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Diziet_Sma
11/25/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
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Edited by Diziet_Sma at 11/25/09 10:57 AM Diziet_Sma was starred Diziet_Sma was unstarred

BytheSea
11/25/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
The picture is hosted on a blogspot blog. You can report the image hoster.

Their blog is:
0hot-girls. blogspot.co m
The post is:
h ttp://0hot- girls.blogspot.com/2009/10/michelle-obama. html
[remove spaces]

The link to report a blog is here:
[www.google.com]

NOTE: GOING TO THE POST WILL INCREASE ITS RANKING IN GOOGLE.
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Edited by BytheSea at 11/25/09 12:27 AM BytheSea was starred BytheSea was unstarred

BytheSea
11/25/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
Great. Kids use google images in school to find pictures of presidents and first ladies for their school projects. Now, I had never heard of the money, black people thing until I was about 16 and knew right from wrong. Now, across the country, hundreds of thousands of school children are being indoctrinated into a metaphor that was on its way out.
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cirocco
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
It amazes me how many people rely on Google both personally and professionally (running searches on everything from health concerns to stats they need for work presentations) yet don't have the foggiest idea how it, or the internet at large, works. I used to have to remind my ex-fiance constantly that anyone can put anything on any topic online. Although he had a graduate degree, he treated everything he read on blogs and Wikipedia as gospel truth. This is just careless.
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sybann
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
So can we change the algorithm by all performing a search and clicking on the NEXT image? Yeah, it was a lame idea.
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chatterboxwriting
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
It didn't come up when I searched. I got a picture of Michelle Obama looking beautiful as the first result.
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BytheSea
11/25/09

@chatterboxwriting: Me neither. The collective voice of the internet must have spoken b/c both google and google images brings up normal pics for me too.
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vulcanized
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
As much as I hate it, I have to say that I think Google is taking the right approach. They can't lose the appearance of neutrality and I think they are trusting and hoping that someone out there in hacker land will take care of this.

I understand where they are coming from. I hesitate to use Bing because it is owned by Microsoft and I don't trust the neutrality of the results. I don't like the idea of a huge corporation controlling that quantity of information.

This entire thing saddens me so deeply, though. I was so excited when Obama was elected and I knew that some ugliness was going to be dredged up, but I never imagined it would be as bad as it has been. I guess I was more of an optimist than I realized and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Pessimist Squad, that's saying something.
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largirl
11/24/09

@vulcanized: Agreed. I don't see how they can remove it without compromising the ethics of reliable and neutral search engines. If they remove this, what is next? (Obviously I hate that it happened, of course...it's awful.)
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HarpMadness promoted this comment Edited by largirl at 11/24/09 3:49 PM largirl was starred largirl was unstarred

Cimorene
11/24/09

@vulcanized: The thing that bothers me is that allowing racist shit to be google-bombed into top ratings isn't actually "neutral." It's more like, "We allow racist images and the racist bigots who love them to fuck with our algorithms."
There really isn't such thing as a neutral position.
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vulcanized
11/24/09

@Cimorene: I guess it's as neutral as it can be. Plenty of liberal jokes have Google-bombed their way to the top without intervention from Google (Santorum, as others have mentioned, the "miserable failure" bomb, etc), so to let these go and jump on this one would suggest a bias. It's a sad day when speaking out against racism makes you biased, but I guess that's where we are. Either Google has to figure out a way to keep everybody from Google bombing or they have to let shit like this slide. The problem isn't racism per se, it's any censoring of any information because the people at Google don't like it (no matter how justified their dislike may be).
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DevilsLawyer
11/25/09

@vulcanized: Nah, it's not as ugly as I feared. But then again my worst fear was Obama not surviving to serve his full term, so a) I have a higher (or lower?) bar for awfulness, and b) I still have my fingers crossed.
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vulcanized
11/25/09

@DevilsLawyer: I didn't have that fear before he was elected, but I've since developed it. Once people started bringing guns to town halls, it suddenly seemed like a very real possibility.
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rodmanstreet
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
Oh my God, I did the search and was so surprised and grossed out by the picture that I instinctively closed the browser within a split second. At least I have another example to cite when my Republican family members roll their eyes at the idea of racism against the Obamas.
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hedonisticme
11/24/09

@rodmanstreet: I did the same thing! It was worse than I had imagined....
And what you mentioned at the end, do they believe there is actually no racism against them?
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rodmanstreet
11/24/09

@hedonisticme: They sort of act like calling out racism is a cop out, like, "Oh, these people just call racism on everything, get over it. Stop using the race card."
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
11/25/09

@rodmanstreet: You may want to flip the Aristotelian logicspeak on them ad use the obverse. Racism is everywhere in a racist society, as it's foundational at bottom to many property ownership theorems supporting the "manifest destiny" and related colonialist philosophies.
It's just because it doesn't hurt them deliberately that they don't see it.

(It's one of those "if and only if" statements that I don't know the formal logical lexicon for. I was so intimidated by my TA that I didn't do well in that class. I kick myself frequently as a result.)
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hedonisticme
11/25/09

@rodmanstreet: Ok that's what I thought...I know someone who does the same thing as well!

#tips
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willwriteforfood
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
Seems like it's high time to harness the anarchic powers of 4chan in service of undoing this travesty. Surely someone creative can do something evil to the Free Republic site...not that I'm condoning this, mind you. I would never suggest anyone do something illegal. Just something, er, diabolical.
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HelloTitty
11/24/09

@willwriteforfood: It's entirely possible that it was 4chan that dropped this Google bomb. It's very 4chan-y isn't it?
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willwriteforfood
11/24/09

@HelloTitty: Ugh, I hadn't thought about that. I would have expected 4chan to be less ideological, you know? I fully thought this was the work of some freeper. It has the hallmarks of a joke a frat guy thought was hilarious.
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toastandlove
11/24/09

@HelloTitty: Racist and degrading to women? Yep, sounds like /b/tards to me.
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thrombus
11/24/09

@willwriteforfood: On 4chan nothing is sacred, nothing is off limits. It's all "for the lulz".
lulz is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about misogyny and racism.
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willwriteforfood
11/24/09

@thrombus: It's too bad their sense of lulz can't be channeled into something more productive. Like blinging out Sarah Palin's image or turning her book cover into a dead moose. But I guess we have Wonkette for that.
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magicwaffle
11/24/09

@willwriteforfood: "for the lulz" was directed by Anonymous into some great protests against Scientology.
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willwriteforfood
11/25/09

@magicwaffle: See, anarchy CAN be harnessed for a greater good! Heh heh.
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morninggloria
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
Racists are no good at coming up with new jokes. Witnessing them trying to make a joke about a member of a minority race with jabs that have been used millions of times over hundreds of years is about as interesting as watching an episode of Two And A Half Men.
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phantom lady
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
You warned me not to look. but I looked anyway. I just can't believe it. the Obama's have really freaked the White Power Bill's out of their gourds, haven't they.
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AndPreciousLittleofThat
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
I think this fits the definition of First Amendment expression.

Which is why I'd like to propose Amendment 1A: Your right to free speech is only guaranteed by the countervaling right for people to make fun of your stupid, racist ass for all the dumb things you say.
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Atomic Bowling
11/24/09

@AndPreciousLittleofThat: The right to free speech has nothing to do with whether or not you can google bomb your offensive pic to get it listed highly on google, only with the fact that the government (or more specifically, congress) cannot create a law that would restrict from posting your drivel in the first place. Personally I don't know how realistic it is to think that google could remove or prevent this kind of thing on a permanent basis, but technically it is still perfectly within their rights not to index pics like this in their search engine.
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Jack_Burton promoted this comment Atomic Bowling was starred Atomic Bowling was unstarred

Jack_Burton
11/24/09

@Atomic Bowling: It may be within their rights, but:
1. How technologically feasable is it?
2. Safe Search relies partially on image-analyzing software, blacklists, and voluntary ratings of content. The content-recognition would have to be of a pretty tall order to tell images of Photoshopped people from real people.
3. Google loses money by people "gaming the system" or Google-bombing, so you can bet that they are doing their best to cost-effectively reduce artificially-inflated hitcounts.
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BytheSea
11/25/09

@AndPreciousLittleofThat: I don't think free speech applies to google searches. Google isnt' a govn't-controlled entity.
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Atomic Bowling
11/25/09

@Jack_Burton: Oh yeah, I agree completely. As far as I know theoretically they have every right to block such images from their search results, but technologically I think any measure that would stop this kind of thing from popping up repeatedly would also completely hamstring google's effectiveness as a search engine. I just object a bit when people say that things like this are hard to stop because of first amendment rights. It's not the first amendment so much as it is an issue with the current state of the technology, and that issue has no easy or quick solution currently available (and I'm skeptical that they could even come up with a hard or slow one at the moment).
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bluewine
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
The thing that makes me even more mind-numbingly angry is that the very people who think this is hilarious are the ones who cry the loudest that nooo, they aren't racist! And to even suggest so is reverse-racist!
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Elaken
11/24/09

@bluewine: Or it is just a joke, they don't mean anything by it! Geez, get a sense of humor.

Apparently I was raised wrong. I always thought saying and thinking racist or misogynist things makes you a racist or misogynist. Guess I was confused.
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vulcanized
11/24/09

@bluewine: There should be a list of things that are never funny and it should be distributed throughout the country. Comparing black people to monkeys would be on it, as would white people using the N word, gollywog-type illustrations, the majority of rape jokes, jokes about the Holocaust by anyone other than a Holocaust survivor, differentiating between Native Americans and people from India by asking "Dots or feathers?", and most of the things that come out of Chris Buttars' mouth. Then when people try to claim it's a joke, we can say, "Nope, it's on the list and you knew it was on the list. Joke fail. You have now won the coveted title of racist/misogynist/xenophobe/general asshole."
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scarletbegonia
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
Slightly OT aside, that is a beautiful picture of her accompanying this post.
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scarletbegonia
11/24/09

In reply to Google Explains Racist Search Results
I need to talk to my cousin at Rensselaer - a very talented hacker with a knack for messing up jerks' computers.
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Triana Orpheus
11/24/09

@scarletbegonia: Don't put your cousin out there like that. They are watching.
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