Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by philwelch » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

forapurpose wrote: post #289

philwelch wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Social norms" can be either descriptive or prescriptive. Descriptive norms are norms that reflect society as it is, and Google doesn't need to do anything about them, because the society that produces millions of web pages with cute pictures of puppies or helpful information about what not to feed your dog for every single web page with dog porn will result in a SERP that is overwhelmingly weighted towards that info…

I'm surprised myself that someone on HN is really claiming that Google doesn't edit search results for all sorts of reasons, including for purposes of social norms, of any sort, and social responsibility. In fact, every person and organization does that. I doubt there are any social interactions where people don't behave according to a set of rules. > why are they surprised Nobody said they are surprised; that's not…

I'm not saying they don't edit search results (clearly they do); I'm saying that it's worth reexamining the expectation that they should edit search results for the sake of political agendas.

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

#292

Post by RangerScience » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #281

RangerScience wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'd dance around the issue. Google's search algorithm is "fair", but society is not: It is not "fair" that these search terms are over sexualized. This is, of course, given some particular morality and ethos; your may not find society unfair in this way. (I do) My point is that now it is visible and you can make more informed choices. If you don't like what you see in mirror, why is makeup the "fix" of choice? Al…

My point was that it's like applying makeup to the mirror instead on your face - what you propose is not like improving your fitness, it's like making a curved mirror that makes you appear slim and flatters you, hides the problem and doesn't change anything about the underlying issues. After your proposed changes it is no longer visible, and we can no longer make informed choices - people searching for "black girls"…

To be clear, I haven't said anything about my proposed changes. I'm parroting what I understand to be the changes Google actually applied.

That said...

You're missing that some problems are, actually, entirely perceptive. You're right that changing the mirror to hide problems isn't addressing the underlying issue, but sometimes treatment of symptoms is the only available (or possible the most effective) option. Like everything else, it's one tool that can be applied poorly or effectively.

> it would be unfair to simply damage the service for one group to appease the another

This is ineffective as a stand-alone principle. The failure mode is described as "your freedom ends where mine begins" and is clearly visible in the exaggerated (and somewhat contrived) example of "damaging services for murdering to appease those who want to remain un-murdered is good".

Like all principles, this has both extreme-case failure modes (services for murderers) but also fuzzy-case failure modes. If the term for my identity is sexualized, when that identity has nothing to do with sexuality... well, what's fair? Why should group X define the term instead of group Y?

So, for cases where the problem is primarily perceptive (or the symptoms are primarily perceptive), seems reasonable to me to warp the mirror. It's like using glasses: you're already looking through a warped lens, so use a correspondingly warped lens to correct.

My actual point is that systems that incidentally encode biases then let you better examine those biases, and, depending on the situation, do stuff to address them.

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

#293

Post by RangerScience » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #277

RangerScience wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'd dance around the issue. Google's search algorithm is "fair", but society is not: It is not "fair" that these search terms are over sexualized. This is, of course, given some particular morality and ethos; your may not find society unfair in this way. (I do) My point is that now it is visible and you can make more informed choices. If you don't like what you see in mirror, why is makeup the "fix" of choice? Al…

What you're proposing is a hack, and one with a lot of negative side effects. First of all, to go with the obvious, you better hope that what Google deems the direction they'd like to alter reality is aligned with your own, because I'm quite sure that this will mostly be untrue. Secondly, you're attempting to patch a problem at much too high of a level; making people less racist by altering what they're able to inges…

Making people less racist by altering what they're ingesting is one of the most effective ways to do it.

The "reality" in this case is not unbiased, because it's not the reality of "cars are hard" but the reality of "red means stop".

> access to racially distributed crime statistics

That does sound like something that would backfire or fail. Seems like you hit on the delineating factor: You search for crime statistics to contextualize and understand your reality. Is that why people search for porn?

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

#294

Post by sheepmullet » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #274

sheepmullet wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn't women feel comfortable with their coworkers regardless of local culture? The problem is what makes a woman feel uncomfortable is culturally driven - when you have such a mix of cultures at work people are bound to make innocent mis-steps. Californian companies have a tendency of looking at it by race and gender identity. Do you assume the best of people or do you assume the worst?

If you're asking, I personally assume the best. I understand where you're coming from - maybe you're referring to things like "micro-aggressions" and other things many of us would find silly? Yup, definitely something that needs tackling. I've never argued that there would be a clear algorithm for "this makes people uncomfortable to the point that it should be illegal, this does not." Luckily, our judges and court sy…

> Luckily, our judges and court system are pretty good at exactly this sort of thing.

What makes you think that?

Millions of Americans have been negatively impacted by bad laws on the books.

> I think a law on the books that goes something along the lines of "nobody should be made to feel sexually uncomfortable at work" starts the definition

You have just killed all chance of workplace romance - and more than 50% of people have dated coworkers.

We have sexual harassment laws on the books already.

Why would you negatively impact millions so a few people don't have to feel mildly uncomfortable (and obviously it's mild or it would be sexual harassement which is already illegal)?

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

#295

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 12:05 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #261

perl4ever wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do white boys ever enter the query "white boys" into a search engine? I assume some HN users could speak to this...

To answer your immediate question, "white boys" is not uncommon in popular usage. People might look it up in the process of looking up a lyric or obscure title/name for a song/group. The phrase "white boys" in general seems to be mostly desexualized. You can call someone a "white boy", either as a mild insult (like describing something as "vanilla") or a term of endearment. I think that's predicated from most people…

I'm aware of how the term is used, but your comments seem more like a tangent than an answer.

My question was whether there is any connection between being a white boy and Googling the search term "white boys".

It was prompted by the parent post suggesting that not seeing a connection between being a black girl and Googling "black girls" might be kind of a blind spot.

I think the implication was pretty clear that if you don't imagine someone Googling the search term "black girls", it's because they occupy the position of the "other" in your mind. However, I gave a reason to doubt it - contemplate whether and how often white boys Google "white boys".

I note that somehow, I already knew the connotations of the term "white boy" that you mentioned without Googling it. So you are not bringing anything to the point I was making.

I am not a laissez faire fanatic about much of anything, including Google search results - I just think that when people criticize such results, the search terms (and the subsequent reasoning) often seem contrived.