How Bing Search Engine Plays Politics in Election 2016

Microsoft Bing ^ | Bing Political Index

[poconopundit]

You'd think that Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, would take great pains to ensure that its BING.com search engine would be politically neutral.

Well in the last couple weeks I’ve noticed that Microsoft/Bing is playing some pretty blatant political tricks to influence the American voting public through its search engine.

What they have done is stick a chart at the top of the search results that tries to influence the voter. If you do a search on a particular presidential candidate's name here are some of the results you get:

• Hillary
• Jeb Bush
• Marco Rubio
• Ted Cruz

OK, here are some of the very obvious bias going on here:

• Limiting Choices of Candidates on Screen — The first problem is that not all the candidates show. The results vary, but you find, for example, that when you search for "Jeb Bush", the pictures of Jeb, Carson, Cruz and many other GOP candidates appear, but you do not see Trump or Rubio. Why is that? Then you may notice that's there's a faint arrow on the far right of the screen that allows you to scroll to other candidates.
• Magnify Certain Issues, Not Mention Some Very Important Ones — Yet another bias is the issues that Microsoft is telling us are important to the American public. We are told, for instance, that Environmental Policy and LGBT Rights are important. Ah, but what about issues such as Stopping Terrorism, Job Creation, Economic Growth, and Stopping Government Corruption? A lot of voters care a lot about such issues, but Microsoft apparently dismisses those as not important.
• Biased Public Scores — And yet another bias is in the Public Scores. According to Microsoft, 7 of the 10 issues in the campaign the public leans toward progressive solutions. Would the public really agree? Second, if you look at the issue of Immigration Reform the charts shows Hillary and Sanders to be leaders in this category. Oh, really? I guess all depends on your perspective. Cruz and Trump are shown on the opposite side.

Microsoft should be ashamed of this bias.

[TBP]

Google and Yahoo are no better.

[Noumenon]

They have no shame. Gates went over to the Dark Side a long time ago.

[Timpanagos1]

That could only be fixed via federal regulation and we do not want to go there.

[BitWielder1]

Blatant Bias is the new Normal.

[Calpublican]

Who uses Bing? Google also plays politics, but their engine is much better.

Don’t know about Yahoo search engine but their news is direct from the Communist/Democrat Headquarters.

[GraceG]

And they love to play with language for their own ends, they use the term “Progressive” which is nothing more than a slick term for “Gradual Soft Totalitarianism”.

[Hugin]

I use Bing all the time, often for candidates names. I have never gotten that. Just tried searching Trump, Rubio, and Cruz and got no such graphic. Maybe it’s based on your past viewing.

[poconopundit]

It varies. If you type Jeb, you don’t get the graph, but Jeb Bush gets you there.

Likewise, type Trump and you don’t get the chart, but type Donald Trump and you do.

But with Hillary or Hillary Clinton you get the chart. Go figure...

[poconopundit]

You’re right. “Progressive” is definitely a loaded word. And who isn’t for “progress”. That word is a very clever masking of truth.

[BenLurkin]

You'd think that Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, would take great pains to ensure that its BING.com search engine would be politically neutral.