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Microsoft Tackles 'Horrifying' Bing Search Results (bbc.com)
Microsoft has "taken action" to change its Bing search engine after it was found to give "horrifying" results for some terms. From a report: Journalist Chris Hoffman discovered Bing suggested racist topics when he looked up words such as "Jews", "Muslims" and "black people". Bing also ranked widely debunked conspiracy theories among the top suggestions for other words. Mr Hoffman said Microsoft had to do better at moderating its search system. In his investigation, Mr Hoffman looked up racially-themed terms and found that the majority of suggestions for further searches that accompanied results pointed people to racist sites or images. Racist memes and images were also returned for many of the words he tried. "We all know this garbage exists on the web, but Bing shouldn't be leading people to it with their search suggestions," wrote Mr Hoffman. It is believed that the suggestions for further searches connected to these terms have emerged from a combination of user activity and concerted action by far-right groups to skew responses. [...] Jeff Jones, a senior director at Microsoft, said: "We take matters of offensive content very seriously and continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent such content from appearing as a suggested search. As soon as we become aware of an issue, we take action to address it."
I'd appreciate a search engine that gives me exactly what I search for. I can filter things myself and get better at searching and get what I'm looking for that way.
If those pages are the type people are reading most often for those given search terms then Bing is doing its job. I don't expect morality to be a weighting factor for a query (horrible as that may be).
Why is it pathetic that civilized people would find it horrific that fraud and corruption are promoted? It is the job of the civilized to be horrified by cthuloid barbarism.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'd appreciate a search engine that gives me exactly what I search for.
No you wouldn't. You want something that will return the information you are seeking. That is often not going to be what you actually searched for. Furthermore that isn't a valid justification for a search engine returning the sorts of "horrifying" results Bing is evidently prone to in places where they should not reasonably be expected.
I can filter things myself and get better at searching and get what I'm looking for that way.
Even if true that doesn't mean that is the best way to do it and it also doesn't mean other people want to search that way. I sure as hell value a search engine that isn't rock dumb and that can help me get to the information I'm seeking. If I want to seek out some bogus conspiracy theories or racists propaganda there probably should be some extra steps involved in getting to that.
I can see "deprioritize" yes.
But if it comes to full removal filtering from the complete long-list of search results, that seems like a dangerous precedent.
It may be targeting universally objectionable racist stuff now, but it is a slippery slope to make MS, Google, and Facebook the moral police.
What if they start filtering out the postings of supporters of "trade enemy" countries. as being flamebait. Or start filtering out unpopular opinions phrased with strong language. This starts to sound exactly like the great totalitarian firewall of China.
A better solution might be search-user tweakable prioritization / filter settings, with "tame" default settings.
That way, a journalist researching, or a historian documenting, racist crap on the internet could find what they're looking for.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The question here is whether it is a search engine's task to educate and censor or not. And it has no good answer. If you say no, you get all the horrible ignorance, arrogance, racism, x-ism, etc. but you also get a true picture of reality in the net. If you say yes, you get a "morality" that is dictated by those with power, which may well be worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Such as how the gay community managed to create a new definition that shows up first or second in response to their dislike of Rick Santorum?
Walled gardens need to identify themselves as such. Also, there needs to bea choice - I don't have a problem with a (self-declared) censoring search engine, if I have an alternative, any more than I object to searches having a "safe search" mode as long as I can turn it off.
I'm worried about the effect this will have on DDG to the extent it still fronts Bing, however.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Which is why the database that the swedish government seized, which shows that 80% of the crimes were being committed by 'migrants' or whatever term you europeans want to label illegals as. Sorry, you can try painting this bullshit whatever way you want. In the UK, you've got all those child rape gangs and those are being committed by people who've migrated. In Canada, we just had our first bust in BC of a child rape/grooming gang...again migrants.
A girl by the name of Mirassa Shen was murdered in BC...by a 'migrant' who'd been in the country mere months. They charged him with 1st degree murder. Now here's the interesting part, in Canada there are two ways to get a 1st degree murder charge: Premeditation is the first key element here, meaning they had to plan, know, stalk, and then execute their plan. The other way is by rape and murder. Police have already stated that there was no premeditation, that neither person knew each other. So let's finish up, because I'll keep it in Canada. There are now hotels and motels being used as "migrant shelters" vandalism, theft, assault 1, robbery 1&2, sexual assault(1 - not rape), sexual assault(2 - rape) are clustered around these places. They're not shitholes in the cities, these places are in the downtown core in many cases.
But by all means, keep pretending that importing people who are culturally non-compatible, believe that they can "take" whatever they want, that women are worth less then a man. Are doing great things for society...
Om, nomnomnom...