The Web is missing an essential part of infrastructure: an Open Web Index
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.03846.pdf From the users’ point of view, search engines are reliable and trustworthy sources, providing fair and unbiased results. However, it has been found that search results simply should not be considered “neutral”. Some scholars argue that an unbiased search engine is simply not possible, as there is no ideal result set against which a bias can be measured [5,6]. Therefore, I argue that every search engine presents its own algorithmically generated view of the web’s content. Every such view can be different, and none of them are the definitive or correct one. Problems that may arise from search engines’ interpreting the world in certain ways are, amongst others, reinforcing stereotypes, e.g., towards women [7]; influencing public opinion in the context of political elections (e.g., [2]), and preferring dramatic interpretations of rather harmless health-related symptoms [13]. It seems, therefore, unreasonable to have only one (or a few) dominant search engines imposing their view on the Web's content, which is, on closer inspection, really only one of many possible views. Therefore, I argue for building an index of the Web that will form the basis for a multitude of search engines and other services that are based on Web data.
participants (1)
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Giacomo