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I 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 actu
by LargeWu 17y ago
I 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".
- ErrantX 17y agoI suspect if Jerry Springer: The Opera hd been written by a group or country that certain sects of Christianity want dead then the response would be the same. It was groups of hardliners with their own agenda (aka not representing the religion) who, for the most part, provided the extreme reaction. The majority showed roughly the same response as to JS:TO.
- gloob 17y agoI can't speak for anyone else here, obviously, but I've never had my head cut off, whether by Islam, Muslims, or any related noun. "The plural of anecdote is not data" and all that, though, so take my story with a grain of salt, eh?
- joubert 17y agoIsn't that how most religions get their start?
- joubert 17y agoWhat I wonder is how the autosuggestions are generally generated. From what users type in? If so, and certain phrases get censored from autosuggest (even though "Islam is" is specifically in the censor list, it is not the only phrase that is specifically on this list), then my conclusion would be that the majority of phrases that googlers type in that start with "Islam is" are hateful? Hence the exclusion. In fact, what phrases get excluded might even be data driven as you can deduce sentiment from the most common phrases that users type in.
- ErrantX 17y ago> It's part of a trend of going out of the way to avoid offending Muslims specifically. A lot of other "<something> is/are" terms are filtered too. I dont think this is specifically about offending Muslims.
- ams6110 17y agoIf they are censoring the suggestion list, why do you assume they are not censoring the actual search results?