Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Fruits on June 3, 2011 at 12:04pm

That does lead us back to the edited results idea.

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Permalink Reply by 3equ3cp1fsw0n on June 3, 2011 at 12:09pm

Good thread. It reminds me of how CNN and Fox watchers accuse each other of confirmation bias reporting.

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Permalink Reply by Akshay Bist on June 3, 2011 at 12:14pm

I remember reading about google censoring some suggestions from showing up on autocomplete. IIRC there is a website that lists these blocked suggestions. Will try & find it later

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Permalink Reply by Kirsten on June 4, 2011 at 2:15am

The bigger the company, the bigger the pressure to conform to social norms and niceties. Sadly, Google's public traded status means we're more likely to see those kinds of things happen.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 4, 2011 at 8:49am

Ding ding ding ding! They mostly don't filter search results but there are such things as Torrents, torrenting and bit torrent among others. Now I assume anything disparaging about Christian views.

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Permalink Reply by Freek on June 4, 2011 at 5:26am

I don't know if Google censors stuff like this, but if you start with the religion, the autocomplete works.

muslim vio get you to muslim violence (before that you get muslim videos), and the same works for christian vio...

But Google may still filter some of its autocomplete sentences. I wouldn't call it censoring though, because the content isn't blocked. Google is just not immediately directing you to it.

 

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Permalink Reply by Radu Andreiu on June 4, 2011 at 8:50am

 

I don't know if Google is censoring stuff, but this is too funny, especially the part about Christians being atheists too. :))

 

Plus, the first suggested link is awesome too.

 

P.S. Look what a basic search for atheists turned up:

Atheists have too many university diplomas! These folks are chock full of secular knowledge. They toss the Bible aside in favor of so-called, "research" and "theories." They spend their days studying and trying to gather facts and data to support their ridiculous scientific theories, such as evolution and gravity. Don't let it fool you, Christian Brothers and Sisters! All the secular knowledge in the world can't disprove that the reason we are all here today was because Eve got some bad advice from a talking snake! Atheists are too full of their silly "logic" to understand that only blind faith leads to sighted Truth. Why, the homo-lovers in England have already accepted that most scientists are naturally Atheists. Don't let it happen in America! Report your Biology professor – or any so-called teacher who pollutes the soul with extraneous (non-Biblical) information -- to the local authorities before he recruits your child!

 

It's a parody, of course. I thought it's too funny not to mention it.

How to Spot Atheists and Report Them to the FBI - the source of the text.

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Permalink Reply by Akshay Bist on June 4, 2011 at 9:00am

Found the page where all the words blacklisted in google autocomplete are listed, but it looks like that the list is a little dated, but if you still wanna have a look, here -  http://www.2600.com/googleblacklist/

And I typed in christians are in google & got this - 

 

 

 

So don't see any censoring going on.

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Permalink Reply by Jo on June 4, 2011 at 4:01pm

nice!

 

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Permalink Reply by Doubting Thomas on June 4, 2011 at 10:03am

Well is the guy at the top in google religious?

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 4, 2011 at 10:39am

I don't think so they seem to be pretty non-denominational. They often have speakers go to the google campus for talks and one of the speakers was Christopher Hitchens.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs

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Permalink Reply by Gareth Fouche on June 5, 2011 at 9:12am

Think you're jumping to conclusions. Google search algorithms work on more than just basic count of search term. For example :

 

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/google1.htm

 

There are more factors at play here so better to hold off on leaping to the 'google's biased!' conclusion.

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