My search for the least politically correct search engine
You’ve all seen the news of Google Gemini’s image-generation fiasco. This was an example of a company pushing diversity to such an absurd extreme that, even given the current political climate, they were forced to apologise. Other forms of bias are more discrete. The politicisation of search results is more underhand and insidious precisely because its subtle enough that few are even aware its happening — the information surfaced by Google search isn’t an organic result of a neutral algorithm helping you to find the information you're looking for, but the result of Silicon Valley apparatchiks tweaking the code to reflect their own deeply ideological convictions.
Google is arguably the most influential political actor in the world. The Google search engine is the primary way human beings research just about anything — including history and politics. Google have total control over their search rankings — this determines whether a website will receive millions of hits or be barely visible.
Thankfully, there are other search engines to choose from. Would they all prove as politically-biased as Google? To run this experiment I chose the most politically incorrect article I could possibly think of, the article that ushered in a whole wave of previously unprecedented online suppression, arguably the most notorious article ever published on the internet. It is frankly a miracle (or, more accurately, a demonstration of unrivalled technical know-how and stubborn perseverance) that this site has managed to stay online — albeit with an ever-shifting top-level domain.
Duck Duck Go
Search term: daily stormer road rage
The article is second place in the search results. The top article is a New Yorker piece lambasting the Daily Stormer.
Rating: Reasonable
Brave search
Search term: daily stormer fatty smasher
The article on the Daily Stormer website is second in the search results. In top place is exactly the same article copy-pasted onto somebody’s random blog.
Rating: Reliably accurate
Yandex
Search term: daily stormer unable to dodge
Yandex returned the article from the Daily Stormer’s old .com top level domain as saved by the Wayback Machine. It also returned results for the thoroughly un-woke Unz Review and Occidental Dissent.
Rating: Reliably accurate
Bing
Search term: daily stormer "fatty smasher"
Yandex returned the article from the Daily Stormer’s old .com top level domain as saved by the Wayback Machine. It also returned results for the thoroughly un-woke Unz Review and Occidental Dissent.
Rating: Borderline
And the winner is…
Brave and Yandex are clearly the stand-out choices. It’s evident that Google's politicised amplification of certain content and total obfuscation of other content is somewhat unique (although Bing isn’t that much better). You can still find the original article through Google. Typing site:dailystormer.in into the search bar limits results to just that website. Other than that, regardless of which search term you use, Google has completely redacted this article — it simply doesn’t appear anywhere in any search results.
Whether you find the excesses of the Stormer amusing or juvenile and offensive, its worth looking at the most extreme case to test just how censorious these algorithms can be. Less edgy right-wing websites are relegated to the back-pages rather than omitted entirely.