71–80 of 295 posts
I like the underlying question that the author brings up - what's google algorithm, and who's responsible for it? In the old days it was "most linked page with those keywords," right? So if you searched "gay man" and got a bunch of gay porn, is it necessarily google's fault that the internet is more gay porn that it is resources for gay men to discuss LGBT issues? Is it google's fault that news agencies more typicall…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not powerless. They just didn't bother.
They can't change math because people don't like the results. They can stop relying on algorithms because the underlying data reflects social bias, or use them and reflect society. But, they are always going to upset some group some of the time because social norms are not consistent across society. IMO, attacking Google on this is pointless, deal with the actual problem.
Google search results reflect what's in use on the web via PageRank and modern PageRank-like approximations. Google and its human staff does not apply human intellect to the problem of sorting, picking, and ranking each search result. Moreover, Google has included "Safe Search" features for several years that would remove these types of results from search. Before we condemn Google for the collective actions of the b…
> Google search results reflect what's in use on the web via PageRank and modern PageRank-like approximations. PageRank is only a fraction of the total inputs to Google search. Once PageRank was described it was subject to being gamed at such a scale that it essentially destroyed the web, ironically making Google that much more a necessity. > Google and its human staff does not apply human intellect to the problem of…
I take strong issue with the "obvious" conclusion that Google knows which terms are innocent. Disclaimer: In this specific case, I agree with you that "black girls" has an innocent connotation and am not suggesting otherwise. Please do not misinterpret my thoughts below.
Shall we require Google to be ever vigilant about the meaning of words in use at various times by the various communities of the world, and to entrust them with the responsibility for determining the innocence or guiltiness of words or phrases for all mankind?
If we shall require such effort of Google, ought we not elevate Google to the role of judge over other matters of humankind given their good stewardship over matters of innocence and guilt?
Taken to the limit the argument advocates the establishment of an echo chamber to wrap tightly around each one's subjective interpretation of their reality. Isn't this the exact opposite of what we should be trying to achieve?
Have we not had enough of this Brave New World?
I like the underlying question that the author brings up - what's google algorithm, and who's responsible for it? In the old days it was "most linked page with those keywords," right? So if you searched "gay man" and got a bunch of gay porn, is it necessarily google's fault that the internet is more gay porn that it is resources for gay men to discuss LGBT issues? Is it google's fault that news agencies more typicall…
>I think Google is responsible in 2018, now that they offer extremely tailored results. Duckduckgo, maybe not. But if Google is going to say "we're going to show you listings for restaurants in SF in your simple 'restaurants' search because we know you live in SF," I think they should also say "we're going to show you results for LGBT resources when you search for 'gay men' because nothing about your query indicates…
> Are you saying that ...
vs
> You are saying that ...
It seems like the main crux of the argument is that being reflective of the culture is also reinforcing it - the fact that say there aren’t as many stock photos of 3 black teens while there is a lot more “mug shot” style photos is probably reflective of the usual portrayal in media, but most people generally agree that the culture shouldn’t be that way. The question is, should search algorithms show what currently is…
> should search algorithms show radical thought (and goes for social media as well) - how about making the results tunable based on user preferences & filters? oooh wow.. user control! what a concept..
Um, it's not "Google", it's "the content of the internet" that's biased - right?
If it is curating the data, then how it curates matters. In this case, they've curated most of the porn from the first page of results, from the looks of it.
Not sure how that makes me feel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I think Google is responsible in 2018, now that they offer extremely tailored results. Duckduckgo, maybe not. But if Google is going to say "we're going to show you listings for restaurants in SF in your simple 'restaurants' search because we know you live in SF," I think they should also say "we're going to show you results for LGBT resources when you search for 'gay men' because nothing about your query indicates…
Neither here nor there, but as a conversational style I find that when i'm asking a legitimate but pointed question, people are more likely to take accept my question as an honest one if I open with > Are you saying that ... vs > You are saying that ...
I like the underlying question that the author brings up - what's google algorithm, and who's responsible for it? In the old days it was "most linked page with those keywords," right? So if you searched "gay man" and got a bunch of gay porn, is it necessarily google's fault that the internet is more gay porn that it is resources for gay men to discuss LGBT issues? Is it google's fault that news agencies more typicall…
>I think Google is responsible in 2018, now that they offer extremely tailored results. Duckduckgo, maybe not. But if Google is going to say "we're going to show you listings for restaurants in SF in your simple 'restaurants' search because we know you live in SF," I think they should also say "we're going to show you results for LGBT resources when you search for 'gay men' because nothing about your query indicates…
If I search for "restaurants", it shouldn't give me restaurants in Shanghai because that's the city with the largest population. It should give me Northern California, since that's where I live and Google knows that.
Similarly, Google might reasonably infer that if someone is searching for their own race, sexuality, or religion, they're probably more interested in information or support groups than porn. Not that both can't be served as results... just... priorities of what people are looking for.
I like the underlying question that the author brings up - what's google algorithm, and who's responsible for it? In the old days it was "most linked page with those keywords," right? So if you searched "gay man" and got a bunch of gay porn, is it necessarily google's fault that the internet is more gay porn that it is resources for gay men to discuss LGBT issues? Is it google's fault that news agencies more typicall…
Also, how hard is it really to get a sense for the quality of a search and the irrelevance of its results for the vast majority of people? Given how much demographic data Google pulls in from your history, it seems to be not super hard to notice that actual black girls are repulsed by what was shown to them. It also seems easy to post a notice saying: "Hey, searchers like you have found this query to contain many irr…
They did exactly this in 2004, when searches for "jew" brought up anti-Semitic website "Jew Watch" as the top result (because, as a linguistic quirk, "Jew" tends to be used in a slur-like way and Jewish organizations tend to use "Jewish," and the algorithm at the time considered those as different words): they placed an ad at the top of the page with an explanation of the "Offensive Search Results," distancing themselves from the content and explaining the "Jew"/"Jewish" thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew_Watch#Google_Search_result...
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/google/jew-watch/jew-watch-c... (and yes, that's Netscape Navigator!)
http://web.archive.org/web/20050123081919/http://www.google....
