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Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

time.com

121–130 of 295 posts

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#121
With all due compassion, don't "black girls" generally have a hard-enough time with broader acceptance, and this might be what is reflected in google search results?

In other words, this is not Google's fault and is mostly just an ugly reflection of our collective problematic values.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#122
post #116
post #9

> “p-ssy,” as a noun You are allowed to say fuck on the internet. Also, does it really count if you skip out one letter? I never understood this. You're still all but saying the word. Nobody is being protected here lol. A kid can cycle through the five vowels in about half a second to figure out what the word is, and one of them is also kinda a swear - pissy. EDIT: "n 2012, I wrote an article for Bitch Magazine" now…

Different publications have different style books. This is Time, which, given it's history as a mainstream magazine, likely has a more conservative editorial style than more recent, online-only publications.

I believe you, I'm just curious why the style guide ever said "swear words are fine as long as you blank out a single letter."

Meh, likely the answer is unknown, mostly I'm just commenting

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#124
I tried replicating the searches described in this article, in an incognito window. Most of the searches described inthe article are quite dated; they're also spread over a significant amount of time. None of the searches I tried came out the way the article described. There was no porn in the results for "black girls"; the third result for "professor style" was a black man, and there was a black woman further down on the first page. Search results for "three white teenagers", "three black teenagers", "professional hairstyles for work" and "unprofessional hairstyles for work" were dominated by links to the very discussion this article is reporting on, which sort of suggests they weren't queries anyone was making to begin with.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#125
post #45
post #14

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…

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…

Wtf, you are not seriously claiming that TBP is at fault? You are just trolling, right?

Because they are not. And neither is Google.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn‘t this precisely why safe search was invented? I find the „unprofessional hairstyle“ example much harder - you‘d have to first classify all pictures according to minority groups, determine the mix of minority group mix located in the search locale of the user, decide whether the mix should be local, regional, national or international in this case, and then correct the bias in the results accordingly. Seems quite…

Yes, but I'm surprised that there isn't some self correction there. My understanding is that one of the primary metrics goole uses is which link you click on last after searching. If the majority of people searching are white and all people want to see people who look like them, then the top result should be white. But I expect that when black women search, they will keep scrolling until they find the picture that th…

My (totally uneducated) guess is that most people typing "unprofessional hairstyle" aren't looking for a make-up example they can follow: they're looking for funny pictures.

So if the top ten results are black women (or Asian guys, or British royalties, or whatever), and if they look funny enough, then users will be satisfied and stop looking further. So whatever pictures that went up there first stays there.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#129

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…

> This seems like a bad idea to me, especially in the context of a discussion about how to reduce the political/social influence of Google. 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 massivel…

That can happen even if everyone involved is individually logical and rational. See the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox for more.

It happens even more easily if you're lumping people into a single group, but the individuals that you see speaking out about one topic are different than the individuals that you see speaking out about another.

The upshot is that from your described experience you cannot conclude that any group is being self-contradictory unless you personally witness the same person contradicting themselves in different discussions.

Re: Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls

#130

I tried replicating the searches described in this article, in an incognito window. Most of the searches described inthe article are quite dated; they're also spread over a significant amount of time. None of the searches I tried came out the way the article described. There was no porn in the results for "black girls"; the third result for "professor style" was a black man, and there was a black woman further down o…

How do you know the algo/search results weren't tweaked after these critiques went public but before your tests?
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