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Google won't make search recommendations for "Islam is"
- blahedo 17y agoInterestingly, the same is not true for Islam was ("founded", "founded by", "spread by the sword") or Muhammad is ("a false prophet", "satan", "the antichrist") or was ("born and raised in", "born", "illiterate"), or Allah is ("satan", "great", "not obliged") or was (which, intriguingly, has just a single suggestion, "a moon god"). I'm actually having a hard time finding anything else that is similarly blocked. Makes you wonder what the completion list had been popping up before they blocked it, eh?
- DrJokepu 17y agoIt's not that hard to find other blocked terms. Just try something that's socially sensitive or offensive. Such as 'n----rs are ' or even 'chinese are ' (note: 'swedish are ' works). I wouldn't be very surprised if they had some sort of algorithm to generate the blacklisted terms as opposed to manually cherrypicking them. We're talking about Google here.
- gridspy 17y agoGoogle could learn a lot by analysing which suggestions are presented and how the user reacts [chooses one, presses enter as is, leaves site, types something else]. You might be able to correlate this with how useful / how hateful the suggestions are.
- I_I 17y agoExcept that in many of those searches, the person is looking for something hateful.
- lmkg 17y agoMy pet theory was that it was based on the length of the query, since "Islam" was the shortest word on the list of terms. That got shot down by "Allah is ". I guess it really is censoring.
- nollidge 17y agoNot censoring. Just not actively suggesting certain things. That stuff is all reachable if you want to type the whole thing yourself.
- flatline 17y agoPerhaps there is too much noise or too even a distribution - if there are too many nearly-equally weighted results for "Islam is" to make a good suggestion, does it not even try?
- scythe 17y agoThere's been a popular trend of posting screenshots from Google search recommendations over the past few months; I wouldn't be surprised if one of those shots made it to Google Headquarters (though I'm certainly surprised they didn't notice it sooner!). Also shame on PZ Meyers for yoinking that article from atheists.org.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- mcantor 17y agoThere's actually an entire site devoted to it, in the style of FML/IMMD/etc.: http://autocompleteme.com/ http://autocompleteme.com/ (Sorry if I just wasted anyone's evening!)
- isleyaardvark 17y agoHe links to that article from atheists.org right before the blockquote. I'm not sure what he should be ashamed of.
- krakensden 17y agoEveryone knows exactly why they don't make search recommendations, and is there really anything we can say about it that won't devolve into trolling, flaming, and deliberate misunderstanding?
- gort 17y agoEveryone knows exactly why Sure, but did you know that they were doing it at all? I didn't until today.
- Retric 17y agoI don't think it's removed for the reasons you think it is. It seems to be driven by what people search for. First option under "dead b" is "dead baby jokes". Try "death and r" and "death and return of superman" is above "death and resurrection of jesus". And one of the options under "death squads" is "death squads health care" If people don't use "Islam is ..." all that often it's not going to be part of their suggestion tree. PS: First option under "muslim is " is "muslim is wrong". Muslim is not actually a religion, but I think far more people in the US use it than islam.
- gort 17y agoHmm - you could be right, but as the article takes pains to note, all of the obvious analogous searches do return suggestions, which I think is evidence against your idea. Still, it's been pointed out that queries like "Muhammad is" still "work", which I think is evidence for your idea. :)
- joubert 17y agoRight, I think the author of the article is not really interested in uncovering the (presumably) interesting heuristics for inclusion/exclusion in the autosuggest list, and is rather just throwing his prejudices out in the open.
- Batsu 17y agoIn a related thought, try "Islam will"
- gort 17y agoNote: to replicate the stated behaviour, you might need to type in the space, e.g. "Judaism is " rather than "Judaism is".
- arithmetic 17y agoMaybe it's just a bug? Haven't you found phrases which you thought were very popular and yet couldn't find Google recommendations for them?
- viggity 17y agoSo much for letting the algorithms rule their results. They could at least be somewhat equal about it and do the same thing about christianity and judaism, but then again, they know that nobody is going to chop someone's head off when they see that the first result for "christianity is" is "christianity is bullshit". How long is the civilized world going submit to this insanity? When is enough, enough?
- gort 17y agoThey could at least be somewhat equal about it In theory, I'm not sure that I find the addition of a whole bunch of exceptions to be better than the current situation. In practice, these recommendations are all a bit useless.
- ams6110 17y agoLet's hope someone at Google is reading this and gets this fixed PRONTO. It is grounds for boycotting the service IMHO.
- DrJokepu 17y agoHuh? Since when common sense, avoiding trouble and trying not to offend socially sensitive groups count as 'grounds for boycotting'?
- tomjen2 17y agoBecause Google is supposed to not be evil and treating one group of lunatics differently from all other groups of lunatics is.
- ams6110 17y agoThere's apparent favoritism here, or bias against, depending how you want to look at it. If there were no filtering going on either way, I'd have no complaint.
- techiferous 17y agoGoogle is probably the hardest company in the world to boycott successfully.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- markpercival 17y agoAnother reason why I Google with the Bing http://img.skitch.com/20100105-f2xhs1pm1bmi1wt24cng2hddyw.jpg http://img.skitch.com/20100105-f2xhs1pm1bmi1wt24cng2hddyw.jp... Cause everyone knows "Islam is the light baby doll"
- onedognight 17y agoI would assume they put things in the list on a trial basis otherwise they wouldn't be able to respond quickly to current events.
- rbreve 17y agotry out "Obama is"
- jcl 17y agoInteresting... It's fairly difficult to find male celebrity names that do not come up with "___ is an idiot".
- charlesmarshall 17y agochuck norris ...
- artsrc 17y agoclint eastwood
- jackowayed 17y agoThis isn't new. They've been filtering it for years, ever since some screenshots of what happens when they don't made the rounds. From November 2005: http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2005/11/30/does-google-suggest-racism/ http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2005/11/30/does-g... "Blacks are lazy" "Blacks are stupid" "Jews are evil" "Jews are cheap"
- gort 17y agoInteresting. One also can't get "whites are", "Hindus are", etc. But one can get "Christianity is", "Buddhism is", etc.
- LargeWu 17y agoI haven't seen it pointed out yet that it doesn't actually block searches for "Islam is". It only blocks recommendations. It's not like they're censoring actual results here. What they're doing is simply disabling a minor feature for a small number of potentially inflammatory use cases at the expense of about 10 seconds of amusement for you. If this offends you, I would think it says more about you than Google.
- cmelbye 17y agoI think it's more of a question of why is it just "Islam is"?
- gort 17y agoIt doesn't exactly offend me; I just find it interesting and potentially troubling. It's part of a trend of going out of the way to avoid offending Muslims specifically. I fear that things like Ireland's new blasphemy law, which came into force a few days ago, are the result of this trend. (Of course, it applies to mockery of all religions; in the West at least one can hardly get a law passed outlawing just mockery of Islam.) I just read a comment elsewhere that such a trend "incentivises outrage", which I think is exactly right.
- yters 17y agoIf we only respect religions that cut off our heads, eventually those will be the religions that rule us.
- artsrc 17y agoMy reaction to this is that people who are easily offended must have some insecurity. Where this insecurity is not justified, it reduces my respect.
- gort 17y agoTo be fair, religious affiliation seems unusually tightly bound to some people's sense of who they are. What's unclear to me is why certain religions have this worse than others, e.g. compare Muslim reaction to the Muhammad cartoons with Christian reaction to "Jerry Springer: The Opera".
- jrnkntl 17y agoWell, try muslim is for that matter.
- gort 17y agoWhich is grammatically questionable.
- jrnkntl 17y agook ok, even muslism is then.
- gort 17y agoEh? My point was that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to have thought of it. They certainly won't have thought of this bizarre misspelling.
- jrnkntl 17y agoFair enough, I am unfamiliar with the misspellings. Musli(s)m sounds perfectly normal to me as a non-native speaker of the English language, and for a bunch of other people on the internet for that matter hence the suggestions of google.
- joubert 17y agoI just tried to say that out loud and find it quite a tongue twister.
- miguelpais 17y agoThis is rather disturbing. I didn't live through a dictatorial government in my country, but 30 years or so one that was ruling for about 50 years was put down. The worst thing about a dictatorship is not the censorship itself that will cut the parts that they don't want to be read from a text or a poem, it is when the author himself limits its expressiveness and freewill to the walls built by the fear of the censorship, and will instead write the version of his feelings that he thinks it will not get cut. Google is doing the same... actively self-censoring, the worst form of censorship.
- joubert 17y agoAren't they simply withholding phrase suggestions which they deem wrong? I.e. you can still search for anything ranging from the angelic to the vile, and they probably don't censor (but of course, there's no way for an outsider to ever know). What I do wonder is whether Google, for example, actually filters out from its search results websites that are blacklisted by the Australian government, when people down under google.
- adharmad 17y agoIf that is the case, why are they not being consistent? Why withhold suggestions only in the case of "Islam"?
- gloob 17y agoThey don't. They also withhold suggestions in the case of "jews are" and "white people are" and "hot teens".
- gsmaverick 17y agoHow would the phrase suggestions in question be wrong? They have a severe case of political correctness!
- billpg 17y agoI wondered if its because one word is the prefix of the other. My first attempt, "ishmael is " also suggested nothing! Then I tried a few others; "isaac is " and "israel is " which did come up with suggestions. Oh well.
- borism 17y agoso, all of you who think they have algorithm to restrict suggestions... what is the algorithm?
- gridspy 17y agoI don't think a blacklist is plausible. There are similar phrases that yield negative results such as "is Islam" Perhaps there simply are not enough queries for "Islam is" in your region.
- DannoHung 17y agoTop results from "Islam is *": "Islam is both a religion and a complete way of life" "Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs" "Islam is violent" "Islam is spreading among Thousands black South Africans" "Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants" (The preceding word is "Radical") "Islam is intolerant, militant, supports terrorism" (This is from a site discussing contrasting viewpoints of Islam) "Islam is your birthright" "Islam is not a barrier to democracy as is often perceived by Western nations"
- uuilly 17y ago"Engineers are:" http://dl.dropbox.com/u/147719/Picture%206.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/147719/Picture%206.png
- johnl 17y agoSearch engines should avoid being in the business of egging people on. That has to be one messy program/algorithm/filter. We put one together for a retail company emails and stopped 20% of the incoming mail. It was pretty funny what combos you can get.
- sown 17y agoIf you search for "muhummad is " you get the results you are looking for.
- mynameishere 17y ago"islam should" is decidedly accurate as well.
- sown 17y agoTrue. But I would think that people at google would be thorough. Most perplexing.
- bgurupra 17y agoI submit something that may be potentially useful, a guy who is going to open source out something that might be real interesting ->http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032278 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032278 and I get no love and this ahem "sensationalist" blog with no proof whatsoever for the claims gets so many points - wow!
- gort 17y agoIt doesn't make any claims (aside from claims about the behaviour of the Google search field, which are easily verified). It asks a question. But don't feel bad - whether your submission gets voted up is half luck: either a couple of people spot it and vote it up so it becomes visible to everyone, or not.
- nightlifelover 17y agoI found this pretty interesting, not sure if it still works: http://emerging-patterns.com/tmp/CrimsonJihad.png http://emerging-patterns.com/tmp/CrimsonJihad.png
- gort 17y agohttp://searchengineland.com/islam-is-blocked-by-google-suggest-bug-32921 http://searchengineland.com/islam-is-blocked-by-google-sugge... A [Google] spokesperson tells us: "This is a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can."