5 ms·

What Does Google's Subtle Censorship Say About Us?

69 points by grellas 16y ago

saurik 16y ago
I'm pretty certain that if Google had people /automatically/ running searches for swear words, pornography, or BitTorrent sites they'd get a lot of people fired from their jobs (possibly even automatically ;P) and possibly even seized by the FBI. Seriously: why does everyone assume that Google's autosearch result filtering is designed by corporations or those with overly chaste minds (I totally failed at coming up with a better word/phrase for this ;P) to mold the Internet in their own image, and not as a way to protect users from being unfairly beat down by those same interests randomly?
- spot 16y ago
  It certainly makes sense that Autosuggest shouldn't pop up any "NSFW" results. There's a difference between suggestion and answering. That explains why the sex/curse words are dropped. But what about the racist results? That's just as verboten in the office. And talk of torrents doesn't qualify by this standard.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    Until we can build a computer that understands English (not to mention every other language they offer autocomplete in) or convince everyone to stop searching for such things, I don't think it's possible for Google to filter out all the naughty/bad/copyright infringing suggestions. My take on it is that they're doing their best to remove suggestions that are likely to cause them trouble, particularly the trouble they might be in if someone were to make a claim against them for inducing copyright infringement. I wonder if they'd get any mileage out of changing the name? But I'm not sure if they could find something to make it clear that Google is saying that these searches are popular, not that these searches are endorsed by Google.
  - saurik 16y ago
    I actually think a lot of offices might care about misuse of company bandwidth, and the racists searches in the article require an understanding of English (which the Internet filter you will find installed in an IT department does not possess) to determine are racist.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    But what about the racist results? That's just as verboten in the office. An experiment: try typing "nig" in the google search box. I think the results are somewhat localised, but I get "Nigella Lawson", "Night Noodle Markets" and "Nightmare on Elm Street". But type another "G" and autosuggest vanishes completely. And talk of torrents doesn't qualify by this standard. No, but it does count as enticing people towards criminal activity, which would quite arguably be against Google's "Don't Be Evil" policy. Another thing I couldn't get any autosuggest results for: "How to commit su..."
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
yanw 16y ago
People need to be more carful with the terminology, not every editorial exercise is 'censorship'. Google isn't hosting the content nor have they stopped indexing and linking to it. As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results, also it might be part of Google's negations with record companies and film studios to get their content.
- JeanPierre 16y ago
  As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results The same argument is used against guns and dangerous knives as well, as they help users commit murders. The arguments against banning of guns is that "it is not the gun that kills, it is the person" and "if they really wanted to kill, they would have found another way". (Whether these arguments are good or not is another debate...) I have not really done that much research on the gun debate, but couldn't those arguments be applied to this case as well?
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    If you want to do some research into the gun debate, a good place to start is the movie "Bowling for Columbine". Some people will think of it as an extreme left-wing-nutjob propaganda piece, but my recollection of the movie is not that it hammers you with a conclusion, but that it presents a bunch of different scenarios that are all 'odd' in their own way. Accusing BfC of being a propaganda piece is like calling Borat a propaganda piece, stylistically they are quite similar. Anyway, one of the things that really struck me about that movie was the difference in gun related deaths (per head of population) in Canada and the U.S. Basically both countries have buttloads of guns and the justification in both is that they are for 'hunting'. I don't remember the exact figures, but the deaths per 1000 from guns was enormously much higher in the U.S. than in Canada. Moore doesn't give an answer to that dilemma per se, but he does throw it out there for people to think about and make up their own minds. Frankly, if that is propaganda, I think the U.S. and the internet in general need a lot more of it. ----- As for the guns debate, you could make an analogy to poison, where you say that poisons are sold at the supermarket, so why not sell guns at the supermarket too? I guess the reply would be that the poisons that are sold invariably have some other practical use, e.g. cleaning products. Whereas guns are pretty much designed with the express and only purpose of killing stuff. Then the gun-nut will reply "oh, there's lots of other uses for a gun, like sport (target practice), hunting and personal defense as a deterrent". The problem isn't that those things are wrong, the problem is that - unlike pretty much every other country in the world with guns - people in the U.S. don't seem to stop at deterrent, they are much more likely to use the 'personal defense' guns to try to kill someone else. Why is that? What is it about the U.S. that as soon as they get a gun in their hand they want to go 'pop a cap in yo ass'? And why doesn't that happen in Canada? Some of the scenarios I remember from the movie that were presented: The bank that gives you a shotgun when you open an account The mall store(?) that was selling ammo in massive aisles The five year old that took a handgun to school and shot one of his class-mates dead The Columbine massacre The gun lobby holding a big pro-guns rally in Columbine immediately after the massacre Moore harassing Charlton Heston (figurehead of the gun lobby) (this one was most like a scene from Borat - it was an uncomfortable 'excuse me while I invade your personal' thing and went on for ages)
xiaoma 16y ago
"old people need" auto completes with "to die" Sadly, this really does reflect on us, the vast number of English speaking google users. Trying to remove all offensive reflections of the garbage people type in is impossible though. It's not really bounded.
Daniel14 16y ago
-1 to this article. Google isn't blocking anything. No censorship, they're just not helping you get to presumably illegal sites anymore. Oooh, they're forcing you to press enter to get to hacked content! EVAAL! Seriously..
trotsky 16y ago
I'm surprised the atlantic fell for this story.
zmmmmm 16y ago
Why is this being referred to so constantly as censorship? Censorship is preventing someone else from speaking. Suggested keywords are Google's speech to us. Unlike search index content, Google is responsible for their contents and will beheld accountable when they are inappropriate. The only party being censored by filtering keywords is Google. If you really, really, want to call this censorship then you have to also apply a "safe-harbor" type principle to it where you remove responsibility from Google for what the suggestions contain. I don't think anybody suggests that would be a good idea. And I bet the same crowd bleating censorship would be up in arms about finding inappropriate terms suggested if Google didn't do this.
- smokeyj 16y ago
  > Censorship is preventing someone else from speaking. One could argue the recording lobbies are preventing Google from "speaking", by means of legal intimidation. Legal censorship is still censorship. Preventing someone else from speaking is a form of censorship, but censorship includes all means of suppressing communication.
- j_baker 16y ago
  On the other hand, the idea of search engine companies blocking autocomplete keywords is a new concept that isn't taken into account by existing definitions of censorship. Regardless of how you define censorship, the core concept is that censorship is blocking content that is deemed inappropriate. Google is essentially blocking content that is deemed inappropriate under some standard, so therefore it is censorship. English is a constantly evolving language. Words' definitions aren't set in stone once they're entered into the dictionary.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Google is essentially blocking content that is deemed inappropriate under some standard, so therefore it is censorship. A fun exercise: what else would count as censorship under this rather expanded definition? For instance, if I run a bookstore then am I "censoring" every book I don't carry?
maeon3 16y ago
We better shutdown and close all the libraries and bookstores too. The page-to-eye data transfer protocols are evil, we need to crack down on this kind of piracy.
anonymoushn 16y ago
This has happened for a long time for other strings. If you begin typing "why are musl" "limey" or "nigg" then google will stop autocompleting. Interestingly, if you begin typing "why are chris" "why are jew" or "wop" then it will continue autocompleting.

69 points by grellas 16y ago

I'm pretty certain that if Google had people /automatically/ running searches for swear words, pornography, or BitTorrent sites they'd get a lot of people fired from their jobs (possibly even automatically ;P) and possibly even seized by the FBI. Seriously: why does everyone assume that Google's autosearch result filtering is designed by corporations or those with overly chaste minds (I totally failed at coming up with a better word/phrase for this ;P) to mold the Internet in their own image, and not as a way to protect users from being unfairly beat down by those same interests randomly?

spot 16y ago
It certainly makes sense that Autosuggest shouldn't pop up any "NSFW" results. There's a difference between suggestion and answering. That explains why the sex/curse words are dropped. But what about the racist results? That's just as verboten in the office. And talk of torrents doesn't qualify by this standard.
- Natsu 16y ago
  Until we can build a computer that understands English (not to mention every other language they offer autocomplete in) or convince everyone to stop searching for such things, I don't think it's possible for Google to filter out all the naughty/bad/copyright infringing suggestions. My take on it is that they're doing their best to remove suggestions that are likely to cause them trouble, particularly the trouble they might be in if someone were to make a claim against them for inducing copyright infringement. I wonder if they'd get any mileage out of changing the name? But I'm not sure if they could find something to make it clear that Google is saying that these searches are popular, not that these searches are endorsed by Google.
- saurik 16y ago
  I actually think a lot of offices might care about misuse of company bandwidth, and the racists searches in the article require an understanding of English (which the Internet filter you will find installed in an IT department does not possess) to determine are racist.
- hugh3 16y ago
  But what about the racist results? That's just as verboten in the office. An experiment: try typing "nig" in the google search box. I think the results are somewhat localised, but I get "Nigella Lawson", "Night Noodle Markets" and "Nightmare on Elm Street". But type another "G" and autosuggest vanishes completely. And talk of torrents doesn't qualify by this standard. No, but it does count as enticing people towards criminal activity, which would quite arguably be against Google's "Don't Be Evil" policy. Another thing I couldn't get any autosuggest results for: "How to commit su..."
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

yanw 16y ago

People need to be more carful with the terminology, not every editorial exercise is 'censorship'. Google isn't hosting the content nor have they stopped indexing and linking to it. As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results, also it might be part of Google's negations with record companies and film studios to get their content.

JeanPierre 16y ago
As for the 'torrent' thing, IP lawyers might be arguing that Google is helping users commit infringement via Autocomplete specifically with how instant displays results The same argument is used against guns and dangerous knives as well, as they help users commit murders. The arguments against banning of guns is that "it is not the gun that kills, it is the person" and "if they really wanted to kill, they would have found another way". (Whether these arguments are good or not is another debate...) I have not really done that much research on the gun debate, but couldn't those arguments be applied to this case as well?
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  If you want to do some research into the gun debate, a good place to start is the movie "Bowling for Columbine". Some people will think of it as an extreme left-wing-nutjob propaganda piece, but my recollection of the movie is not that it hammers you with a conclusion, but that it presents a bunch of different scenarios that are all 'odd' in their own way. Accusing BfC of being a propaganda piece is like calling Borat a propaganda piece, stylistically they are quite similar. Anyway, one of the things that really struck me about that movie was the difference in gun related deaths (per head of population) in Canada and the U.S. Basically both countries have buttloads of guns and the justification in both is that they are for 'hunting'. I don't remember the exact figures, but the deaths per 1000 from guns was enormously much higher in the U.S. than in Canada. Moore doesn't give an answer to that dilemma per se, but he does throw it out there for people to think about and make up their own minds. Frankly, if that is propaganda, I think the U.S. and the internet in general need a lot more of it. ----- As for the guns debate, you could make an analogy to poison, where you say that poisons are sold at the supermarket, so why not sell guns at the supermarket too? I guess the reply would be that the poisons that are sold invariably have some other practical use, e.g. cleaning products. Whereas guns are pretty much designed with the express and only purpose of killing stuff. Then the gun-nut will reply "oh, there's lots of other uses for a gun, like sport (target practice), hunting and personal defense as a deterrent". The problem isn't that those things are wrong, the problem is that - unlike pretty much every other country in the world with guns - people in the U.S. don't seem to stop at deterrent, they are much more likely to use the 'personal defense' guns to try to kill someone else. Why is that? What is it about the U.S. that as soon as they get a gun in their hand they want to go 'pop a cap in yo ass'? And why doesn't that happen in Canada? Some of the scenarios I remember from the movie that were presented: The bank that gives you a shotgun when you open an account The mall store(?) that was selling ammo in massive aisles The five year old that took a handgun to school and shot one of his class-mates dead The Columbine massacre The gun lobby holding a big pro-guns rally in Columbine immediately after the massacre Moore harassing Charlton Heston (figurehead of the gun lobby) (this one was most like a scene from Borat - it was an uncomfortable 'excuse me while I invade your personal' thing and went on for ages)

xiaoma 16y ago

"old people need" auto completes with "to die" Sadly, this really does reflect on us, the vast number of English speaking google users. Trying to remove all offensive reflections of the garbage people type in is impossible though. It's not really bounded.

Daniel14 16y ago

-1 to this article. Google isn't blocking anything. No censorship, they're just not helping you get to presumably illegal sites anymore. Oooh, they're forcing you to press enter to get to hacked content! EVAAL! Seriously..

trotsky 16y ago

I'm surprised the atlantic fell for this story.

zmmmmm 16y ago

Why is this being referred to so constantly as censorship? Censorship is preventing someone else from speaking. Suggested keywords are Google's speech to us. Unlike search index content, Google is responsible for their contents and will beheld accountable when they are inappropriate. The only party being censored by filtering keywords is Google. If you really, really, want to call this censorship then you have to also apply a "safe-harbor" type principle to it where you remove responsibility from Google for what the suggestions contain. I don't think anybody suggests that would be a good idea. And I bet the same crowd bleating censorship would be up in arms about finding inappropriate terms suggested if Google didn't do this.

smokeyj 16y ago
> Censorship is preventing someone else from speaking. One could argue the recording lobbies are preventing Google from "speaking", by means of legal intimidation. Legal censorship is still censorship. Preventing someone else from speaking is a form of censorship, but censorship includes all means of suppressing communication.
j_baker 16y ago
On the other hand, the idea of search engine companies blocking autocomplete keywords is a new concept that isn't taken into account by existing definitions of censorship. Regardless of how you define censorship, the core concept is that censorship is blocking content that is deemed inappropriate. Google is essentially blocking content that is deemed inappropriate under some standard, so therefore it is censorship. English is a constantly evolving language. Words' definitions aren't set in stone once they're entered into the dictionary.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Google is essentially blocking content that is deemed inappropriate under some standard, so therefore it is censorship. A fun exercise: what else would count as censorship under this rather expanded definition? For instance, if I run a bookstore then am I "censoring" every book I don't carry?

maeon3 16y ago

We better shutdown and close all the libraries and bookstores too. The page-to-eye data transfer protocols are evil, we need to crack down on this kind of piracy.

anonymoushn 16y ago

This has happened for a long time for other strings. If you begin typing "why are musl" "limey" or "nigg" then google will stop autocompleting. Interestingly, if you begin typing "why are chris" "why are jew" or "wop" then it will continue autocompleting.