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Google's Algorithm Displays Racist Results Because the Society Is Racist (fusion.net)
On June 6, Kabir Alli, an 18-year old in Virginia, posted a brief video of himself running a couple of quick Google image searches. First he searched for "three black teenagers" and was met with several rows of decontextualized mugshots. Then he searched for "three white teenagers" and was served up stock photos of relaxed teens hanging out in front of various plain white backgrounds. The tweet has stirred controversy, with many people accusing Google of being racist. But is that the case? Alli says that while it's Google's fault in some sense as they should have better control over the things people see, he also believes that at the end of the day, what Google shows us is a reflection of what people think. A Google spokesperson had similar things to say. Our image search results are a reflection of content from across the web, including the frequency with which types of images appear and the way they're described online. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what image search results appear for a given query. These results don't reflect Google's own opinions or beliefs -- as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.
If you just search for "three teenagers" that's fine. When you start mentioning the race in the search term, YOU are the racist.
captcha "re-arrest". seriously wtf?
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This explanation sounds plausible, but if you unpack it, it assumes that google's algorithms are a perfect reflection of society. I'm pretty confident that is not true, if for no other reason than it would require perfect knowledge of society in order to pull off.
The question then becomes how much do google's algorithms distort society, and the answer to that is going to vary on a case by case basis.
And black males are disproportionately represented in gangs and other criminal statistics. Notice how most of those mugshots are of black men, and pictures of women are for the most part not mugshots.
This just in: Search engine displays realities of life, not sugar-coated version of what we want. See other news and weather at 11.
If it's reflective of the content being indexed, the only way to "correct this bias" is to add bias.
You can't keep arguing for equality while at the same time highlighting differences.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Sadly truth is only a defense for fact based discussions. Race based discussions are usually anything but fact based. Much of political correctness is not talking about the elephant in the room. For white people the only winning move is not to play, or to talk in this case.
Giving accurate results should always be the priority. Biasing data just robs people/society of an accurate self analysis.
"it's Google's fault in some sense as they should have better control over the things people see"
No. Now fuck off. Oh shit, I guess that makes me a racist I suppose.
Alli says that while it's Google's fault in some sense as they should have better control over the things people see...
In so far as Google controlling how information is displayed, I agree. Google, however, should not control which information is displayed. There is little difference between hiding mugshot photos and hiding photos of tanks in Tienanmen Square; both represent significant social issued we should not hide from view lest they be allowed to continue behind the shadows.
That is to say, it is Google's job to display exactly the information they are displaying: the potentially offensive images and their sources. It, then, becomes our job as a moral society to take those sources to task if they are in the wrong. Google hiding this information would, in reality, protect the people actually perpetrating the offenses.
Sure, you might not have to see it anymore, but that doesn't mean it's gone away. Making it go away is our job; showing it to us so we know we haven't met with success yet is Google's.
The question, then, becomes whether or not what Google depicts is an accurate representation of reality; we already know it's an accurate representation of the sources. If it is an accurate representation of reality, it is on us to change that reality; if it is not, it is on us to convince the sources to change to match reality.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It is all Google's fault that most black teenagers have criminal records, while most white teenagers spend their time hanging out around white backdrops. Lets not even think about putting the blame on those poor black children. They not only face the problem of poverty, but also the problem of childhood obesity caused by all that food stamp money. I blame Google. They should be returning search results based on how we would like the world to be, not how it is.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Some groups will do anything to avoid accurate self analysis
So you think that instead of reporting on the world as it is Google should, in their infinite wisdom, decide what the world should look like and then return search results with that in mind?
Moreover, how do you envision Google actually implementing your regime of censorship? Currently the lifetime risk of going to prison for a black US male is about 30%. By age 18, 30% of black men have been arrested. The typical white and black teenager do not have the same life experiences. So how are Google's algorithms supposed to decide when displaying the inequalities of our society is the right thing to do, and when doing so would be too upsetting to the user?
+1
I was reading through before posting and FINALLY someone said the correct answer.
Google's systems are just returning matches from their index. Google isn't creating the content they are indexing. They are not making decisions about society, what you might want to see, or whatever value people want to try and slap on it. CHANGING that behavior is what would introduce bias.
And like it or not, there appears to be far more content on the web to index that has "black teenager" equated with mugshots than "white teenager". And that shouldn't be surprising ot anyone because facts show that to be true in reality, too... not just some bias of the web. We can try to argue WHY this is so, but that doesn't change that it is fact and Google is doing nothing wrong.
I couldn't find stats for children, but Wikipedia says 4.7% of black adults in the US are incarcerated. That's against a backdrop of a country with an insane incarceration rate, but still...
So there is just no way that returning multiple pictures of arrested children is in any way representative of reality.
It's nonsense like this that perpetuates untrue stereotypes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
a statistical fact that black males ages 14-17 are more than 10 times more likely to end up in prison for the same drug "crimes" than white teens committing the same offense. This is due to the *fact* that the color of their skin makes them more likely to get pulled over, then searched, then indicted, and then convicted.
Read this: https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim...
They wouldn't and he's just trolling. Black-on-black violence isn't the fault of white people not thanking black baristas, even if that actually happened in reality.
This is just the typical "white guilt" viewpoint: everything is the fault of the all-powerful whitey. If you buy your froofy coffee drink in the wrong way, minority murder rates will start rising, because those poor savages don't have any self-determination of their own.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.