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They are especially slanted on an ideological basis. Try searching "American inventors" - nearly all the people listed are African Americans.
I doubt all of this is inadvertent, and its definitely dangerous, given the power of Google. Today they are undoubtedly influenced by "left-wing" ideology, but what about tomorrow?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> That a query for an innocent term... 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…
Google aims to 'organize the worlds information', how it does that concerns all of us so yes, this makes them responsible with determining whether a certain set of words has an innocent or negative interpretation.
It's not the world I want to live in but I live in it nonetheless. That Google should not have this power to begin with is obvious but here we are.
> 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?
Definitely not, why make things even worse? They already have too much power we will not make things better by compounding the problem.
> 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?
It is, but again, the filter bubble is real and the more customized Google search results are for an individual the worse this gets.
> Have we not had enough of this Brave New World?
I do, and so does the author, but clearly you are either missing the point or you have not had enough yet.
DDG's results for "black girls" is pretty different from Google present-day, though definitely a lot cleaner compared to what the author saw in 2009:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=black+girls&t=hb&ia=web
(sidenote: it's not clear if the author disabled SafeSearch in her 2009 search or not. SafeSearch was definitely part of Google by then, and I can't imagine "sugaryblackpussy.com" getting past that filter. If you turn DDG's Safe Search to "Moderate" -- "Off" returns the same results as "Strict" -- you will get a lot of very NSFW results. I guess this sidenote raises a new set of issues about the author's methodology but will ignore it for the sake of brevity here.)
The first result is an article titled "Black Girls Only" in Ebony magazine [0]. Which isn't a bad article (or publication). Maybe people would object that the first result is actually about sexualizing black women (albeit positively). The 2nd result is a lot less promising: "Hot Black Girls (45 pics)" at acidcow.com, which has a higher Alexa ranking [1] than Ebony.com (22K vs 63K), but basically looks to be a clunky imageboard. blackgirlscode.com is #6, followed by blackgirlsrun.com (a running club). The rest of the top results are black girl image sites (photobucket, a Facebook group for Big Beautiful Black Girls). The most notable difference between DDG and Google Results, besides what's #1, is that Google results have a lot more news articles in which "black girls" are in the headline (via NPR, nytimes, and theroot). DDG is a lot more sporadic in comparison
DDG for "white girls" is not terribly better in terms of being female-friendly:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=white+girls
The first result is to the Amazon listing of a book titled "White Girls", by a well regarded New Yorker critic [2]. But the #2 result goes to urbandictionary.com, and #3 hilariously goes to the Wayans Brothers' classic, "White Chicks". There's a bunch of results relating to "White Girl", the mediocre 2016 film (Wikipedia, rogerebert.com, rottentomatoes.com, etc). And then a bunch of results about white females with men of other races.
[a] https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/blob/b7a...
[0] http://www.ebony.com/news-views/black-girls-only-503
[1] https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/acidcow.com
[2] https://www.amazon.com/White-Girls-Hilton-Als/dp/194045025X
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…
It seems to me that there's an enormous contingent of people who wants to yell about the influence of Google and Facebook and then yell even louder about how they're not actively intervening to skew content towards their political preferences (ie increase their influence massively). This split-personality approach is baffling to me.
A Google search for "American inventors": https://i.imgur.com/qw5kfQp.png A Google search for "American women scientists": https://i.imgur.com/o6mxG56.png Can the media stop doing this thing where they p-hack reality for proof of racist/sexist conspiracies?
In fact, the article is much more supportive of its claims, because it's an excerpt from a book that cites peer-reviewed (I believe) research. The point is that there's a trend, not that some search results are weird.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Google I get the same results as the writer of the article for 'black girls', on Bing I get a bunch of porn. So it looks as if Google has permanently adjusted the results for this particular query.
I think it's possible we're actually in violent agreement due, in part, to our different result set from Google. Even "incognito mode" doesn't return for me the set of salacious results reported by the author.
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…
Well, it's like the restaurant example. 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 o…
Don't they already do this for porn? I thought that feature was in place years ago. It's even a minor Internet joke that Bing is only good for porn (since they're more lax about letting porn into their results).
This is a much harder problem that it looks to a casual observer. Just imagine what kind of people would type "black girls" to Google search. Not "black girls outfit", not "black girls social bias", just "black girls". I'll bet at least 50% of the searchers are looking for porn. So even if Google had infinite resources, its choices are: (1) act as a moral authority and deny pornographic contents to those who are look…
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…
Political correctness and affirmative action are based on the idea that pretending the world is an ideal version of itself will eventually make it that way. In reality though, the world is a complex place and the ideal pretend version can only be implemented in a carefully controlled environment such as a movie, a theatrical presentation, a video game or a situation where all participants agree to or are pressured in…
This viewpoint has served me with a perfect success rate in all of my interpersonal reactions, including relatively combative ones (handing a beer can a drunk has thrown on the street back to him and asking if he could throw it away next time, random example).
Are there any specific example of things you think are incompatible with optimism without horse blinders?
While trying to read to article, my browser (Safari on iPhone) was redirected to a scammy looking amazon gift card website. Did anyone else have this problem? I am trying to figure out if it is a problem with Time.com or my phone.