I want. Now, these results are supposed to be based
on my past searches and the results I clicked on. If that is true and if
I am having a problem finding news items from the radical press then
what kind of results are others who do not have my search history or a
personalized Google account getting?
On 10/6/2017 9:54 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
You may or may not be aware that the websites from which I get most of my
articles, are in trouble. Google has changed their algorithms so that when
people do searches, articles from those websites, websites like Alternet,
Truthout, Popular Resistance, and Truthdig, don't appear in the results. The
email digests from some of these websites, which I have been receiving, are
disappearing. Reader Supported News has disappeared. Truthdig appears only
once or twice a week. Yesterday, Truthdig did appear. But when I attempted
to read an article, I kept getting a message that the website's certificate
was faulty with a question, did I want to continue anyway? Even though I
kept saying yes. I was stalled at that point in the article with the
question reappearing until I just gave up. There are other changes as well.
Many of the daily digest emails are in html which Outlook has difficulty
reading. Much of the ssame information which is in articles, appears in
podcasts in a less distilled manner, but all of the podcasts depend on
listeners' contributions to some extent or completely. I point this out
because I want you to realize that our ability to see and hear information
that is different from what corporations and the government wants us to
hear, are diminishing. Many of my favorite websites are asking people to
spread their information through social media. However, Facebook and
Twitter, particularly Facebook, is quickly succumbing to government
pressure. There was an excellent report on TRN (The Real News Network) the
other day, about the insanity of the congressional investigation of what are
purported to be, Russian ads on Facebook. The TRN reporter who was at the
hearings and Max Blumenthal, countered the assertions that you are hearing
about these account from mainstream media with ease. But the upshot of all
of this is that our freedom of the press and free speech, are fast
disappearing. And I suspect that email lists will soon follow because of
this trend.
Miriam
