Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

This title is a bit misleading. The article opens with:

> My first encounter with racism in search was in 2009 when I was talking to a friend who causally mentioned one day, “You should see what happens when you Google ‘black girls.’” I did and was stunned.

but then later on:

> Although I focus mainly on the example of black girls to talk about search bias and stereotyping, black girls are not the only girls and women marginalized in search. The results retrieved two years into this study, in 2013, representing Asian girls, Asian Indian girls, Latina girls, white girls, and so forth reveal the ways in which girls’ identities are commercialized, sexualized or made curiosities within the gaze of the search engine. Women and girls do not fare well in Google Search — that is evident.

So it's not racism, it's sexism. Or is it? What would have happened if you searched for black boys, white boys etc. in 2009? I bet it wouldn't have been PG friendly...

It's always bothered me when people, (justifiably) frustrated with the bubble effect that personalization can effect upon search results, want to see Google return to "objective" results. But PageRank/BackRub was never an objective metric, it was always affected by what webmasters chose to link to and the semantic markup they wrote. It seemed to be a good metric for a majority of these things, but assuming few webmasters in the early years were black women or black, then the "objective" metric of PageRank/BackRub is going to be dismal.

So yes, I agree that more pressure needs to be put on the algorithm-makers, so that there isn't complacency about accepting the results of "pure" computation. But I feel too much weight is given toward the sentiment of "If Google isn’t responsible for its algorithm, then who is?", as if the problems could be wholly or even substantially fixed through "modifications to its algorithm". The other side of the equation is the data -- and diversity is as important to have in media as it is to tech, even if tech feels like the stronger, more immediate lever in changing things.

Now that it's been a long time (in tech time) since 2010/2012, it'd be interesting to hear exactly what modifications/improvements Google made to its algorithm to return such different results for "black girls". Was it a de-emphasizing of negative/outdated sources? Or an arbitrary boost for such entities as "Black Girls Code"? Or was BGC not given an arbitrary boost, but found to have been unjustly ignored/under-weighted when it came to determining SERP? I understand not wanting to reveal details of search engine tweaks the day/month/year after they've been implemented. But half a decade later, hopefully learning more details of these "tweaks" won't leave Google vulnerable to black-hat SEO.

It is Google's site and Google's (very much) proprietary algorithm so of course Google is at fault. Your argument is a variant of the "uploader defense." It was used by the TPB operators to claim that they weren't responsible for what was featured on their site because it was uploaded by users. But legally (or morally) they realized that they were, because they removed child porn even though they let Hollywood movies remain.

>It seems like the main crux of the argument is that being reflective of the culture is also reinforcing it

I believe expecting Google to change its search results to match an ideological agenda (I'm not using "ideological" in a derogatory sense here) is a case of shooting the messenger. It's the job of humans to make society in the image they desire and the job of the search engine to efficiently and accurately give the search results that people want.

But Google has agency to adapt to the content if needed. If black-hat SEO gets the upper hand and results in an Internet trending toward cheap/fake linkbait, Google (or any competitor) doesn't have to just shrug and give the excuse, "Our shitty search results only reflect the shitty Internet"