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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).
reason I sometimes use Bing. Thanks for killing the one advantage Bing had.
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.
Search engines aren't supposed to return what is the most popular, but what is the most useful. Nobody ever needs to be told what they already know, only what they need to also know.
When you have a positive feedback loop, it's always good to stop the cycle before things get destroyed.
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)
It is rather amusing to watch this thing that we here at /. 20 years ago assumed would usher in a new era of transnational singularity-driven technocracy. .. ...
Yet it turns out fuuucking /pol/ is always right. fuck. I never wanted to end up knowing all this shit.
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?
I did a Bing search none of those things were on any of the 5 pages I scrolled. The first result was a linux.com 'Windows to Linux Mogration Guide.' So basically, your post is complete and total bullshit.
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.
Swedish media have been caught making the decision not to report on events regarding muslim immigrants because those reports would be beneficial for the (politically) unpopular part Sverigedemokraterna. This wasn't about racist memes - it was about choosing not to report factual truth about things that actually happened because it was not politically correct to do so.
Is that what you want the internet to become? In that case, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
a true picture of reality in the net.
I think "reality in the net" is what people are trying to avoid in favor of "reality in the real world", because the two are often not the same. Every uninformed opinion posted online is not somehow equivalent to truth of what actually happens in the world. The "vaccine debate" or climate change are perfect examples, where there are a very small number of vocal opinions which somehow get amplified and equated with the much larger number of fact-based studies. You end up with a picture that these issues are hotly debated when they're really not, they're really a lot more settled than the online discussion would lead someone to believe.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If I search for that phrase on Bing, the very first item at the top is from Wikihow on how to move from Windows to Linux in 8 steps (with pictures!). They even embed part of the list right in the first result. Step 1 is choose a distro. Step 2 is try the "live CD" versions first. Step 3 is about picking the correct applications to use. Step 4 is about backing up your data (maybe the steps aren't in the right order, but whatever). Etc.
The second result is the Windows To Linux Migration Guide from linux.com. The fourth result is 11 reasons why you should migrate from Windows to Linux. The next result is titled "Migrating to Linux From Windows Makes for Good Business".
I don't see a single anti-Linux result on the first page. So, if that list of what you posted is actually the results you see, then that says a lot more about your previous searches than anything about Bing. I don't use Bing at all, so I should have no history there.
If that list you posted is some example you just made up, then you're perfectly illustrating the problem that the article is about - uninformed crap posted online (and modded up!) masquerading as actual information which should not be on the top of the list.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
And how do you propose to do that? Force all people to post their opinions and then add a "reality" or "truth" score? The only thing a search engine can give you truthfully is the reality on the net, nothing else. Everything else will be some ones or some parties interpretation of how the world is or should be and it will be skewed.
That said, I do see your point and it would be nice to have a way to represent full truth in a search engine, but I am pretty sure it cannot be done and any attempt to do so will likely be worse than the problem it addresses.
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.
The problem is that reality is very subjective.
It's not though. People are subjective, reality is not. When light from the sun reflects off a given object, that light has a certain wavelength. The fact that different people might interpret that light differently does not change the objective fact that the wavelength is measurable and constant. The wavelength of that light is an objective fact even if different eyes interpret the same wavelength as different colors.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to objectively determine the truth of most things and anyone who says otherwise is basic.
Such a blanket statement is very basic. Not everything is one extreme or another.
Now let's try to apply this to the topic at hand. If someone searches for "jews" on a search engine, would it be "more correct" to present them with a bunch of conspiracy theories about Jews, or would it be "more correct" to present them with a history of the Jewish people as we know it?
That answer does not require a debate on the nature of objective truth.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Actually it's because they weren't immigrants, they were the children of immigrants, some third generation, born in Sweden. Unless their religion was a particular factor in their crime is irrelevant, same as when Christians and atheists commit random crimes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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...
Again, most of the child rapists in the UK were second or third generation, i.e. born in Britain and British citizens. The fact that they were mostly Asian and Muslim has been discussed on major TV programmes extensively, and in newspapers and in Parliament and at the inquest into what happened.
Uh...the inquest stated that most of the people were immigrants who'd been in the UK for a period greater then 1 year. The average time they'd been in the country was 4 years. That doesn't make them 1st generation. And being born in another country and immigrating with your parents doesn't make you 1st generation either.
What upsets people is that these discussions don't consider the fake news reports, so they think things are being covered up.
So what's "fake news" about it happening over and over again, the police, councils, and child protection services covering it up. And then when there's an inquiry into it, the inquiry comes back stating that they didn't investigate because they were afraid of being labeled racist. Then a year later, the same shit is still going on...the police aren't investigating, the councils are covering it up, and child protection services are looking the other way. That's the very definition of "covering it up." And then there was the "trojan horse scandal" and...well what do you know, it happened in other cities too and the response was the same. And the police, and councils and education boards ALSO simply ignored it and yet it's still happening.
Man it's like there's systemic failures in the UK, and nobody wants to do anything for fear of being labeled racist.
Om, nomnomnom...