
Google won't make search recommendations for "Islam is" - gort
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/google_is_being_sensitive.php
======
krakensden
Everyone knows exactly why they don't make search recommendations, and is
there really anything we can say about it that won't devolve into trolling,
flaming, and deliberate misunderstanding?

~~~
joubert
I don't know what your theory is ("everyone knows exactly why"), but I'll put
forth my thesis.

1) Autosuggestions are a sample of the most frequent phrases google users type
in

2) This autosuggest list is analyzed statistically and a sentiment score
established ranging from 0 (friendly) through 1 (hateful).

3) If the autosuggest list statistics reveal a certain characteristic (e.g.
all hateful, or very controversial, etc.), then no suggestions get returned.

If I'm wrong that at least in principle this is an automatic, data-driven
behavior, then I really feel sorry for the sod who is maintaining a list of
what phrases aren't kosher.

~~~
gort
I think the counterexample to this theory is "Christianity is" which returns 7
negative suggestions, 1 ambiguous, 1 positive, and 1 t-shirt.

Another argument is that typing in "Islam i[letter]" where [letter] is some
common consonant usually returns suggestions.

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jackowayed
This isn't new. They've been filtering it for years, ever since some
screenshots of what happens when they don't made the rounds.

From November 2005:

[http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2005/11/30/does-g...](http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2005/11/30/does-
google-suggest-racism/)

"Blacks are lazy"

"Blacks are stupid"

"Jews are evil"

"Jews are cheap"

~~~
gort
Interesting. One also can't get "whites are", "Hindus are", etc. But one can
get "Christianity is", "Buddhism is", etc.

------
blahedo
Interestingly, the same is not true for Islam was ("founded", "founded by",
"spread by the sword") or Muhammad is ("a false prophet", "satan", "the
antichrist") or was ("born and raised in", "born", "illiterate"), or Allah is
("satan", "great", "not obliged") or was (which, intriguingly, has just a
single suggestion, "a moon god").

I'm actually having a hard time finding anything else that is similarly
blocked. Makes you wonder what the completion list had been popping up before
they blocked it, eh?

~~~
DrJokepu
It's not that hard to find other blocked terms. Just try something that's
socially sensitive or offensive. Such as 'n----rs are ' or even 'chinese are '
(note: 'swedish are ' works).

I wouldn't be very surprised if they had some sort of algorithm to generate
the blacklisted terms as opposed to manually cherrypicking them. We're talking
about Google here.

~~~
gridspy
Google could learn a lot by analysing which suggestions are presented and how
the user reacts [chooses one, presses enter as is, leaves site, types
something else]. You might be able to correlate this with how useful / how
hateful the suggestions are.

~~~
I_I
Except that in many of those searches, the person _is_ looking for something
hateful.

------
LargeWu
I haven't seen it pointed out yet that it doesn't actually block searches for
"Islam is". It only blocks recommendations. It's not like they're censoring
actual results here.

What they're doing is simply disabling a minor feature for a small number of
potentially inflammatory use cases at the expense of about 10 seconds of
amusement for you. If this offends you, I would think it says more about you
than Google.

~~~
gort
It doesn't exactly _offend_ me; I just find it interesting and potentially
troubling. It's part of a trend of going out of the way to avoid offending
Muslims specifically.

I fear that things like Ireland's new blasphemy law, which came into force a
few days ago, are the result of this trend. (Of course, it applies to mockery
of all religions; in the West at least one can hardly get a law passed
outlawing just mockery of Islam.)

I just read a comment elsewhere that such a trend "incentivises outrage",
which I think is exactly right.

~~~
yters
If we only respect religions that cut off our heads, eventually those will be
the religions that rule us.

~~~
artsrc
My reaction to this is that people who are easily offended must have some
insecurity. Where this insecurity is not justified, it reduces my respect.

~~~
gort
To be fair, religious affiliation seems unusually tightly bound to some
people's sense of who they are. What's unclear to me is why certain religions
have this worse than others, e.g. compare Muslim reaction to the Muhammad
cartoons with Christian reaction to "Jerry Springer: The Opera".

~~~
ErrantX
I suspect if Jerry Springer: The Opera hd been written by a group or country
that certain sects of Christianity want dead then the response would be the
same.

It was groups of hardliners with their own agenda (aka not representing the
religion) who, for the most part, provided the extreme reaction. The majority
showed roughly the same response as to JS:TO.

------
viggity
So much for letting the algorithms rule their results. They could at least be
somewhat equal about it and do the same thing about christianity and judaism,
but then again, they know that nobody is going to chop someone's head off when
they see that the first result for "christianity is" is "christianity is
_bullshit_ ".

How long is the civilized world going submit to this insanity? When is enough,
enough?

~~~
ams6110
Let's hope someone at Google is reading this and gets this fixed PRONTO. It is
grounds for boycotting the service IMHO.

~~~
DrJokepu
Huh? Since when common sense, avoiding trouble and trying not to offend
socially sensitive groups count as 'grounds for boycotting'?

~~~
ams6110
There's apparent favoritism here, or bias against, depending how you want to
look at it. If there were no filtering going on either way, I'd have no
complaint.

------
markpercival
Another reason why I Google with the Bing

[http://img.skitch.com/20100105-f2xhs1pm1bmi1wt24cng2hddyw.jp...](http://img.skitch.com/20100105-f2xhs1pm1bmi1wt24cng2hddyw.jpg)

Cause everyone knows "Islam is the light baby doll"

~~~
onedognight
I would assume they put things in the list on a trial basis otherwise they
wouldn't be able to respond quickly to current events.

------
miguelpais
This is rather disturbing. I didn't live through a dictatorial government in
my country, but 30 years or so one that was ruling for about 50 years was put
down. The worst thing about a dictatorship is not the censorship itself that
will cut the parts that they don't want to be read from a text or a poem, it
is when the author himself limits its expressiveness and freewill to the walls
built by the fear of the censorship, and will instead write the version of his
feelings that he thinks it will not get cut.

Google is doing the same... actively self-censoring, the worst form of
censorship.

~~~
joubert
Aren't they simply withholding phrase suggestions which they deem wrong? I.e.
you can still search for anything ranging from the angelic to the vile, and
they probably don't censor (but of course, there's no way for an outsider to
_ever_ know).

What I do wonder is whether Google, for example, actually filters out from its
search results websites that are blacklisted by the Australian government,
when people down under google.

~~~
adharmad
If that is the case, why are they not being consistent? Why withhold
suggestions only in the case of "Islam"?

~~~
gloob
They don't. They also withhold suggestions in the case of "jews are" and
"white people are" and "hot teens".

------
sown
If you search for "muhummad is " you get the results you are looking for.

~~~
mynameishere
"islam should" is decidedly accurate as well.

~~~
sown
True.

But I would think that people at google would be thorough. Most perplexing.

------
scythe
There's been a popular trend of posting screenshots from Google search
recommendations over the past few months; I wouldn't be surprised if one of
those shots made it to Google Headquarters (though I'm certainly surprised
they didn't notice it sooner!).

Also shame on PZ Meyers for yoinking that article from atheists.org.

~~~
mcantor
There's actually an entire site devoted to it, in the style of FML/IMMD/etc.:
<http://autocompleteme.com/>

(Sorry if I just wasted anyone's evening!)

------
gridspy
I don't think a blacklist is plausible. There are similar phrases that yield
negative results such as "is Islam"

Perhaps there simply are not enough queries for "Islam is" in your region.

------
bgurupra
I submit something that may be potentially useful, a guy who is going to open
source out something that might be real interesting
-><http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032278> and I get no love and this
ahem "sensationalist" blog with no proof whatsoever for the claims gets so
many points - wow!

~~~
gort
It doesn't make any claims (aside from claims about the behaviour of the
Google search field, which are easily verified). It asks a question. But don't
feel bad - whether your submission gets voted up is half luck: either a couple
of people spot it and vote it up so it becomes visible to everyone, or not.

------
uuilly
"Engineers are:"

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/147719/Picture%206.png>

------
gort
[http://searchengineland.com/islam-is-blocked-by-google-
sugge...](http://searchengineland.com/islam-is-blocked-by-google-suggest-
bug-32921)

 _A [Google] spokesperson tells us: "This is a bug and we’re working to fix it
as quickly as we can."_

------
billpg
I wondered if its because one word is the prefix of the other. My first
attempt, "ishmael is " also suggested nothing!

Then I tried a few others; "isaac is " and "israel is " which did come up with
suggestions.

Oh well.

------
nightlifelover
I found this pretty interesting, not sure if it still works:

<http://emerging-patterns.com/tmp/CrimsonJihad.png>

------
arithmetic
Maybe it's just a bug? Haven't you found phrases which you thought were very
popular and yet couldn't find Google recommendations for them?

------
jrnkntl
Well, try _muslim is_ for that matter.

~~~
gort
Which is grammatically questionable.

~~~
jrnkntl
ok ok, even _muslism is_ then.

~~~
gort
Eh? My point was that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to have thought of
it. They certainly won't have thought of this bizarre misspelling.

~~~
jrnkntl
Fair enough, I am unfamiliar with the misspellings. Musli(s)m sounds perfectly
normal to me as a non-native speaker of the English language, and for a bunch
of other people on the internet for that matter hence the suggestions of
google.

~~~
joubert
I just tried to say that out loud and find it quite a tongue twister.

------
johnl
Search engines should avoid being in the business of egging people on. That
has to be one messy program/algorithm/filter. We put one together for a retail
company emails and stopped 20% of the incoming mail. It was pretty funny what
combos you can get.

------
gort
Note: to replicate the stated behaviour, you might need to type in the space,
e.g. "Judaism is " rather than "Judaism is".

------
rbreve
try out "Obama is"

~~~
jcl
Interesting... It's fairly difficult to find male celebrity names that do
_not_ come up with "___ is an idiot".

~~~
charlesmarshall
chuck norris ...

------
DannoHung
Top results from "Islam is *":

"Islam is both a religion and a complete way of life"

"Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs"

"Islam is violent"

"Islam is spreading among Thousands black South Africans"

"Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants" (The
preceding word is "Radical")

"Islam is intolerant, militant, supports terrorism" (This is from a site
discussing contrasting viewpoints of Islam)

"Islam is your birthright"

"Islam is not a barrier to democracy as is often perceived by Western nations"

~~~
Sukotto
Not for me. I see the behavior mentioned in the article.

~~~
DannoHung
No, I mean I typed it in, hit search, and copied the bolded bits.

------
borism
so, all of you who think they have algorithm to restrict suggestions...

what is the algorithm?

