|
|
|
Advertisement
February 23, 2010 | 9:18 am
Is Google Really Racist?
Posted by Sam Gliksman
Follow JewishJournal.com on 
| Tweet |
There is a note on the notice-board at my workplace that accuses Google of being racist. Whenever you start typing in the Google search box an auto-complete feature drops down and suggests a list of related search terms. The notice-board note displays a screen shot of the search suggestions listed when you type “Judaism is” or Christianity is” into the Google search box. The suggestions are clearly racist and include terms such as “Judaism is false” and “Judaism is a “gutter religion”. In fact, the results are even worse if you type “Holocaust is” into the search box (”...is a hoax” for one). So is Google actually racist as the note suggests?.
The list of search “suggestions” is derived from an algorithmic analysis of the overall volume of searches related to a specific term. Does that imply then that the most popular search related to Judaism is “Judaism is a gutter religion”? No it doesn’t, although some would like you to believe that it is searched most often. Search suggestions can be manipulated - and there are those that would like to steer anyone with an interest in Judaism or Christianity to a certain set of skewed search results.
This is an example of the type of simple cyber attacks that have become very commonplace. Cyber terrorists realize that they can manipulate search engines by planting and spreading viruses that send large volumes of specific searches to Google servers, thereby making them “popular”. Google has very little to do with the compilation of the search suggestion lists. Having said that, I should however note that while Google is not directly responsible for any particular suggestion, it’s completely within their ability to remove offensive search suggestion and they should be pressured to do so. You may remember a controversy a couple of years ago related to the search term “holocaust”. The first site that was listed was a holocaust denial website. Google refused to alter the search results claiming that it would not get involved in “political” debates. After much pressure Google finally relented and removed the offensive listing.
One final footnote. Several weeks ago when testing the “Judaism is” search term in Google I also tried checking for “Islam is”. While searches for Judaism and Christianity returned offensive suggestions, searching for Islam did not - pointing an accusatory finger at the source of the cyber attacks. However if you try searching “Islam is” today, you’ll now find a similar list of offensive search terms. I’ll leave the moral judgements up to you.
18 Comments — Leave your comment
Share this post:
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Google
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Technorati
YahooMyWeb
Terrorist Groups Using YouTube to Distribute Propaganda
11.12.10 at 11:14 am | Despite efforts to block offensive material,. . .
Campaign calls for No-Device Day on Yom Kippur
8.31.10 at 2:23 pm | Troubled celebs featured in call for mobile fast. . .
iPhone weather app divides Jerusalem
6.3.10 at 9:18 am | Yahoo! Weather users must now choose between West. . .
Bar Refaeli busted for bringing an iPad to Israel
5.14.10 at 9:26 am | Supermodel Bar Refaeli gets busted at Tel Aviv's. . .
Israel bans iPad
4.14.10 at 11:27 am | Tablet computer will be confiscated at. . .
Grapes facing frost? Ice ‘em
3.23.10 at 3:50 pm | California growers use Israeli technique to. . .
Do you speak IMonics?
2.4.10 at 5:00 pm | The unique language of text messaging.... . . (8)
iPad: an iPod Touch on steroids
1.27.10 at 9:19 pm | Apple’s tablet looks great, but will it have. . . (8)
Terrorist Groups Using YouTube to Distribute Propaganda
11.12.10 at 11:14 am | Despite efforts to block offensive material,. . . (7)
Anti-Semitism: The Ugly Side of Facebook
I guess the real issue is: are we, humans,...
Is Google Really Racist?
Google search results are an algorithm and it...Do you speak IMonics?
I feel more people need to read this information...
A Road Map for the Digital Immigrant
well , digital immigrants are a reality , better...Terrorist Groups Using YouTube to Distribute Propaganda
They still are, YouTube appears to only remove a...Campaign calls for No-Device Day on Yom Kippur
Those who are suggesting that folks should turn...
COMMENTS
We welcome your feedback. Comments may not exceed 700 characters.
Privacy Policy
Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.
Terms of Service
JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details.
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| ||
Site SectionsNewspaper
Serving a community of 600,000, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles is the largest Jewish weekly outside New York City. Our award-winning paper reaches over 150,000 educated, involved and affluent readers each week. Subscribe here. © Copyright 2012 Tribe Media Corp. | ||
|
I typed on google the search terms which you have mentioned and the auto-complete feature suggested the same words which you have mentioned. It is not with Judaism or Christianity, google suggests the same words for every religion. So, this can’t be termed as racism.
Ylod
The accuser needs to understand search engines before he makes accusations. These are just the database found-set result for the search criteria. No human is involved.
The sorting criteria for each search engine is different. According to Mary Bettinson, whose career is search engine optimization (adjusting web pages so they appear near the top of search engine results), Google uses a combination of the number of times people visit the site, the number of links to the site and the freshness (dates current and content changes often) of the page as well as the traditional meta tag content. Even the “Islam” example can be explained by the success of search engine optimization people in getting the URLs of Web sites less offensive to Islam to appear at the top of the search result list.
There are thousands of people working to gain an advantage with their search engine results, and millions of people changing site statistics every second, so expect changes, many completely unrelated to religious bias or paranoia. The Internet is likely the most dynamic territory in existence.
Sorry to say, but this article doesn’t makes any sense. Google is not racist at all. It shows the same keywords for all religions.
That has nothing to do with Google, Google never makes the content it just displays what others have published and searched.
I would like to agree with Katrina, Google is not a person or human, it is just a “register” of all content on the internet and than it is only about people who submit the text.
Thanks,YLOD
Sue Google for ANTI SEMITISM - eBay (item 160406795342 end time Apr-21-10 22:34:05 PDT)
This is a link proving that google is racist. Go to ebay and look up the item number. Please keep in contact with me.
Google search results are an algorithm and it will display whatever it’s program sees relevant even if it’s racist. Think of the thousands of racists posts that are made everyday. It would be impossible for google to filter everything.
Sarah from maid of honor speeches
For some reason it does this but most of them are not racist.
Google should *not* be pressured to remove those suggested lists. That would be taking a moral bias. I agree that vulgarity shouldn’t be there, but you can’t screen out a particular viewpoint from Google’s feature just because it goes against your belief system.
Intimately, the post is really the freshest on this laudable topic. I agree with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your incoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be enough, for the phenomenal clarity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates.
Nice article, thanks for sharing this information.
Good to know that this topic is being covered also in this web site.
Keep up with the good work.
I just want to let you know that I just check out your site and I find it very interesting and informative. I can’t wait to read lots of your posts.
blog article is very intersting and fanstic,at the same time the blog theme is unique and perfect,great job.To your success.
Sorry to say, but this article doesn’t makes any sense. Google is not racist at all. It shows the same keywords for all religions. For real man.
Read the article. He didn’t say it was racist at all. He said that the search results were being manipulated. It also says that it’s been changed since the article was written.
Wes, I agree - I think this is just reading into things too much. Too many over sensitive people!
I mean come on. Obviously Google has the most complex algorithm known to any search engine, and all computer programmers. It was designed by humans so obviously there is going to be some discrepancies in there somewhere.
Google search results are an algorithm and it will display whatever it’s program sees relevant even if it’s racist. Think of the thousands of racists posts that are made everyday. How to prevent bed bugs