Information ethics: can you believe anything you google?

The Internet has changed the landscape for conducting business. Because of the highly-connected world and the sudden expansion of the competition field, today's companies face both more opportunities (customers and markets they might never have thought of before) and more challenges (dealing with a globalized and ever-changing marketplace). Further to the above, the complexity and size of the Web do not make things any easier.

What are some of the main challenges the Web poses for information retrieval?

The advent of the Internet made it possible for me to befriend someone standing 10,000 miles away from me, buy a leather jacket made by an Italian artisan from my apartment in New York, plan my wedding in Thailand while sunbathing in Miami, read a book written by a Saudi Arabian translated in English on my e-reader while I'm in a train in London, watch a man cook sushi live from Japan while I sit on the couch at home in Chicago eating Pringles.

All of this has been, is, and will be possible because of the Internet, but what isn't?

Have you ever googled the word "polarization"? About 331,000,000 results (in 0.60 seconds). This is how many explanations there are for a single search query of one word. How is an average person supposed to know what the right answer is? And if you aren't sure about what you're reading, do you really have an answer? And is something true if you don't know who wrote the "truth" you're reading?

Polarization is a phenomenon that leads a group of people, or even entire societies, toward ideological extremes, away from anything like common ground. Facebook did that to 2016 America. Are we telling this to ourselves now? Maybe not yet.

Social media works with algorithms that, now more than ever, are programmed to understand what you like to see and hear and lead you to more of what you want to see and hear. Social media rely on your time and know how to use confirmation bias to keep you scrolling. Confirmation bias is a psychological principle that explains the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. (Wikipedia, n.d.)

Social media will identify your gender, age, political beliefs, habits, and routines and create a bubble where all of that is validated. Everyone does what you do, says what you'll say, likes what you like. How cool is that? Cool for a 15-year-old K-pop fan, not so cool for a 40-year-old pedophile, not so cool for a 25-year-old with suicidal thoughts, and not so cool for a 33-year-old with a drug addiction.

Small businesses are part of another category that is suffering. What if your grandmother were to open a small bakery in your town? She would probably sell well— if she wasn't competing with the 10 bakeries listed on Google in your area, the ones who run paid advertisements, have a professional photographer take pictures of their cookies, hire a graphic designer to create logos and branded material, an SEO specialist to write blog posts targeted at stay-at-home moms, a social media manager fresh out of college with a marketing degree hopping on every TikTok trend, keeping the Instagram feed aesthetically pleasing, and talking to moms on Facebook to plan their kids' birthday parties' custom cakes.

Is it really a small business if the budget required to keep it up online exceeds that to keep the business actually going? Advertisement has always been vital in business, but it didn't mean "life or death." If you're not listed on google, you basically do not exist, and if you don't exist, how will customers find you? What if you are listed and appear on page 2 of 100? You still don't exist, at least for me; I've never been on page 2 on any search query in my life.

Efficient information retrieval means having clearly reliable sources, fairness, and ethical design practices embedded in our platforms. We aren't remotely close to achieving any of that.

Originally published on TechNews at https://www.technewsiit.com/information-ethics-can-you-believe-anything-you-google