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Latest Target In War On Drugs: Google Autocomplete
netbuzz writes "The National Association of Attorneys General met in Boston this week and one panel focused on the 'safe harbor' provision of 1996 Communications Decency Act. Within that broader discussion, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood cited the autocomplete feature in Google search as evidence the company has more control over content than it contends. 'We know they manipulate the autocomplete feature,' Hood said, with his point being that there should be more such manipulation, not less. His primary example: a search on 'prescription drugs online' presents an autocomplete suggestion of 'prescription drugs online without a prescription.'"
Attorneys are ... :)
...thus began this Anon's War on War
And so is anyone who accepts the proffered autocomplete options without thinking about what he wants to search for.
On the other hand, here's an opportunity for GoogleClippy. "It looks like you're searching for illegal drugs online. How can I help you with that?"
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The new front in the war on drugs: minor inconvenience. Take that, drugs!
A government official is looking for a moral crusade to fill his time and justify his paycheck. Mississippi Jim, on patrol!
Why try to stop people from searching for something they are searching for anyway? The algorithm probably just checks to see what common queries are completed using the text so far. How much time and money is going to be spent on something that isn't going to do anything but annoy Google users and developers? IANAL, but I thought ordering drugs online is legal in the US as long as it is not a controlled substance?
. . . it auto-completes with "The National Association of Attorneys General" . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If a lot of people that started a search with "prescription drugs online" were searching for "prescription drugs online unicorns riding gorillas wearing purple napkin trampoline" then that is what autocomplete would suggest. Bloody hell, it's not like someone at Google is manually creating "suggestions" for people...
http://youtu.be/blB_X38YSxQ
Well, I was going to invite you to my annual "worldwide slashdotter tug of war" competition, but now I'm not sure I'll even host it again this year.
type "Is Jim Hood" and the second autocomplete result is:
still in jail
Pirate Pharmacist: Get all your illicit information on drugs that you could also get from a library or med school.
I'm sorry but your latest tactic is Blatant censorship
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
When you do something small and nice for a group of assholes, be it the government or the RIAA or whomever, then you set the expectation for that as the bare minimum across the board. There's no gratitude, they'll only say that you aren't doing enough. The second they started censoring autocomplete, it was an inevitability that crap like this would happen.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Drugs will fuck up your life kid, so if we ever catch you using, buying and selling them we'll kidnap you and throw you in a cage and fuck up you and your family's lives.
Typical politics.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Let's end it along with the prescription system. Much like prohibition, the war on drugs only empowers cartels and drug companies. Not that there's really a difference between the two groups.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
other nefarious and dastardly plots these brave attorneys have uncovered:
1. an image search for 'boobies' using google image search can and will display, actual breasts.
2. Google translate can and will translate nearly a dozen highly offensive english words into any of more than 20 different languages.
3. a youtube search for 'collateral murder' will produce a video of american soldiers murdering journalists in iraq.
4. Google searches for the phrases "edward snowden" or "Julian Assange" provides shockingly inappropriate, unbiased information pertaining to united states foreign and domestic policy.
5. despite dire and repeated warnings by their trustworthy IT staff, google will in fact let you google the word 'google' without any safeguard for the catastrophic consequences that ensue.
6. despite providing readily available search results for filthy pill junkies, google search raises the ire of attorneys around the globe as it fails to provide a reliable and affordable source of high quality pure columbian cocaine for todays savvy litigators and high powered firms.
Good people go to bed earlier.
but now I'm not sure I'll even host it again this year.
After that guy showed up last year with his "tug-of-war robot overlord", there's really not much point to it. I mean, we could go for a bigger slab of concrete with a bigger nuclear-powered winch, but after a while it's just more work than fun.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
As soon as they deciding to do all kinds of manipulation they left themselves open to this kind of thing, and it seems like they pretty much have to go along with it, don't they? I mean, do they really want to make the case that showing someone an offensive word is worse than letting people see dangerous and questionably legal activities?
How much protection do Google users need from the horrors of the raw unfiltered internet? Gradually this will reduce the effectiveness of their search engine.
I have always suspected that Google autocomplete was on drugs.
Have gnu, will travel.
It auto-completes with "gullible"...
I got as far as "Mississippi Attorney General" and stopped reading, because I knew what followed would simultaneously knock points off my IQ and make me weep for the lost potential of a once-sentient species.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Also, somebody teach this idiot how incredibly difficult it is to adjust data retrieval algorithms is*, especially on Google's scale.
Actually, the algorithms adjust themselves, in real time, all the time, based on trending searches.
That is why they are so successful. They are crowd sourced.
Everyone thinks they are so unique and individual and different from everybody else. They are totally shocked to find out they have exactly the same thought patterns as a large percentage of other people. I often see something on TV, reach for my tablet and google a couple words, only to have auto complete suggest almost exactly the next few words I was going to enter. 60 million other viewers saw the same thing, and decided to do the same search, and at least half are faster than I am. Its worked this way forever, and without it I'd still be clueless about who Amanda Witherspoon is.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Also, somebody teach this idiot how incredibly difficult it is to adjust data retrieval algorithms is*, especially on Google's scale.
Actually, the algorithms adjust themselves, in real time, all the time, based on trending searches.
In addition, the algorithm is personalized based on your previous searches (although you can turn this off).
So, an attorney general who accepted the auto-complete for "prescription drugs online without a prescription" would be more likely to see that as the first recommendation when subsequently typing "prescription drugs online" into the Google search box.
he reason doctors prescribe antibiotics even if the person has a viral illness is because of secondary or opportunistic infections.
It's *also* because people want the doctor to do something to make them feel better. I've heard multiple doctors admit that they do stuff with no sound medical basis because it makes the patients feel like they're doing something useful.
You know what I do if what I'm searching for doesn't autopop up while I'm typing? I finish typing. I don't give up and say "fuck it, I guess what I want isn't out there" until I type it in and get no results.
I really hope the youth of today aren't so spoiled that they give up searching if what they're searching for isn't in the autocomplete buffer.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Heh, that really is a Google auto-complete.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.