Human
Google Denies Charges Saying It Favors Hillary Clinton, Connects Trump's Name with Hitler Again
Johnson D
First Posted: Jun 13, 2016 06:10 AM EDT
Google denied allegations that they are politically biased in its search algorithm after a video showed the search giant allegedly distorting display results for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The allegations came from SourceFed's video editor Spencer Reed which showed the disparities they found in Google's autocomplete function. The autocomplete function will start to guess your search query as you type. According to mashable.com, this is something that is also done by Bing and Yahoo. However, Reed and Lieberman are convinced that Google does it differently in a way that Clinton and her presidential aspirations are protected.
The video showed how when the user started typing in "Hillary Clinton cri" Google did not complete it as "Hillary Clinton Criminal Investigation." When it was tried out using Bing, which also uses autocomplete, "crimes" and "criminal investigation" appeared. Another thing they found controversial was when a search of "Donald Trump ra" does fill in with "racist" on Google, as well as Bing.
"The intention is clear: Google is burying potential searches for terms that could have hurt Hillary Clinton in the primary elections over the past several months," Lieberman said in the video.
A Google spokesperson released a statement saying, "Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person's name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms."
SourceFed seemed to be confusing actual search results with these recommendations, which are essentially Google's automated guesswork.
"Autocomplete predictions aren't search results and don't limit what you can search for," Google's VP of product management for search, Tamar Yehoshua, writes in a blog post Friday. "You can still perform whatever search you want to, and of course, regardless of what you search for, we always strive to deliver the most relevant results from across the web."
Republican candidate Donald Trump commented about the video allegations, saying it is a "disgrace" if Google would manipulate its searches. "Very, very dishonest," Trump said in a statement to USA Today. "They should let it float and allow people to see how crooked she really is."
On Friday, Trump made headlines when Google's search function connected his name and Hitler. Typing "When was Hitler born" on the search engine resulted to Trump's face showing alongside Hitler's wife, Eva Braun, and Charlie Chaplin, who famously humiliated the Nazi leader in his 1940 movie "The Great Dictator."
The unexpected search result had caught the attention of millions of people using the search engine and started a debate on Reddit. The controversy spread like wild fire across the internet. Google told FoxNews.com that it was looking into why Trump's image would appear alongside Hitler's. After releasing the statement, the search giant subsequently removed Trump's image from the search result.
Google said that the image will be removed from the search result until it can clarify why it appears.
Some Trump critics have compared him to Hitler, which could have influenced Google's search algorithms. And there's certainly no shortage of Trump references online. A "Trump Hitler" Google search Friday generated 25.7 million results. A "Trump Clinton" search, meanwhile, returned 199 million results.
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First Posted: Jun 13, 2016 06:10 AM EDT
Google denied allegations that they are politically biased in its search algorithm after a video showed the search giant allegedly distorting display results for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The allegations came from SourceFed's video editor Spencer Reed which showed the disparities they found in Google's autocomplete function. The autocomplete function will start to guess your search query as you type. According to mashable.com, this is something that is also done by Bing and Yahoo. However, Reed and Lieberman are convinced that Google does it differently in a way that Clinton and her presidential aspirations are protected.
The video showed how when the user started typing in "Hillary Clinton cri" Google did not complete it as "Hillary Clinton Criminal Investigation." When it was tried out using Bing, which also uses autocomplete, "crimes" and "criminal investigation" appeared. Another thing they found controversial was when a search of "Donald Trump ra" does fill in with "racist" on Google, as well as Bing.
"The intention is clear: Google is burying potential searches for terms that could have hurt Hillary Clinton in the primary elections over the past several months," Lieberman said in the video.
A Google spokesperson released a statement saying, "Google Autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our Autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person's name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms."
SourceFed seemed to be confusing actual search results with these recommendations, which are essentially Google's automated guesswork.
"Autocomplete predictions aren't search results and don't limit what you can search for," Google's VP of product management for search, Tamar Yehoshua, writes in a blog post Friday. "You can still perform whatever search you want to, and of course, regardless of what you search for, we always strive to deliver the most relevant results from across the web."
Republican candidate Donald Trump commented about the video allegations, saying it is a "disgrace" if Google would manipulate its searches. "Very, very dishonest," Trump said in a statement to USA Today. "They should let it float and allow people to see how crooked she really is."
On Friday, Trump made headlines when Google's search function connected his name and Hitler. Typing "When was Hitler born" on the search engine resulted to Trump's face showing alongside Hitler's wife, Eva Braun, and Charlie Chaplin, who famously humiliated the Nazi leader in his 1940 movie "The Great Dictator."
The unexpected search result had caught the attention of millions of people using the search engine and started a debate on Reddit. The controversy spread like wild fire across the internet. Google told FoxNews.com that it was looking into why Trump's image would appear alongside Hitler's. After releasing the statement, the search giant subsequently removed Trump's image from the search result.
Google said that the image will be removed from the search result until it can clarify why it appears.
Some Trump critics have compared him to Hitler, which could have influenced Google's search algorithms. And there's certainly no shortage of Trump references online. A "Trump Hitler" Google search Friday generated 25.7 million results. A "Trump Clinton" search, meanwhile, returned 199 million results.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone