🐱 Google alters algorithm to remove Holocaust denial search results

http://indianexpress.com/article/te...move-holocaust-denial-search-results-4446974/

Google has changed its algorithm to completely remove Holocaust denial results for the query ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’. Google Search, which earlier showed link to a Stormfront’s article on 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen, has removed that result and other similar Holocaust denial sites. Stormfront is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist website. Digital Trends quoted a spokesperson from Google, who said, “Judging which pages on the web best answer a query is a challenging problem and we don’t always get it right.”
Google’s u-turn comes after it had earlier said it won’t be removing the result. In an earlier comment to Fortune magazine, Google has said it does “not remove content from search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines.” But now it looks like Google is cracking down on this sort of content, which spreads false information.

Google has altered its search results in the past as well. The search giant removed phrases like ‘are jews evil’, ‘are muslims bad’ and ‘are women evil’ from the autocomplete feature in the search box after a Guardian report had highlighted these. However search results from websites around topics like these still continue to figure in Google search results. Many of these are from white-supremacist websites, which spew racial, religious hatred against minority communities, women.

In fact as the Gizmodo reports points out if you search on phrases like ‘are jews evil’ etc, results from Stormfront still appear in the first page. A query on ‘Are Muslims evil’ also include anti-Muslim articles in the first page of results itself.

However, a Google spokesperson in a statement to Gizmodo said the company will continue to make changes to its algorithm over time to ‘tackle such challenges’. Whether this means that in future misleading websites with false information get removed altogether from results remains to be seen.

 

[Pac]

You know, this one of those cases where the phrase "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" fits perfectly. For as much idiocy and shitty business practices Google has implemented in recent times, this is one shitty business practice I don't have a problem with. Fuck Holocaust deniers. But yeah, Google needs a competitor more than ever; a decent/sizable competitor. Bing doesn't cut it, and duck duck go is still an obscure search engine.

 

[Joan Nyan]

why would google pander to the few loons that are crazy enough to believe it?

They're not even pandering to them, they're pandering against them by censoring them.

 

[r00]

They're not even pandering to them, they're pandering against them by censoring them.

youre right, pandering was the wrong word, but i see this as google saying "a tiny percentage of the population cant handle this information so lets expunge it from history on their behalf.". fuck that. whatever their intentions, this is the beginning of a slippery slope towards a weird orwellian future where things have to be deemed acceptable to simply even exist. Who knows what else they are going to delete in the future, and on what grounds.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Why dont they start censoring sites about religion, seeing as holocaust denial is about as grounded in reality as believing any of the shit that happened in the bible? Fuck this nonsense.

Precisely, which is why I think flagging something as questionable is an acceptable medium between censorship and letting malevolent actors run rampant.

Who the fuck are you, or anyone else, to decide who are malevolent actors and whether they can run rampant?

Sure that shit is easy to say when it's your side who is in control of these things but they won't always be and if it was a bunch of socially conservatives making those decisions you'd be shitting bricks

 

[Rihanna Ikari]

If you don't want it on the first page of Google, stop fucking clicking on it.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Google! What are you doing? You're backing the Holocaust Denialists!

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Man, Jews think of everything.

 

[The 25th Cyberman]

Holocaust Denial is exceptional since its literally the most documented event of all time but this is exceptional and clearly a trial run for censoring more and more shit, next it's gonna be climate change "denial" and they are gonna push harder and harder to make sure all wrongthinks and places like this are disappeared.

i agree with you, but is climate change denialism the best example to use? it's about on the same level as holocaust denail at this point, only more people believe it.

 

[nad7155]

It's rigged I'm telling ya.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

i agree with you, but is climate change denialism the best example to use? it's about on the same level as holocaust denail at this point, only more people believe it.

Lol at thinking it's real unironically

 

[QI 541]

So uhh I googled "the holocaust didn't happen" and got stormfront "10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen" on the front page???

 

[AnOminous]

https://www.bing.com/

Isn't that the only other real option? AOL and Yahoo search are both "powered by Bing" so they're not really alternatives.

They're far less trustworthy and worse, compare search results any day. Their results are garbage and filled top to bottom with useless spam.

You know, this one of those cases where the phrase "Even a broken clock is right twice a day" fits perfectly. For as much idiocy and shitty business practices Google has implemented in recent times, this is one shitty business practice I don't have a problem with. Fuck Holocaust deniers. But yeah, Google needs a competitor more than ever; a decent/sizable competitor. Bing doesn't cut it, and duck duck go is still an obscure search engine.

DuckDuckGo is almost by design always going to be a niche search engine, not a serious competitor to Google's market share.

 

[Conrix]

youre right, pandering was the wrong word, but i see this as google saying "a tiny percentage of the population cant handle this information so lets expunge it from history on their behalf.". fuck that. whatever their intentions, this is the beginning of a slippery slope towards a weird orwellian future where things have to be deemed acceptable to simply even exist. Who knows what else they are going to delete in the future, and on what grounds.

At least it'll be a handy way to discriminate against autistic people since autistic people can't make anything that's deemed acceptable by our Talmudic overlords.

 

[Cuck Norris]

At least it'll be a handy way to discriminate against autistic people since autistic people can't make anything that's deemed acceptable by our Talmudic overlords.

That's understandable since they make shit like this:

 

[vertexwindi]

First they came for the Holocaust deniers, and I did not speak out - because I'm not a Holocaust denier.

 

[melty]

Maybe they'll remove results for "do vaccines cause autism" next?

 

[AnOminous]

Google didn't really alter their algorithm.

They created an EXCEPTION to it to censor a specific viewpoint. An algorithm can't do that automatically, so they actually had to tailor something specifically to the disfavored content and censor it specifically.

They BROKE their algorithm.

 

[CWCchange]

Next, other forms of "fake news" and badthought.

Google has never needed a competitor as a search engine more than now.

MFW up-and-coming Chinese search engines censor and track you less than Google.

 

[DuskEngine]

See no evil

Hear no evil

Speak no evil

Don't be evil

 

[The Lawgiver]

Great job you guys, now how about you fix image search so it doesn't fucking show borderline illegal porn when you search certain mundane terms in safe search?
Oh wait...
Oh, oh no.