Bing continues to surprise in all the wrong ways.
The Microsoft search engine has long been the butt of jokes for its perceived failings as, you know, a search engine, but a new Stanford study suggests its true faults are significantly more troubling. Specifically, according to the report, Bing returns disinformation, conspiracy theories, and white supremacist content at an alarming rate.
Bing's popularity as a search engine has waxed and waned over the years, with its 2017 global market share of 9 percent declining to a solid 5.27 percent in more recent days. But don't get it twisted, as 5 percent of global market share still represents a sizable chuck of users. And those users, note study authors Daniel Bush and Alex Zaheer, are being fed a disproportionate amount of crap.
Bush and Zaheer conducted their study by running 13 separate search queries on both Bing and Google, and then comparing the results. Those results include some real head turners, such as the fact that Bing seems to spit back a lot of disinformation and misinformation.
"Across the top 50 results for 12 separate queries (a total of 600 results), Bing returned at least 125 sources of disinformation and misinformation, while Google returned 13," study authors write.
And it doesn't stop there. "Bing directs users to conspiracy-related content," note Bush and Zaheer, "even if they aren’t explicitly looking for it."
Some examples they provide are searches for "fluoride," and "sandy hook shooting," which return results claiming the U.S. government poisons the water supply and that the notorious 2012 school shooting was a hoax, respectively.
The fun continues as the authors report both that "Bing shows users Russian propaganda at a much higher rate than Google does," and that "Bing dredges up gratuitous white-supremacist content in response to unrelated queries."
We reached out to Microsoft for a response to these findings, but did not immediately hear back.
Perhaps the PR team is busy trying to Bing a non-conspiracy-themed reply. Either way, you can rest easy knowing that the default Edge browser search engine is hard at work, spreading vile garbage to those unfortunate enough to still be using it.
