Ryan Lloyd
I am a political scientist specializing in comparative political behavior, elections, and research methods, particularly in Brazil and Latin America. I am currently working as a User Experience Researcher with the Engineering Productivity Research team at Google, after previously working in Trust & Safety at Google with a focus on Brazil.
Before joining Google, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies at Centre College and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of International Relations at the University of São Paulo. I received my Master's and PhD in Government from the University of Texas-Austin, and my Bachelor's in Political Science from Kenyon College. I have also held positions with the Decode Zika & Covid Project at UT-Austin.
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There is a growing trend of legislation, regulation, and court rulings mandating the delisting of content from intermediary platforms. However, few, if any, studies have evaluated user reactions to edge cases involving the delisting of content of public interest. We administered a vignette-based online survey experiment to a representative sample of over 20,000 participants in five countries. We sought to understand user perceptions of delisting content from search engine results and the factors that influence them. While leaving information accessible in search engine results generally leads to warmer feelings towards those search engines, we find that contextual elements also impact this resulting warmth. In addition, we analyze respondents' knowledge and attitudes about the ``Right to be Forgotten'' (RTBF), perhaps the most well-known legislation on delisting. We find that respondents in countries with active RTBF legislation are more likely to support delisting, know more about RTBF, and support RTBF, and that RTBF knowledge/attitudes affects respondents' answers to our experiment. These results indicate a complex tension around delisting public-interest content from search engines' results. Experts sensitive to local context should perform reviews to ensure that delisting requests are handled in a way that meets users’ expectations.
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