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.

Comments

Re:Or it could be because there's a "thug culture"

[PopeRatzo]

And black males are disproportionately represented in gangs and other criminal statistics.

And white males are disproportionately represented in neo-Nazi and serial killer groups.

Re:Well

[Penguinisto]

Dunno about him, but considering that I live in rural Oregon, there's not a whole hell of a lot that I could do, at least locally; seems to be a shortage of non-white-folks out here.

There's help that could be done in in Portland, but the progressive crowd is too busy gentrifying the place - which in turn is driving black folk out of that town faster than redlining ever could. Seriously - something that generations of bigots had tried and failed to do, the Latte Leftist crowd will get done in less than 10 years.

But hey - here's an idea... how about we work to change the culture that black youth are bombarded with on a daily basis? You know, get rid of the music that oh-so-happily promotes misogyny, violence, and worse towards fellow blacks and especially black women? Of course we could also change that whole single-parenting-is-so-awesome-so-abandon-that-bitch-quick paradigm that was a sad byproduct of the '60s sexual revolution. Then we could promote building character, work skills, and entrepreneurialship, instead of simply doling out benefits like the government were some paternalistic entity that thinks poor black folk are somehow incapable of improving their lot on their own...

Everybody wants to make excuses, but no one wants to stand up and do the actual work - mostly because the work that needs done tends to also refute the whole 'progressive' ideology.