Google is spying

I get that too. But, you and I might disagree on what the “truth” is, depending on the subject… And bias forms the “truth” for many people far too often…

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Without actually knowing how they did this, it is hard to tell whether there is any substance to it. If they had used a PC that had previously browsed and searched sites that are generally pro-Democrat, then they will get almost exclusively pro-Democrat advertising. The same would probably go the other way.

Other factors that would bias the search results: the IP address of the PCs they used (all the same address? Were the PCs used all on the same campus? The same state?), were different PCs in different physical locations across the country used? Were they 100% clean installs? What history did the public IP address of the those locations have, in terms of browsing and search? Were the users logged into their Google accounts?

Given the Big Tech algorithms, it is next to impossible to get a non-biased search result, even on a clean device. You need a clean device (100%, including a MAC address and IP address that have never used the internet before (the latter is next to impossible), and in a location that has a 50-50 voter bias between Republican and Democrat. If you can’t fulfil those criteriea, and probably a few dozen others, you cannot conduct unbiased research into Big Tech. It is just too big and too complicated and unknown to get any meaningful results, other than the advertising will reflect the user’s internet usage pattern.

Also, 95 people is way too small for any serious scientific study. No serious scientist would use such a small study group for such findings. I agree with you @darcmage.

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