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Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

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Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#51

Post by lake99 »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
lake99 wrote: post #37

What? I tried these searches out when the article was just three hours old on HN. I could not reproduce any of these results. Safe Search was set "Moderate", and my results did not change significantly when I switched it to "Off". The worst it got for me was when I asked for autocomplete suggestions for "muslims are": good hindu worst cancer killed Disclosure: I performed these searches from India. I'm open to the po…

Not so much autocomplete suggestions, but the autosuggested related searches under Image Search. In my case I got shown "muslims are scum" and "muslims are terrorists", in the UK. "Michelle Obama" got suggested "... muscles"?

No, I had looked at those too. Both under Image Search (for Jews, Muslims, and "gril") and under Videos (for Michelle Obama). All the related searches were completely innocuous. The autocomplete suggestions were the least innocuous ones I got. Looking for "gril" got me images of girls, but all completely SFW or child-safe.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#52

Post by sam_goody »

jstanley wrote: post #26
sam_goody wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that once these thoughts and articles are suggested, they become much more mainstream. Try something less controversial, robbery. No doubt, people search for "how to break into houses", and you might even click on that link if it was a top suggestion. But if people saw that all the time, there would be an increase in robberies, and a decrease in the feeling that it matters. And just because it generates…

> Once it is a suggestion (even at the end of the list) it will get clicks, and move up till it dominates. So why isn't every article that has ever been suggested moving up until it dominates?

Because most articles don't trigger the same responses.

It is the outrageuos and the radical that trigger the interest.

Have you not noticed that the links on the side of all the trash blogs are full of "The craziest snake!" or whatever?

Which clickbait works better - "Hitler loved his black maid" or "cheap diapers"? Does that really mean that more people are searching for Hitler's black maid than for cheap diapers?

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#53

Post by jstanley »

sam_goody wrote: post #52
jstanley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once it is a suggestion (even at the end of the list) it will get clicks, and move up till it dominates. So why isn't every article that has ever been suggested moving up until it dominates?

Because most articles don't trigger the same responses. It is the outrageuos and the radical that trigger the interest. Have you not noticed that the links on the side of all the trash blogs are full of "The craziest snake!" or whatever? Which clickbait works better - "Hitler loved his black maid" or "cheap diapers"? Does that really mean that more people are searching for Hitler's black maid than for cheap diapers?

So in your opinion why isn't "Hitler loved his black maid" the top result for every search query?

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#54

Post by xbmcuser »

gear54rus wrote: post #31
jakobegger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things should not be autocompleted. I can't think of a reason why a search engine should suggest a completion if you start typing something generic like "xyz are ...".

except it does suggest if you type 'people are...' some fucker somewhere again decided what you should or shouldn't see, there's no other explanation :)

Have you started using the internet in the last 2-3 years Google was not censoring suggestions until a lot of noise was made about racist results etc. So this hasn't come out of the blue and anyway search suggestions are just that suggestions I don't think Google is censoring the results unless it is being forced to us dmca or European right to be forgotten or whatever restrictions are being put by different countries for search results by users in each country.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#56

Post by threatofrain »

anonytrary wrote: post #16

At least searching "muslims are" in Bing gives you honest autocompletes that reflect what people actually search for. Google, on the other hand, evidently censors content it deems to be offensive. If you search "muslims are" in Google, there are no autocomplete results at all. I doubt Google does not have enough data on "muslims are *" searches I have safe search off, meaning I don't want to be patronized when I am s…

When one types a query, why should a search engine model search success based on what everyone else in the world searches up? Doesn't it matter more that Google finds what that person wants?

And if individuals want to understand Google Search Trends, as noted already, it's there but I don't think many people are going there, because it's not what they want.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#57

Post by jakobegger »

jstanley wrote: post #33
jakobegger wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a query like that, and I think autocomplete is fine once you typed "muslims are vege...". But I don't see why you'd autocomplete a sentence that could go anywhere. Just because many people type that isn't a good reason.

Why isn't that a good reason? It's not a search engine's job to be the thought police.

Because it's a stupid thing to do. It makes sense to complete a query once it is obvious what the user wants to write. That's helpful, you saved me from typing a few characters.

But if you suggest completions for queries at a point where it isn't yet obvious what the user wants, you are no longer just helpful. You are steering people in a certain direction, whether that's your intent or not. You are effectively telling people, hey, try this query, it's popular, even if the user had no intent of typing that query.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#58

Post by dorchadas »

gear54rus wrote: post #48
ubernostrum wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some fucker somewhere again decided what you should or shouldn't see Yes, that's what a suggestion algorithm is. There is no pure Platonic ideal neutral objective suggestion algorithm. Every suggestion algorithm is going to have biases based on both its training data and the goals (explicit or otherwise) of its creators. You've gotten as far as, apparently, noticing that tweaking the algorithm after the public has se…

when I enter something, I expect to see what other people search for, not "what people search for, except...", this talk about suggestion algos has nothing to do with the issue I think

When I enter something, I want to see what's relevant to me, not what other people searched for. As such, it makes sense to not suggest anything when I type in 'Muslims are', as Google doesn't know what I want to see yet; it could decide that once I started typing in more strings on the next word. It'd make more sense to me if, instead of completing search queries, it just completed individual words in the queries.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#59

Post by dorchadas »

threatofrain wrote: post #56
anonytrary wrote: post #16

At least searching "muslims are" in Bing gives you honest autocompletes that reflect what people actually search for. Google, on the other hand, evidently censors content it deems to be offensive. If you search "muslims are" in Google, there are no autocomplete results at all. I doubt Google does not have enough data on "muslims are *" searches I have safe search off, meaning I don't want to be patronized when I am s…

When one types a query, why should a search engine model search success based on what everyone else in the world searches up? Doesn't it matter more that Google finds what that person wants? And if individuals want to understand Google Search Trends, as noted already, it's there but I don't think many people are going there, because it's not what they want.

> When one types a query, why should a search engine model search success based on what everyone else in the world searches up? Doesn't it matter more that Google finds what that person wants?

That's exactly what I want, at least. It'd make much more sense for them to just work on autocompleting individual words instead of queries. That way it's useful to the person who's searching and it doesn't matter what everyone else searched.

Re: Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

#60

Post by true_religion »

yorwba wrote: post #27
true_religion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said borderline, because it is not past the line of illegality. Thus your second sentence makes no sense.

Borderline but legal child pornography would still be classified as "adult", no? To me, the second sentence makes perfect sense.

If you have safe search on, all the results should be non nude, non adult.

I reread the article, and see where I went wrong. They mix up two issues: bing returning odd suggestions with safe search on, and bing returning results for searches for illegal material with safe search off.

I had thought they were only talking about safe search being on.

In my misreading, I made the assumption that Bing would never return illegal results for searches for children, as it would never return pornography since safe search is on. Apologies to the OP.

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