7 ms·

The Rise of Hate Search

26 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

coldtea 11y ago
>People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter? Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes. I hate it that we're so spineless to venture an actual judgment without the support of some "study" or "statistic" stating the obvious. Of course tons of people searching for "kill Muslim" matters. In fact, it would matter even if it wasn't correlated with increase with hate crimes (though, of course, it obviously is).
- richthegeek 11y ago
  Yes, it's real problem when we pass judgement without proof... /s
  - coldtea 11y ago
    It would have been more sarcastic if it was "with proof" (as you probably meant). And yes, it can be a real problem if people can't reason out the simplest things without assistance from "experts" and "research". Especially since ideally they should be able to judge those experts and that research too, not take it as a gospel. Common sense can get you a long way. And if you lack common sense, then the finest and more interest-free research wont really save you.
- V-2 11y ago
  Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Or both are caused by a third factor (say, Boston bombings), but don't affect eachother directly.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Yeah, but my point is we could just use mere prior knowledge of how the world works to rule that out. I wouldn't expect many people to be typing "kill muslims" in order find muslim related hate-crime reports, especially in the aftermath of an terrorist attack attributed to muslims (and I wouldn't expect reality to be counter-intuitive to such an expectation either).
    - V-2 11y ago
      But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. It may or may not be valid. It could be based on a false premise, too. Apart from searching for hate-crime reports, there are many other possible reasons why someone would be googling for "kill muslims" that don't assume hateful emotional involvement. Curiosity, boredom; having read about a rise of anti-muslim comments. In what proportion? I don't know, and I don't claim to know, and if someone claims they do, I'm really sceptical about it. That's why I see these findings as rather useless. Too many unknowns for drawing conclusions.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. Yes, and my point is that presumption is enough in lots of cases -- and especially enough to be sure that "kill muslims" as a search term shows negative "emotional involvement" and not a desire to find out about muslim hate crimes...
        V-2 11y ago
        Well, it's still not based on anything, which is why I remained unconcinved. Let's agree to disagree.
seren 11y ago
Really interesting to see that a political speech has a direct and measurable effect. Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time. PR companies for politicians etc have been doing these sort of things (with Twitter etc) for several years...
jkot 11y ago
> In November, there were about 3,600 searches in the United States for “I hate Muslims” and about 2,400 for “kill Muslims.” It is sad that NY Times had turned into yet another "news generator".
- mahouse 11y ago
  I wonder if you know the same NYT that I know, because they have been shitty for years now.
slavik81 11y ago
> A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks. Searches for “I hate Muslims” are even clearer. Is it actually clear what the searcher thinks? I enter phrases I'm searching for into Google. I don't just type my current thoughts in there to let Google know.
- logicallee 11y ago
  I think both "are all Muslims terrorists" and "I hate Muslims" are perfectly reasonable searches when hearing that someone has decided to exercise free speech, expressing a political viewpoint, simultaneously with deciding to commit heinous, psychopathic, immoral and of course illegal murder - when this person personally expresses that their religious views tie these unrelated things together. In response to "are all Muslims terrorists" I would expect to get an informative page detailing that no, obviously they are not (I know muslims personally who are as western, educated, and civilized as any of my Christian friends) while also explaining why some muslims or muslim countries are uncivilized places that have not been exposed to basic things humanity figured out during the enlightenment. (In these places Apostasy is a crime punishable by death, for example.) So it's a reasonable question with a reasonable answer. The search "I hate muslims" is also quite reasonable, and I would expect a reasonable search result to be about how to deal with personal bigotry in the face of a mixed population. For example, if a shop owner has 17-30 cases of armed robbery occurring every year, and all of them are by African-Americans, I might expect this person to search for "I hate blacks" and get an informative page about why the fact that some African-Americans are thugs is no reason to generalize and be bigotted. At the end of the day, the shop owner's next hire might be an African-American, and one who wouldn't think of armed robbery any more than the HN readership does. Here possibly I'm being hopelessly optimistic. I do think it's up to Google to return search results that are not hate-speech based. In the United STates with good reason, blind hatred advocating violence against a group is not protected political speech - you couldn't just publish a book advocating lynching every (minority group). But that doesn't extend to the whole of the Internet, and people can say whatever bigoted stuff they want. That doesn't mean search engines need to return those pages. They can return reasonable pages instead.
brianjoseff 11y ago
I wonder why Google has become a sort of window into the hidden recesses of the public mind. It's a search box, built to return relevant web pages, but it seems people use it as a repository for unfiltered thoughts as well. Perhaps because the search box is a totally dispassionate, nonjudgemental listener. And it even responds! It serves up links that it thinks are relevant to what we say to it. It's like the stuffed teddy bears we confided in as children...but algorithmically powered, antiseptic white, and it talks back to us...albeit in a garbled speech comprised entirely of links and ads.
okasaki 11y ago
> While hate searches were about 20 percent of all top searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it. > The search data also tells us that changes in Americans’ policy concerns have been dramatic. They happened, quite literally, within minutes of the terror attacks. I don't know how they got this "within hours" and "literally, within minutes" data, when they previously say the data was weekly > Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.
- golergka 11y ago
  They didn't say that they have access _only_ to weekly data. But using week as a period to draw correlation between crimes and searches makes much more sense than trying to make this correlation on a minute-per-minute basis.
stinos 11y ago
A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks Actually it does. I know I'm proably a minority, but I have typed such questions into google (well, DDG to be fair) to find such topics on sites likes skeptics.stackexchange.com or just when I'm bored and feel like reading some of the huge crap which is out there on the internet.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Yep, there's weird people like myself who find it entertaining to read viewpoints normally sequestered away by the more "civilized" part of the internet. I like seeing wildly different perspectives from my own so long as I can do so from a distance from the comfort of my own home. If anyone tried to take my internet searches and theorize what sort of person I am they almost certainly would paint an unflattering and utterly bizarre picture. It really is amazing how different the internet looks if you do searches in other languages, or phrased in such a way as to imply you're from a specific country, a certain race, gender, hold a certain political belief, etc etc
- V-2 11y ago
  If someone truly believes that all Muslims are terrorists, they aren't all that likely to be searching for websites that question this point of view. I'm not googling for "are all humans mammals?" etc.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
When did hate become a crime? Why is it suddently a crime to hate somebody, who declares their commitment to killing you, raping your wife, selling your kids for slaves and taking your property? Because that's basic salafi doctrine, isn't it? They have plan to do that, but the criminal is somehow still me!?
- seivan 11y ago
  It came with the notion that islam is above criticism. They create words like "islamophobia" in order to reflect any wrong doing into some sort of unwarranted fear. Anyone, including ex-muslims who criticise islam are branded as racist and my favourite word: "native-informants". You can thank the likes of Aslan, Greenwald and other people who make $$ on such matters.
  - vixen99 11y ago
    If the term Islamophobia denotes an irrational fear of Islam, what is the term for a rational fear of Islam? Of course, such a term would have currency only in the West given that (some) Muslims kill many more Muslims than non-believers. And what is all this down to? Interpretation of a text! As well to bear in mind that a similar problem once existed, now pretty much in the past, with the Christian bible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9
- logicallee 11y ago
  this is what the koran writes about homosexuals: "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. " pretty black and white. no real way to interpret it any differently. So obviously anyone who reads this will support the murder of any homosexual they encounter. it's quite impossible to read it any other way, just try. put on your best legal hat and try to read the above in any other way. there's no room for believers not to follow 1400 year texts literally. oh wait I was actually quoting Leviticus 20:13, not the koran. My bad! my point is it doesn't matter what a religion says in purely literal terms, being civilized is everyone's responsibility, and it's wrong of you to generalize as you do. Edit: anyone care to explain the downvote?
xupybd 11y ago
I can't help but wonder if this is the aim of groups like ISIS, to drive a wedge between Muslims in the west and the non Muslims. It certainly would help them recruit. Also I'm not sure if Google searches are the best indicator, perhaps trumps support after suggesting banning Muslims is a stronger indicator.
- HaseebR7 11y ago
  That is exactly what ISIS wants Westerners to do. http://www.thenation.com/article/assault-on-life/ http://www.thenation.com/article/assault-on-life/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-marshall/want-to-help-isis-hate-a-_b_8584142.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-marshall/want-to-help-i... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/the-islamic-state-wants-you-to-hate-refugees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-wants-you-to-hate-muslims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-...
  - acqq 11y ago
    What exactly ISIS actually wants: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terror-Organisation-Andrew-Hosken-Caliphate-Abu-Musab-al-Zarqawi http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terr...
rl3 11y ago
>There are about 1,600 searches for “I hate my boss” every month in the United States. That sounds far too low. Since most people don't search like that, I'd imagine "hate boss" probably has a far higher amount, with the collective tally for queries that have near-identical semantics being astronomical.
compbio 11y ago
Absolute and utter FUD article, with zero basis in science and all the markings of another self-fulfilling social research trick. Of to Google "Are all The New York Times articles shitty journalism?" Our research shows that in the months after these searches, the number of shitty articles on The New York Times seems to rise. We know this before the FBI does so, because we wield the power of Google Trends.
V-2 11y ago
No science like social science based on google search statistics and correlation ; ) And what would you make of that? https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=i%20hate%20jews%2C%20i%20hate%20muslims%2C%20i%20hate%20white%20people&date=1%2F2010%2061m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=i%20hate%20jews%2C%2... I would also recommend http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- acqq 11y ago
  Better: proof that hate against Muslims doesn't increase in comparison with the raise of ISIS: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ISIS%2C%20i%20hate%20muslims https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ISIS%2C%20i%20hate%2...
leni536 11y ago
What could be actually interesting how it affects Google's suggestions. Now if I type "are all muslim" into google then it gives two suggestions: > are all muslim extremists > are all muslim marriages arranged There was a pretty bad "accidentally" racist search correction of Google. If you searched "white people stole my car" it responded with "Did you mean: black people stole my car". Apparently they fixed it by now.

26 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

>People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter? Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes. I hate it that we're so spineless to venture an actual judgment without the support of some "study" or "statistic" stating the obvious. Of course tons of people searching for "kill Muslim" matters. In fact, it would matter even if it wasn't correlated with increase with hate crimes (though, of course, it obviously is).

richthegeek 11y ago
Yes, it's real problem when we pass judgement without proof... /s
- coldtea 11y ago
  It would have been more sarcastic if it was "with proof" (as you probably meant). And yes, it can be a real problem if people can't reason out the simplest things without assistance from "experts" and "research". Especially since ideally they should be able to judge those experts and that research too, not take it as a gospel. Common sense can get you a long way. And if you lack common sense, then the finest and more interest-free research wont really save you.
V-2 11y ago
Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Or both are caused by a third factor (say, Boston bombings), but don't affect eachother directly.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Yeah, but my point is we could just use mere prior knowledge of how the world works to rule that out. I wouldn't expect many people to be typing "kill muslims" in order find muslim related hate-crime reports, especially in the aftermath of an terrorist attack attributed to muslims (and I wouldn't expect reality to be counter-intuitive to such an expectation either).
  - V-2 11y ago
    But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. It may or may not be valid. It could be based on a false premise, too. Apart from searching for hate-crime reports, there are many other possible reasons why someone would be googling for "kill muslims" that don't assume hateful emotional involvement. Curiosity, boredom; having read about a rise of anti-muslim comments. In what proportion? I don't know, and I don't claim to know, and if someone claims they do, I'm really sceptical about it. That's why I see these findings as rather useless. Too many unknowns for drawing conclusions.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >But "wouldn't expect" isn't really knowledge, is it? It's just a presumption. Yes, and my point is that presumption is enough in lots of cases -- and especially enough to be sure that "kill muslims" as a search term shows negative "emotional involvement" and not a desire to find out about muslim hate crimes...
      - V-2 11y ago
        Well, it's still not based on anything, which is why I remained unconcinved. Let's agree to disagree.

seren 11y ago

Really interesting to see that a political speech has a direct and measurable effect. Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time.

coldtea 11y ago
>Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time. PR companies for politicians etc have been doing these sort of things (with Twitter etc) for several years...

jkot 11y ago

> In November, there were about 3,600 searches in the United States for “I hate Muslims” and about 2,400 for “kill Muslims.” It is sad that NY Times had turned into yet another "news generator".

mahouse 11y ago
I wonder if you know the same NYT that I know, because they have been shitty for years now.

slavik81 11y ago

> A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks. Searches for “I hate Muslims” are even clearer. Is it actually clear what the searcher thinks? I enter phrases I'm searching for into Google. I don't just type my current thoughts in there to let Google know.

logicallee 11y ago
I think both "are all Muslims terrorists" and "I hate Muslims" are perfectly reasonable searches when hearing that someone has decided to exercise free speech, expressing a political viewpoint, simultaneously with deciding to commit heinous, psychopathic, immoral and of course illegal murder - when this person personally expresses that their religious views tie these unrelated things together. In response to "are all Muslims terrorists" I would expect to get an informative page detailing that no, obviously they are not (I know muslims personally who are as western, educated, and civilized as any of my Christian friends) while also explaining why some muslims or muslim countries are uncivilized places that have not been exposed to basic things humanity figured out during the enlightenment. (In these places Apostasy is a crime punishable by death, for example.) So it's a reasonable question with a reasonable answer. The search "I hate muslims" is also quite reasonable, and I would expect a reasonable search result to be about how to deal with personal bigotry in the face of a mixed population. For example, if a shop owner has 17-30 cases of armed robbery occurring every year, and all of them are by African-Americans, I might expect this person to search for "I hate blacks" and get an informative page about why the fact that some African-Americans are thugs is no reason to generalize and be bigotted. At the end of the day, the shop owner's next hire might be an African-American, and one who wouldn't think of armed robbery any more than the HN readership does. Here possibly I'm being hopelessly optimistic. I do think it's up to Google to return search results that are not hate-speech based. In the United STates with good reason, blind hatred advocating violence against a group is not protected political speech - you couldn't just publish a book advocating lynching every (minority group). But that doesn't extend to the whole of the Internet, and people can say whatever bigoted stuff they want. That doesn't mean search engines need to return those pages. They can return reasonable pages instead.

brianjoseff 11y ago

I wonder why Google has become a sort of window into the hidden recesses of the public mind. It's a search box, built to return relevant web pages, but it seems people use it as a repository for unfiltered thoughts as well. Perhaps because the search box is a totally dispassionate, nonjudgemental listener. And it even responds! It serves up links that it thinks are relevant to what we say to it. It's like the stuffed teddy bears we confided in as children...but algorithmically powered, antiseptic white, and it talks back to us...albeit in a garbled speech comprised entirely of links and ads.

okasaki 11y ago

> While hate searches were about 20 percent of all top searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it. > The search data also tells us that changes in Americans’ policy concerns have been dramatic. They happened, quite literally, within minutes of the terror attacks. I don't know how they got this "within hours" and "literally, within minutes" data, when they previously say the data was weekly > Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

golergka 11y ago
They didn't say that they have access _only_ to weekly data. But using week as a period to draw correlation between crimes and searches makes much more sense than trying to make this correlation on a minute-per-minute basis.

stinos 11y ago

A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks Actually it does. I know I'm proably a minority, but I have typed such questions into google (well, DDG to be fair) to find such topics on sites likes skeptics.stackexchange.com or just when I'm bored and feel like reading some of the huge crap which is out there on the internet.

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
Yep, there's weird people like myself who find it entertaining to read viewpoints normally sequestered away by the more "civilized" part of the internet. I like seeing wildly different perspectives from my own so long as I can do so from a distance from the comfort of my own home. If anyone tried to take my internet searches and theorize what sort of person I am they almost certainly would paint an unflattering and utterly bizarre picture. It really is amazing how different the internet looks if you do searches in other languages, or phrased in such a way as to imply you're from a specific country, a certain race, gender, hold a certain political belief, etc etc
V-2 11y ago
If someone truly believes that all Muslims are terrorists, they aren't all that likely to be searching for websites that question this point of view. I'm not googling for "are all humans mammals?" etc.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

When did hate become a crime? Why is it suddently a crime to hate somebody, who declares their commitment to killing you, raping your wife, selling your kids for slaves and taking your property? Because that's basic salafi doctrine, isn't it? They have plan to do that, but the criminal is somehow still me!?

seivan 11y ago
It came with the notion that islam is above criticism. They create words like "islamophobia" in order to reflect any wrong doing into some sort of unwarranted fear. Anyone, including ex-muslims who criticise islam are branded as racist and my favourite word: "native-informants". You can thank the likes of Aslan, Greenwald and other people who make $$ on such matters.
- vixen99 11y ago
  If the term Islamophobia denotes an irrational fear of Islam, what is the term for a rational fear of Islam? Of course, such a term would have currency only in the West given that (some) Muslims kill many more Muslims than non-believers. And what is all this down to? Interpretation of a text! As well to bear in mind that a similar problem once existed, now pretty much in the past, with the Christian bible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9
logicallee 11y ago
this is what the koran writes about homosexuals: "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. " pretty black and white. no real way to interpret it any differently. So obviously anyone who reads this will support the murder of any homosexual they encounter. it's quite impossible to read it any other way, just try. put on your best legal hat and try to read the above in any other way. there's no room for believers not to follow 1400 year texts literally. oh wait I was actually quoting Leviticus 20:13, not the koran. My bad! my point is it doesn't matter what a religion says in purely literal terms, being civilized is everyone's responsibility, and it's wrong of you to generalize as you do. Edit: anyone care to explain the downvote?

xupybd 11y ago

I can't help but wonder if this is the aim of groups like ISIS, to drive a wedge between Muslims in the west and the non Muslims. It certainly would help them recruit. Also I'm not sure if Google searches are the best indicator, perhaps trumps support after suggesting banning Muslims is a stronger indicator.

HaseebR7 11y ago
That is exactly what ISIS wants Westerners to do. http://www.thenation.com/article/assault-on-life/ http://www.thenation.com/article/assault-on-life/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-marshall/want-to-help-isis-hate-a-_b_8584142.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-marshall/want-to-help-i... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16/the-islamic-state-wants-you-to-hate-refugees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-wants-you-to-hate-muslims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-...
- acqq 11y ago
  What exactly ISIS actually wants: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terror-Organisation-Andrew-Hosken-Caliphate-Abu-Musab-al-Zarqawi http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terr...

rl3 11y ago

>There are about 1,600 searches for “I hate my boss” every month in the United States. That sounds far too low. Since most people don't search like that, I'd imagine "hate boss" probably has a far higher amount, with the collective tally for queries that have near-identical semantics being astronomical.

compbio 11y ago

Absolute and utter FUD article, with zero basis in science and all the markings of another self-fulfilling social research trick. Of to Google "Are all The New York Times articles shitty journalism?" Our research shows that in the months after these searches, the number of shitty articles on The New York Times seems to rise. We know this before the FBI does so, because we wield the power of Google Trends.

V-2 11y ago

No science like social science based on google search statistics and correlation ; ) And what would you make of that? https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=i%20hate%20jews%2C%20i%20hate%20muslims%2C%20i%20hate%20white%20people&date=1%2F2010%2061m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1 https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=i%20hate%20jews%2C%2... I would also recommend http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

acqq 11y ago
Better: proof that hate against Muslims doesn't increase in comparison with the raise of ISIS: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ISIS%2C%20i%20hate%20muslims https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ISIS%2C%20i%20hate%2...

leni536 11y ago

What could be actually interesting how it affects Google's suggestions. Now if I type "are all muslim" into google then it gives two suggestions: > are all muslim extremists > are all muslim marriages arranged There was a pretty bad "accidentally" racist search correction of Google. If you searched "white people stole my car" it responded with "Did you mean: black people stole my car". Apparently they fixed it by now.