Why is it hard to believe that an engineer would engineer something that agrees with their own beliefs?

Have you never heard of algorithmic bias?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_bias

It's quite real, and it is not illegal (in the US), so asserting this is a "conspiracy theory" is silly.

Software engineers are human beings, so of course they have inherent bias.

It's no conspiracy, we all encode our beliefs into what we do. I don't think the poster is suggesting it's on purpose. Occam's Razor would suggest it's more work to take bias out, I would think.

> That's a popular conspiracy theory, but it doesn't hold up to Occam's Razor.

Occam's Razor isn't some sort of physical law that governs human behavior.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

> Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the one that requires the least speculation is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation. Occam's razor applies especially in the philosophy of science, but also more generally.

Sure it does. I'm hypothetically designing a filter that checks for objectionable content on my site. You find any use of skeletons objectionable. I don't, if they're cartoon skeletons. My filter will not prevent cartoon skeletons from being posted, but will post real skeletons.

Bias has been introduced.

The fact that "both sides" are affected doesn't mean there's no bias, it means there's > no bias. It's literally impossible to censor something without SOME bias, because somewhere, someone doesn't find the thing you censor objectionable.

My right wing friend argues that Google straight up manipulated search results to harm Trump and I don't have any evidence to argue against him.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Epstein%20Tes...

I wouldn't be surprised if there's an anti-alt right bias (which frankly I don't feel so bad about because many of those folks are toxic).

Also, to be pedantic that's a misapplication of Occam's razor. The simplest explanation to explain nature is likely true. Nature likes simple laws. People and organizations, however, can be endlessly complex.