The Conversation We Really Need to Have About Bias at Google | Hacker News Reader

The Conversation We Really Need to Have About Bias at Google

nytimes.com

20 pointsseapunk10 comments

The NY Times is showing their own bias here, ignoring the cases when Google's algorithms favor black people, like a search for "American inventors".

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=American%20inventors

Google's algorithms are imperfect but the NY Times is cherry picking results to favor a particular political agenda.

That's because it's matching "African American Inventors".

I guess it's understandable how this became a rallying cry for racists but if you were to search for "US inventors" you'll find all the white faces you crave: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+inventors

The only racism here is in your head.

The NY Times is alleging "Bias at Google" and cherry picking examples that support that allegation while ignoring evidence that would refute that allegation.

I'm sure all of these examples, both positive and negative, have technical explanations. Further refutation of the claim that Google is biased.

I misunderstood your intentions.

That doesn't contradict the article in any way. The article observes that the inadvertent bias in search results tends to reproduce real-world bias against minorities. It makes no claim that the same frequency mining algorithms cannot also skew results in other unintended ways, like matching "African American Inventors" to your query. Claiming otherwise is dishonest.

Painting a misleading picture of the whole situation by ignoring evidence that doesn't suit their agenda is dishonest.

This may be an opinionated article, but the facts it cites are real and credible. I wonder why its flagged?

It used to be that this author had a column that pushed back against the tech blaming but due to either weak demand or editorial decisions he pivoted to the mainstream of blaming internet companies for world's ails, and eventually he pulled a stunt and was caught in a lie:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/farhad-manjoo-nyt-unplug.php

At any rate I yearn for the day when Google's provided comment is something like: "It's our damn site and we don't owe anyone visibly or traffic so stop wasting our time".

This article is impossible to read without being pestered by spammy pop ups and redirects.

Using uMatrix with default settings, I had no such problem.

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