Taking Actions, or Your Search Engine Might Grow into A Gluttonous Monster

-- By YingLiu

Introduction: Louder, Please

Speaking of invading privacy and deteriorating human thinking, search engines could be more horrifying than social networks. dominant players in the search market have been pushing the envelope on user privacy for years and have tied together our dependency on their search engines with their surveillance economy. And despite these practices becoming normalized, many are still unaware of the risks and concerns imposed by search engines.

It’s time to shout out louder to urge netizens be wary of their search box and decentralize their daily searches.

Concern I: The Search Privacy and Data Collection 

Upon the revelation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook and social network platforms become the main target of criticism on data collection. Unfortunately, privacy and data collection concerns imposed by search engines have not received the same level of attention. A survey conducted in 2019 showed that over 30% of searchers are still unaware of how much data collection is going on and for what purpose.

In fact, search engines are more horrifying than the social network. Users can easily create a semifictional persona on Facebook while they neither hide nor fabricate anything when typing in the search box. With the misconception that there is no audience behind the search box, they relievedly are honest with Google and search for everything they are interested in or curious about. 

Throughout almost every point of a user’s journey, search engines are instinctively and accurately tracking behavior and preferences and over a period of time an online user profile is developed. AOL once published users’ search log and the New York Times successfully connected user No. 4417749 with a 62-year-old lady. As the lady put it, these search records exposed her “whole life”.

Google claimed that it collected user data to improve its understanding of queries.  This might be true. But another truth is that Google is selling user search data to make profits. In 2019, over 72% of Google’s advertising revenues were from google search. Google, as well as many other mainstream search engines, are harvesting user data on a tremendous scale to gain a share in the surveillance economy. 


Concern II: The Quality of Search Results and Its Impact on Human Thinking

Some netizens were socialized to accept that they have to hand over personal data to exchange for free, convenient, and so-called personalized searching services. But they undermined the negative impacts of such compromise. When acquiescing in the search engine’s data collection, you are not merely handing in your search queries to it and third-party advertisers, but also sacrificing your search quality.

People search for restaurants, dramas, company information and any unfamiliar concept online. When I was told that someone had made efforts to find a better alternative to replace this “regrettable necessity,” such new information is like Pavlov’s bell, I unavoidably and subconsciously resorted to search engines to check it out. The Generation Z rely on and trust in search engines as much as their grandfathers trusted textbooks and teachers. The search engine is not simply an ads displayer but a participant in the user’s cognitive process — search results on the first page will to some extent determine or distort the searchers’ understanding of the subject issue. 

One needs to receive professional training and evaluation to qualify as a teacher, and textbooks have credible editorial and standardized publication review procedures to ensure the accuracy of the contents. However, the search ranking decisions are made by algorithms, which failed to undertake the filter, weigh and judge responsibilities to ensure the top-ranking results are unbiased, accurate and authoritative. 

All algorithms involve human intervention thus they are never purely scientific or absolutely neutral. The algorithms reflect the value orientation of both engineers and the profit-seeking tech companies they serve. It may be based on the user's browsing history, competitive ranking mechanism and other random factors. When you Google for "the best restaurant nearby," the first hit might not be the one with the highest Yelp score, but the one which paid Google for advertising, or the one you had once visited its website using Chrome.

The Wei Zexi incident is a typical and extreme example of how the results provided by search engines may affect people's cognition and follow-up behavior. Mr. Wei, a young college student, lost his life after receiving dubious cancer treatment from a hospital advertised on a Chinese search engine with misleading medical information. Mr. Wei was killed by his search behavior and the commercially-driven search results.

When search engines become the prevailing knowledge hub while the accuracy of search results cannot be guaranteed, it’s time for all searchers to take a pause and think about how to ensure they can get correct answers from their search engines. 

Is There A Way Out?

An undeniable fact is that search engines enable humankind to access the boundless information pool at an unprecedented speed. If quitting search engines is not a wise move, can searchers take initiatives to protect search privacy and optimize search quality?  

The answer is positive.

The most direct and simple solution is to switch to a privacy-friendly search engine. Some pioneers have begun to develop google search’s alternative: US-based Duckduckgo and UK-based Oscobo offer search engine that does not track or store users’ data.


But doubts still exist regarding search quality. Under the current search engine landscape, a better solution might be decentralizing your searches.

Using a universal search engine like Google does provide convenience to some extent, but it also greatly expands the risk of privacy invasion and results manipulation. Dispersing search queries on various vertical search engines is a good way to avoid revealing your full user profile to one tech company. Moreover, vertical search engines can return more precise and calibrated results due to narrowed scope and vertical expertise.  

Coming out of the comfort zone by abandoning a tool we are used to is never a pleasure, but if doing so can relieve the worries on who’s watching over us every time we search, wondering what the repercussions are and how our own data will be used to manipulate our own thinking, it is worthwhile to make the change.

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