Google removes autocomplete, but

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#1 [Permalink] Posted on 7th December 2016 10:10

Google removes autocomplete suggestions about Jews, women...

Screenshot by Laura Hautala/CNET

Google suggests the word "bad" to complete a search query that starts, "Are Muslims..." The company took down two other autocomplete suggestions on Friday but left this one as is.

If you have a burning desire to ask two specific questions in a Google search, you'll have to type them all the way out.

On Friday, Google removed autocomplete suggestions from its search engine that suggested the word "evil" at the end of these two phrases: "Are Jews..." and "Are women..." It left in place, however, the suggestion of "bad" when users type in "Are Muslims..."

The autocomplete feature is Google's way of finishing your sentences, guessing what you want to search for. The company has deleted autocomplete suggestions in the past, including when a court ordered it to stop suggesting the word "torrent" after the names of popular recording artists.

Sometimes Google's suggestions are wacky or telling, like "Is Tacoma... a city?" (Answer: um... yes.) But the searches pondering the evilness of Jews and women led to search results that were -- not surprisingly -- anti-semitic and misogynistic.

One of the top hits for "Are women evil" leads to a post on a bodybuilding forum about how women are all indeed evil, "In that they're only there until somebody comes and takes them from you or for as long as you have the resources to keep them."

And for the query about Jews, the results are slightly more mixed. They include both a result from white nationalist website Stormfront saying Jews have inherited traits that lead them into usury and "a loathing for 'productive labor,'" and an article from Jewish magazine Tablet pondering why Jews are "increasingly unwelcome in the 21st century."

Google confirmed to the Guardian and the Telegraph that it removed the autocomplete suggestions from the search engine, telling the publications that its autocomplete suggestions are based on the search engine's algorithms.

The company did not respond to a request for comment and an explanation of how frequently it removes autocomplete suggestions or the criteria it uses to do so.

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#2 [Permalink] Posted on 13th December 2016 13:22

Google Won't Alter the Holocaust-Denying Results For 'Did the Holocaust Happen'

Shoes taken from Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz via Getty | Screenshot via Google

If you Google “did the Holocaust happen” the first result is a link from Stormfront.org, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist forum that's widely regarded as the internet's “first major hate site.”

That's troubling for sure, but Google's response was far more concerning. Google told Fortune that the company is “saddened to see that hate organizations still exist,” but it does “not remove content from [its] search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines.” The Google spokesperson made sure to add, “The fact that hate sites appear in Search results does not mean that Google endorses these views.”

Titled “Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen,” the first post on the forum asks other Stormfront members to help the original poster come up with reasons the Holocaust did not happen so he can “give a good argument.” People on the message board claim things like “no tons of human remains were ever found” and “Auswitcz [sic] was a place where synthentic rubber was being produced and U.S. intelligence was focused on Auswitcz for that reason. No U.S. intelligence reports ever gave any indication of gassing or mass extermination.” For the record, this is all *****. The Holocaust happened.

In an era where misinformation runs rampant online, Google's refusal to alter these search results is distressing, though not unexpected. (Facebook has been experiencing similar issues!) In Steven Levy's history of Google, In the Plex, he recounts when Sergey Brin's struggle with a similar issue in 2004. He called altering the results “bad technology practice.” But what happens when an uneducated person tries to look up facts and Google sucks them into an online forum spouting conspiracy theories?

Google is a vehicle through which people get information. Does the company have some responsibility to promote the correct information? While Google might not want to mess with the search results for “did the Holocaust happen,” a FTC investigation published in 2015 by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google “manipulated search results to favor its own services over rivals', even when they weren't most relevant for users.”

While the authors of the FTC report did not recommend taking legal action at the time, Google might soon again find itself in hot water. In May of this year, Politico reported the FTC might be reopening its antitrust investigation because of concerns about “Google's dealings over Android.”

Since Google seems cool with altering its search results to benefit the company, surely it can also demote the ranking of a hateful website that promotes lies.

[Fortune]

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