Recently, an article "Baidu, a search engine, is dead" has aroused social concern. Because it involves the question of whether a search engine with public attributes can give priority to its own 100-number, the parties, the media and netizens hold their own opinions. On January 23, Baidu responded that it had a clear conscience. After keyword comparison, in addition to Baidu, sogou, 360 and other search engines are also giving priority to recommending their own products. In this regard, experts say that when an enterprise is in the leading position in the industry, it must have greater social responsibility and responsibility. The search service makes the service a "private garden", which does not meet the needs of public interests, nor does it meet the basic requirements of the Network Security Law and the Regulations on the Administration of Internet Information Services. Some experts even pointed out that Baidu’s problems actually exist in many large Internet platforms. In order to maintain their dominant position in the market, they are "painting the land as a prison", guiding themselves within the platform, selectively shielding competitors, and rejecting the free crawling of third-party search engine content. This behavior is shaking the fundamental cornerstone of the Internet.
Baidu search leads traffic to its own products and attracts all parties to vomit.
The article "Baidu, the search engine, is dead" says: Recently, more than half of the results seen on the first page of Baidu search will point to Baidu’s own products, especially its self-media platform "Baijiahao", which is all-inclusive, but the quality is worrying. Baidu is no longer the entrance to explore the Chinese Internet, and it can be renamed as "Search in Baijiahao Station".
The article caused a lot of resonance, and netizen Su Zerui said: "I basically don’t use Baidu myself, and the search information is too messy and inefficient. In the era of traffic, Baidu has the right to selectively provide users with search content to expand their traffic, but users will also measure whether to continue to use Baidu, and other search industries will also take the opportunity. " Some media people left a message saying that after their articles were forwarded by others, the search presented only 100-number content, and their websites could not enjoy the content traffic bonus at all. There are also hundreds of authors who believe that the platform audit is more stringent. Because of the presence of traditional media and official institutions, the quality is relatively reliable, and the products such as WeChat and Taobao are compared and evaluated. "Baidu without login is far more open than its peers."
On the 23rd, Baidu responded that Baijiahao is an important measure to improve the ecological experience of Baidu APP content. At present, in Baidu search results, Baijiahao content accounts for less than 10% of the whole site. At the Baijiahao 2019 Content Creator Festival held on the same day, Baidu’s vice president Shen Shai said "with a clear conscience": "In the PC era, Baidu could access the content of any website without any obstacles on the standard browser, but in the era of mobile Internet, many contents were blocked in the APP, which made access more difficult, so we launched Baijiahao and Baidu smart applets, hoping to reverse this situation." At present, the daily activity of Baidu APP has reached 160 million, the average daily recommendation of information flow has exceeded 15 billion, and the number of Baijiahao content creators has exceeded 1.9 million.
In fact, ordinary netizens search for information in the hope of getting the most accurate and authoritative information, and it is best to present what they are looking for in the headlines of the search results. Therefore, Baidu’s argument that "the whole site accounts for less than 10%" can’t hide the fact that the search experience is weakened while avoiding talking about the search results "the proportion of top 100 pages".
"News" Changed to "Information" Baidu’s "Enclosure" Transformation
On the 25th, it was reported that Baidu fine-tuned the search engine and directly covered the website. The search results of information no longer included the website address, but used the name of the media instead. In other words, netizens can’t directly tell whether the search results are from websites or Baijia numbers. As commented in the cnBeta report: "The search result without the webpage address will make users need to open the link to see which website it comes from, which adds some inconvenience, as shown in the following figure, when searching for ‘ Huawei ’ When the keywords are used, it is completely unclear whether it is the content of the external site or the content stored in Baidu itself. "
Although the search weight of Baijiahao is improved due to "ranking by high-quality content", Baidu as a platform still cannot completely check, and there are problems of plagiarism and even mistakes in the media. For example, in 2018, the "acid-base physique theory scam" was exposed. When searching for the keyword "acid physique" with Baidu, the first five pages in the information column "sorted by focus" were all hundred-number content, and the article "Acid physique is the source of all diseases?" The most frightening health rumor in 2018 is transferred to the elderly at home. It is a self-media number named "Focus on Meteorological Information Tracking" and does not indicate the source of the article. According to the reporter’s search, this article is actually a manuscript published by WeChat WeChat official account of Health Times on January 15th. In other words, Baidu information ranked first in a manuscript copied from Health Times by the media. At the same time, the search ranked fifth, "Don’t want to have a son with acidic constitution, expectant mothers should bid farewell to these bad habits!" "I am still making a fuss about this fallacy.
Looking back on the whole incident, this should be inseparable from the transformation of Baidu’s content platform. In 2016, Baidu launched Baijia. In August 2018, the "Baidu News" column in Baidu search was quietly changed to "Baidu Information", and the search results also changed significantly, from the original presentation results based on portals and traditional media to the results based on hundreds of numbers. At that time, there was a self-media evaluation saying that "Baidu raised the weight of Baijiahao to the same position as traditional media. Baijiahao will grow rapidly and is likely to become the largest self-media platform. "
In July 2017, Baidu launched a new search APP "Simple Search", and Li Yanhong once introduced that "Simple Search will never put advertisements in search results". However, this refreshing search engine is only available in mobile phone. That is to say, in Baidu’s logic, PC users can only silently endure advertisements, a lot of self-media information and such consequences — — You think you’re logging in to the vast Internet, but it’s actually just Baidu’s desktop client.
In 2018, Baidu’s revenue exceeded 100 billion, and Li Yanhong announced a 24-word Baidu vision: to become the world’s top high-tech company that understands users best and can help people grow. In an open letter to the inside, he said, "When Baidu started in Zhongguancun 19 years ago, our goal was very clear, that is, to make a search engine that users really felt easy to use … …”
19 years have passed, and Baidu, which hopes to "know users best", has obviously deviated from its original heart.
The public knows that WeChat can only search for WeChat official account articles and Taobao can only search for Taobao goods, but the public doesn’t know that Baidu is almost the only one in Baidu.
Search engines should put public welfare and service in the first place.
In the relevant survey launched by Sina Technology, as of 15: 00 on January 30th, 14,917 people participated. In the question "What do you think of Baidu search?", a total of 38.63% people chose the positive evaluation of "very useful" and "easy to use". 38.99% people chose "difficult to use" and "very difficult to use". 49.61% of people said that "they will continue to use Baidu search". According to the survey, Baidu ranks first in the question of "which search engines do you usually use", accounting for 46.81%, followed by Google (19.13%), sogou (10.14%), 360(10.09%), Bing Bing(10.15%) and others (3.68%).
Users don’t just want to see Baidu’s own products, but want to enter the vast Chinese Internet space through Baidu search. No matter how unique a product is, it is not as colorful as it is, which is also the meaning of search engines. Because users have such expectations, Baidu’s "enclosure" adjustment will lead to the controversy of "public attributes".
So does the public expect too much from the search engine itself? Under the same keyword, the reporter looked up the "website" and "information" of Baidu search computer and the top ten articles of Baidu client, most of which were Baidu’s own products. In the top ten results of Bing Bing, the presentation of each website is relatively balanced. About one third of sogou search’s results are home-grown content, such as Sogou Encyclopedia, Sohu, sogou wise doctor and sogou Ask. Among the 360 search results, 360 Encyclopedia, Fast Information and secondary search, pictures, videos and good doctors are highly recommended. The results show that, besides Baidu, other search engines also tend to recommend their own content products. This will inevitably lead people who access information through these search engines to give priority to their own products, rather than fair recommendations based on "website PR value" or "effectiveness". Once these home information has low quality or even other problems, it is inevitable for the public to avoid it imperceptibly.
On January 2, the National Internet Information Office instructed the Beijing Internet Information Office to talk to the relevant person in charge of Baidu about the spread of vulgar information and serious damage to the ecology of online public opinion in some products and channels of Baidu, and ordered it to be rectified immediately and comprehensively. During the rectification period, Baidu Mobile Web Edition, Baidu News Client Recommended Channel, Baidu APP Woman Channel, Funny Channel and Emotional Channel were suspended for one week from 15: 00 on January 3rd. At that time, the relevant person in charge of Baidu said that it would strictly implement the interview requirements of the network information department, run the network according to law, earnestly fulfill the main responsibility, and strengthen the ecological governance of the network.
In response to this "Baidu" incident, the reporter interviewed industry experts.An expert who asked not to be named commented: "Why did Baidu do this? Is there a deeper reason? For example, in the PC era, search was Internet information navigation. Now, in the mobile APP era, search can’t be found, and major platforms do ‘ No. ’ , introduced the content into their respective ecosystems. In fact, Baidu has its helplessness. This helplessness began when he made Baijia and Xiongzhang. " Does the information barrier of each platform exist? The reporter searched for some original self-media content such as headline number, WeChat WeChat official account, Penguin number, UC Big Fish number, Netease number and Sohu number, and found that it was really difficult for Baidu search to find the original link smoothly. Fang Xingdong, the founder of Blog.com and the chairman of Internet Lab, expressed his views in the Global Times: In recent years, with the increasingly fierce competition among platforms with strong user groups and content production capacity such as WeChat, Weibo, Taobao, Today Headline and Tik Tok, we have observed a trend — — In order to maintain their dominant position in the market, various platforms are "painting the ground as a prison" one after another, guiding themselves within the platform, selectively shielding competitors, and rejecting the free crawling of third-party search engine content. This behavior is shaking the fundamental cornerstone of the Internet.
Lei Xia, an associate researcher at the Institute of Journalism and Communication of China Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the new media era, one of the most important ways for people to get information is through online search, and Baidu search is a search engine with high user dependence. Therefore, the sense of social responsibility is necessary and primary, and it is necessary to push accurate and worth pushing information to everyone. But what kind of information is accurate and worth pushing? First, the information itself has a strong certainty to avoid false information; Second, whether the imported number is 100 or not, it should be based on the recommendation of algorithm basis and user needs, rather than advertising import for profit purposes; Third, it is convenient and direct, instead of users screening a lot of relevant information; Fourth, search engines, in a sense, are equivalent to the entrance to the Internet, and cannot only push hundreds of numbers and cause traffic interception to other websites. When an enterprise is in the leading position in the industry, it must have greater social responsibility and responsibility.
Professor Cao Peixin, Ph.D. in Communication and Communication University of China, believes that this incident shows that Baidu, as an influential communication organization, overemphasizes economic attributes and ignores public attributes (such as truthfulness, objectivity and service) and political attributes (advocating honesty and trustworthiness). Therefore, we should reflect on how to continuously improve the management system and regulations of new media organizations such as Baidu, so as to urge them to better balance the relationship among the three attributes.
Huang Chuxin, director and researcher of the Journalism Research Office of the Institute of Journalism and Communication, China Academy of Social Sciences, said that based on the relationship between users and search engine service providers, since Baidu uses search engines to increase web page hits and earn high advertising fees, it is obliged to provide users with safer and more efficient search engine services; The content on Baijiahao lacks the supervision of gatekeepers, and a large number of false and harmful information is filled with it, which harms the interests of consumers. This will have two consequences. One is that the false and harmful information of Baijiahao will damage social order and hinder the construction of "clear and clear" cyberspace; On the other hand, it is also a kind of damage to Baidu’s image. In the network world, search engine is an important basic project of cultural exchange and communication, so public welfare and service should be put in the first place. Specifically speaking, there should be no "tendentiousness" in the process of users’ use, and factors involving their own commercial interests cannot make a splash in this process. Relevant departments should standardize and coordinate information collection, software development and search mechanism setting, and establish a universal, reasonable and standardized network information resource search system as soon as possible. It is understood that as early as 2002, the United States and European Union countries have promoted the fairness and objectivity of search engines in the form of industry norms and regulations, and formed a complete industry standard.
From the perspective of social management, if we only give priority to recommending self-media content to the public, it will affect the vocal effect of mainstream media. Some self-media organizations, represented by Baijiahao, are unable to correctly identify the authenticity of a news event due to the lack of good media literacy and lack of supervision, and its harm is obvious. In the long run, it will inevitably lead to the inefficiency or even ineffectiveness of mainstream public opinion guidance, reduce the credibility of the government, and weaken the guidance of mainstream media to public opinion. Due to the long-term lack of supervision from the government and enterprises, Baijiahao has been flooded with various chaos such as plagiarism from the media. On the one hand, this situation harms the economic interests of the original author, on the other hand, it encourages the unhealthy trend of plagiarism and manuscript washing, and discourages the creative enthusiasm of many original content producers.
Wang Sixin, deputy dean and professor of the School of Politics and Law, Communication University of China, said that for anyone who uses it, the search engine is an information window that leads him to knowledge, the unknown and the outside world, and it is an aggregation platform of information and values. As the largest search service provider in China, it is a legal obligation for service providers to let Internet users get accurate, objective, comprehensive and authoritative information services with the help of search services, and it is also a basic requirement put forward by the state, society and users. Search engines should pay more attention to their public service functions. If we introduce the "fat water" of search service into our own "one acre and three points" in various ways for our own personal gain, it has seriously deviated from the "avenue" that search service should take.
Secondly, the search service crawls, aggregates and classifies the information in cyberspace through its own technology, and then distributes it according to the needs of users. It is doomed that search service providers should treat the information products and content provided by any third party in cyberspace fairly and fairly in an objective manner. If the search service takes advantage of its own technology and platform, takes advantage of people’s trust in the search service, and takes advantage of its dominant position in the market to sell its own content directly or in disguise, it is equivalent to being both an athlete and a referee, which violates basic procedural justice.
Third, although the search service does not directly provide information services, it has a pre-existing and implicit decision on what kind of information users can access, and it is the guide and foundation for users to seek, accept and spread all kinds of information. In this case, the search service should meet the basic requirements of laws and ethics for information content, and stress political orientation and socialist core values. The search service makes the service a "private garden", which does not meet the basic requirements of the Network Security Law and the Regulations on the Administration of Internet Information Services.
The Regulations on the Administration of Internet Information Search Services issued by the National Internet Information Office clearly requires: "Internet information search service providers shall provide objective, fair and authoritative search results, and shall not harm national interests, public interests and the legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons and other organizations".
General Secretary of the Supreme Leader said that interconnection is the essence of the Internet, cyberspace is the common spiritual home of hundreds of millions of people, and every participant has the obligation to make this spiritual home better. The practice of "adding a plug" to the search list damages people’s sense of happiness and gain in using the Internet, corrupts the atmosphere of cyberspace, and does not conform to the relevant provisions of national laws. Regulators, service providers and users should make concerted efforts to change this situation.
