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No, Google does not try to mirror content. It tries to provide the best results for users. Results the user wants to click on and are relevant. Searching for "p

No, Google does not try to mirror content. It tries to provide the best results for users. Results the user wants to click on and are relevant. Searching for "professor style", nobody wants it to return a minority professor style. Even she doesn't, at scale. If she and others did, they'd be Googling "professor style", not clicking, then Googling "professor style for black women" and results would improve/personalize. Ditto for "black girls": either your looking for porn or for stock photos. What other intentions do you have with such a query? (Besides making a point?) Google changing results for Holocaust "denial" is likewise wrong. Someone searching for such things probably wants to find all such sites and not just a PC version of history repeating what they've already heard. Otherwise they wouldn't need to be searching in the first place. Same for someone searching "Is the moon real" or "is the earth flat". In a great market, Google might start "cleaning" up their results to the point of annoying people, who would then switch. Unfortunately no one comes close to Google search, let alone overall lock-in. So we're stuck with whatever Google decides reflects their brand, including fixing up well-publicized queries for people that want to be offended and complain about stuff. Edit: I search for "best basketball player" and all I see are black guys -- way over-represented. Why doesn't Google bump up Larry Bird to 4th place so there's some more diversity and fight the stereotype? Even worse, Yao Ming is nowhere to be found, what's that say?

danso 9y ago
Sorry, just to clarify, I (and I believe the GP did as well) meant "mirror" in terms of reflecting reality and the state of things -- not "mirror" as it's commonly thought of in content/data online distribution. I think you misread the Holocaust denial situation. The reason why "Did the Holocaust happen?" was so problematic was because that literal string of text is something that you'd never find on a mainstream site, such as the NYT or the Holocaust museum. And yet sites like StormFront would get bonus SERP for using that literal text in a page's title, url slug, and <h1>. StormFront benefited from a blind spot in Google's heuristics that had little to do with whether or not StormFront was actually a legitimate researcher into the question of the Holocaust's historical reality. Same problem with Google Bombs. A law student with a blog was able to get enough people to link "waffle" to 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry [0]. Presumably, the average person googling "waffle" wants the food item, not info about Sen. Kerry. But the reality was that the metrics Google had long used to measure quality and credibility were all saying "waffle => Kerry". Staying true to the algorithm assumes that the algorithm (and its inputs) were pure and complete to begin with. This is not necessarily the case. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Google_bombs_in_the_2004_U.S._Presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Google_bombs_in_the_...
- mirimir 9y ago
  > Sorry, just to clarify, I (and I believe the GP did as well) meant "mirror" in terms of reflecting reality and the state of things -- not "mirror" as it's commonly thought of in content/data online distribution. Yes, I did. But I don't want to see the parasitic SEO-driven copypasta linkfarms. Or perhaps have them, but including such flags.
forapurpose 9y ago
> Ditto for "black girls": either your looking for porn or for stock photos. What other intentions do you have with such a query? Consider the possibility that the user is a black girl, or her parent. Generally, I'm careful not to assume I can anticipate the perspectives of everyone else.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  Do white boys ever enter the query "white boys" into a search engine? I assume some HN users could speak to this...
  - danso 9y ago
    To answer your immediate question, "white boys" is not uncommon in popular usage. People might look it up in the process of looking up a lyric or obscure title/name for a song/group. The phrase "white boys" in general seems to be mostly desexualized. You can call someone a "white boy", either as a mild insult (like describing something as "vanilla") or a term of endearment. I think that's predicated from most people (in the U.S.) realizing that white boys/men are the status quo. I'll ignore race and just say that I think the word "girls" in general has far more of a sexual/gendered connotation in U.S. usage. "Boy/Man" is considerably more generic and all-purpose. I use "Boy/Man/Guy" in casual conversation regardless of audience gender, e.g. e.g. "Boy, that was fucked up!" or "Man oh man that's got to hurt". I can't think of a single time in normal conversation where I would ever say "Girl" or "Lady" without referring to a female.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      I'm aware of how the term is used, but your comments seem more like a tangent than an answer. My question was whether there is any connection between being a white boy and Googling the search term "white boys". It was prompted by the parent post suggesting that not seeing a connection between being a black girl and Googling "black girls" might be kind of a blind spot. I think the implication was pretty clear that if you don't imagine someone Googling the search term "black girls", it's because they occupy the position of the "other" in your mind. However, I gave a reason to doubt it - contemplate whether and how often white boys Google "white boys". I note that somehow, I already knew the connotations of the term "white boy" that you mentioned without Googling it. So you are not bringing anything to the point I was making. I am not a laissez faire fanatic about much of anything, including Google search results - I just think that when people criticize such results, the search terms (and the subsequent reasoning) often seem contrived.

danso 9y ago

Sorry, just to clarify, I (and I believe the GP did as well) meant "mirror" in terms of reflecting reality and the state of things -- not "mirror" as it's commonly thought of in content/data online distribution. I think you misread the Holocaust denial situation. The reason why "Did the Holocaust happen?" was so problematic was because that literal string of text is something that you'd never find on a mainstream site, such as the NYT or the Holocaust museum. And yet sites like StormFront would get bonus SERP for using that literal text in a page's title, url slug, and <h1>. StormFront benefited from a blind spot in Google's heuristics that had little to do with whether or not StormFront was actually a legitimate researcher into the question of the Holocaust's historical reality. Same problem with Google Bombs. A law student with a blog was able to get enough people to link "waffle" to 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry [0]. Presumably, the average person googling "waffle" wants the food item, not info about Sen. Kerry. But the reality was that the metrics Google had long used to measure quality and credibility were all saying "waffle => Kerry". Staying true to the algorithm assumes that the algorithm (and its inputs) were pure and complete to begin with. This is not necessarily the case. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Google_bombs_in_the_2004_U.S._Presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Google_bombs_in_the_...

mirimir 9y ago
> Sorry, just to clarify, I (and I believe the GP did as well) meant "mirror" in terms of reflecting reality and the state of things -- not "mirror" as it's commonly thought of in content/data online distribution. Yes, I did. But I don't want to see the parasitic SEO-driven copypasta linkfarms. Or perhaps have them, but including such flags.

forapurpose 9y ago

> Ditto for "black girls": either your looking for porn or for stock photos. What other intentions do you have with such a query? Consider the possibility that the user is a black girl, or her parent. Generally, I'm careful not to assume I can anticipate the perspectives of everyone else.

perl4ever 9y ago
Do white boys ever enter the query "white boys" into a search engine? I assume some HN users could speak to this...
- danso 9y ago
  To answer your immediate question, "white boys" is not uncommon in popular usage. People might look it up in the process of looking up a lyric or obscure title/name for a song/group. The phrase "white boys" in general seems to be mostly desexualized. You can call someone a "white boy", either as a mild insult (like describing something as "vanilla") or a term of endearment. I think that's predicated from most people (in the U.S.) realizing that white boys/men are the status quo. I'll ignore race and just say that I think the word "girls" in general has far more of a sexual/gendered connotation in U.S. usage. "Boy/Man" is considerably more generic and all-purpose. I use "Boy/Man/Guy" in casual conversation regardless of audience gender, e.g. e.g. "Boy, that was fucked up!" or "Man oh man that's got to hurt". I can't think of a single time in normal conversation where I would ever say "Girl" or "Lady" without referring to a female.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    I'm aware of how the term is used, but your comments seem more like a tangent than an answer. My question was whether there is any connection between being a white boy and Googling the search term "white boys". It was prompted by the parent post suggesting that not seeing a connection between being a black girl and Googling "black girls" might be kind of a blind spot. I think the implication was pretty clear that if you don't imagine someone Googling the search term "black girls", it's because they occupy the position of the "other" in your mind. However, I gave a reason to doubt it - contemplate whether and how often white boys Google "white boys". I note that somehow, I already knew the connotations of the term "white boy" that you mentioned without Googling it. So you are not bringing anything to the point I was making. I am not a laissez faire fanatic about much of anything, including Google search results - I just think that when people criticize such results, the search terms (and the subsequent reasoning) often seem contrived.