Is Google Search intentionally contributing to racism or are their algorithms doing so? And to what can this lead?

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Orwar said:

Anyway. Drink milk. It's good for you.

Probably not all things considered 😟

[Harley Linden]

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[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/25/2021 at 12:56 PM, Bold Burner said:

Dear readers... 

 

The question is simple.. the answer most likely not. 

Why did I come up with this question? 

When I searched for the keywords 'gay' 'kissing' 'gif' I suddenly noticed something. 

The image results were only white caucasian males kissing and an occasional caucasian lesbian kiss.

I did it again without the word 'gay' and I still got caucasian results. 

One could think it's algorithms but in my case I would like to think that is unlikely.
And also I don't know if google still remembers the algorithms created before and if they are still at work after clearing my browser cache. 

I searched for kissing people gifs before of all skin colour and  MM/MF/FF and so forth.
When I did that, specific keywords were used.
So one can then expect to find a mixed result when using basic keywords? Am I wrong to assume this.

So...
is Google Search intentionally contributing to racism or are their algorithms doing so? 

If their algorithms are doing so .. are we then psychologically influenced by our own searches and with it have our beliefs confirmed, justified and/or fundamentally fed?
Or what does this do in general to our (self)beliefs?
Or what what does it to racism..but even on a wider scale to accepting the 'unknown' (if you only see the same, something new is a potential threat, depending on your belief system)?

And...
to what can this lead? 

I quickly wrote this down to not forget (I can be chaotic.. 😛 ) 

I love to hear your thoughts/knowledge about this. 

Kind regards,  

Edit: grammar mistakes (might be even more 😒)

You may know that everyone's Google is supposedly different, that those algorithms track you and feed you what you already want, which creates a silo. It's why going to Bing occasionally or logging on at least with another Google account can be useful.

Search on Judaism and Jews and you'll see how Google contributes to antisemitism. Search on Russia and see how Google, who has zillions of cheap programmers in and from Russia, contributes to Putin's power. Search on my RL name and understand why I have been harassed for years, and even my Wikipedia is a form of harassment. Etc. Google is human nature, and it is not perfectable.

Entire books have been written on this but by people who only have political agendas of their own for the most part. I think the best thing to try to break out of the institutionalized racism is to deal with real people in real time and not rely on social media.

 

[FreeToSL]

Oddly, what jumped at me when I saw the different serches shown in this thread, was how the less diverse results show mostly pictures produced on photoshoots or movie stills, while the more diverse search results show a lot of amateur/personal pictures.

The fact that media has a racist bias is and has always been true, but I think that if you filter out "artificial"* pictures, the result is more diverse in general.

 

* artificial as in, it was produced for a brand or product.

[Caroline Takeda]

Quote

Is Google Search intentionally contributing to racism or are their algorithms doing so?

No, and no.

You see, there is a simple answer.

Actually I have been working for Google. I can tell you, they have a very strict anti-racism policy. It is not tolerated in any shape or form. It is also big part of the "compliance course"(including a test) you have to assist as part of the onboarding process.

Google is using an AI called "Rankbrain" (<<Google that). In a nutshell: This software analyses what is the intent behind a search query. It takes in account the users context (country, mobil, language etc.) but foremost OTHER users interaction with the search results page, who had a similar context as you and used the same or a very similar search query.

The longer the query the more exact it becomes.

Personalized search is something totally different.