Google: It causes serious problems when it positions deniers in the searches on the Holocaust - "TechnoTron"

Posted by: TechnoTron 03/03/2017

Google knows everything. We rely on the most popular search engine on the planet to answer all kinds of questions and to investigate what interests us and surrounds us. Google is a reflection of our reality ... or so we believe. Because those searches are not infallible, and there are those who are managing to shape that reality by deceiving Google and, by the way, all of humanity.


The perfect example was found in The Guardian, where a simple question to the English search engine, "Did the holocaust happen?" ("Did the Holocaust Occur?") Offers a shocking first result: the 10 reasons why the Holocaust did not occur. That the first result of the search (the one in which everyone ends up punching) can turn a lie into truth for many people, and live. What a danger.

Google changes our history

The British newspaper was already making a first approach to Google's behavior a few days ago, and there it was clear that Google is not a reflection of our reality, but a parallel reality. The search engine tries to anticipate what we need and complete phrases according to what other users have asked, in addition to presenting search results as soon as possible.

The results of these predictive searches are the most disparate: if one begins to write "men are ones" or "women are ones" gets offensive results, but as one chooses more specific search terms the engine is also capable Fine tuning.

The problem is that there is no filter on generic questions: Google, the most important search engine on the planet, fails like a shotgun at the fair, showing misleading results and links that often have commercial interests: websites assembled exclusively to attract Click through advertising or - and this is dangerous - those in which lies are propagated with side effects that may become much deeper than might be thought.

Dangerous traps

That reality that Google shows us conforms our point of view and perspective on various topics. That may be less dangerous in someone with a broader background and experience, but the thing changes when the person asking about the Holocaust - to keep that example of reference - is not clear about what happened or ceased to occur.

That first search results in English links to Stormfront, a website that analyzes the 10 reasons why the Holocaust never happened and denies everything we know and know. He denies that in that cataclysm he caused the death of six million Jews, for example, and suddenly makes our reality become a different one and also condition our point of view on that or other issues.

Those responsible for Stormfront are not exactly Wikipedia. On their website they are described as saying: "We are a community of realists and racial idealists. We are the voice of the new and harassed White minority!" The problem is that one does not reach that definition unless you navigate a discussion forum that has managed to become for Google the most relevant result in the question about whether the Holocaust existed or not.

The effect is noticeably different in Spanish. Although the first two results link to Wikipedia, it is the fifth that speaks of "55 questions about the farce of the Holocaust." The results are therefore less questionable than those of the English search. In fact, it is in this case that the engine seems to work much more coherently, showing first the Wikipedia entry on the Holocaust and then another one that speaks precisely of "Holocaust Negationism".

Do not believe everything the internet says

" The problem is that this example repeats itself over and over again with topics where one would expect to be able to trust Google in the results and end up finding dangerous pitfalls for those who do not have an opinion or enough information on a topic." If Google says so ..." "

The problem is that Google's search engine is not perfect. Not much less. Danny Sullivan, head of SearchEngineLand, warns that in these cases it is clear that "there is something that works terribly wrong with the algorithm of Google."


That ambition of Google to answer all our questions quickly is praiseworthy, but that does not mean that features like Direct Answers work well, something that another editor of his team already analyzed in this blog more than a year ago. Google is correcting those incorrect, controversial or strange results on the fly, but that does not prevent the danger from being there.

In this dangerous example Google becomes directly responsible for spreading racist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and this platform, like the rest of services that theoretically should offer us neutral information, ends up positioning itself and what is worse, positioning ourselves.

The threat comes not only from Google, but from any site and web service that ends up serving the same purpose. Those who have managed to mold Google to their liking with SEO techniques also try to do the same with social networks like Twitter or Facebook to also shape our reality.

We've seen it recently with the fake news scandal, the fake news that experts say has become one of the keys to Trump's victory in the presidential election campaign. Joshua Benton, of Nieman Lab, strongly criticized Facebook for that informational role that it has assumed and on which it should have a much more responsible attitude:

"Facebook has become a sewer of misinformation, part of which is motivated by ideology, but much is motivated by the economic incentive that Facebook has created: false things, when they connect with preconceived notions or the sense of identity of A user, spread like wildfire (and are much cheaper to make than the actual news)."

Here Facebook has a debatable behavior. Mark Zuckerberg said this summer that his company "is a technology company, not an information media company." And yet there we have initiatives like Instant Articles that reinforce the role of Facebook as one of the most widespread ways people have to find out what is happening. Or rather, what Facebook tells them is happening. If you are not a media company, why are you so determined to become one?


Both Google and Facebook have acknowledged the problem and just a month ago announced their intention to fight against the false news sites with various measures, mainly aimed at the water lines of those businesses: they will not allow those websites with false news Take advantage of their advertising systems.



It's a good first step, but it takes much more than that. He said Spiderman: "a great power carries a great responsibility". If you're Google and you're able to shape the perspective, opinion and information of 7 billion people around the world, perhaps you should be much more careful about the results you show in your searches to make them more neutral. So that at least they were results that could be effectively considered as "responsible". And the Google algorithm is not.