Question about how Google News works. Is it responsive to your own search history, so it offers sources and issues that you’ve clicked on in the past?
The “for you” section is based on your history. The other stuff is based on their own rankings. You can further customize sources and topics to your liking to make your own perfect news bubble.
That’s just it - I don’t want a perfect news bubble. I want it to be broad-based.
Your own link very strongly implies that it’s not just the “for you” section that selects stories on the basis of your history, since it contains an entire section with instructions on how to avoid being shown such stories. (If these stories were always and only hidden behind that “for you” link, then the only instruction for avoiding them should be “Don’t click on that link”.)
Yeah, good catch!
Yes, Google tailors your search results based on your browsing habits, and I’ve seen some indications it will also do this based on the IP addresses of those physically near you.
Ditto for all the ads that Google sends your way as you surf the web.
The only way to get out of a news bubble is to go directly to news websites yourself instead of relying on search engine results.
Most modern browsers have a ‘private browsing’ or incognito mode where it doesn’t keep cookies (or history or a bunch of other info) for sites you visit or use cookies you’ve previously collected.
So, if you launch google news in one of these windows, it’ll think you’re a totally new person (as long as you don’t use that window to login to google).
Firefox will even let you have a private browsing window and a normal window going at the same time (though they don’t share data).
I visit news.google.com all the time and I also don’t want a news feed based on my preferences. I just did an experiment and compared the page with me signed in vs the page in incognito mode and they were the exact same (except for my custom news sections, obviously).