Islam is..

[Our Wasted Years]

Is Google Censoring Islam Suggestions?

* By Ryan Singel Email Author
* January 7, 2010 |
* 2:23 pm |
* Categories: Search

Confused about what Islam is? Join the party — it seems Google can’t figure it out either. Or, at least its search suggestion program can’t.

If you type, “Buddhism is” or “Christianity is,” Google will quickly show you suggestions for what it thinks you might be trying to type. In the former query’s case, the Google guesses “not a religion,” “wrong,” “not what you think.” Christianity gets tougher treatment with the suggestions “bullshit” and “not a religion.”picture-1

But the query “Islam is”? Not a thing comes to mind for Google to suggest. (Search results are still there, of course.)

It’s enough to get some to conclude Google is censoring itself, perhaps as a result of complaints for suggestions that one guesses are just as flattering as those for other faiths.

But Google says it’s just a software problem.

“This is a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can,” a Google spokesman told Wired.com.

The suggestion feature relies on your previous searches and searches from users globally. Google says it filters out “pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms.”

That means it’s most likely someone at Google got a complaint, added the phrase to a list of skip words, like f**K, seeing the results as hate and violence — perhaps without even looking at suggestions for other religions.

So, “What is the ‘Islam is’” thing? We suggest “a bug,” an “affront,” “censorship,” “an attempt at international relations by a large, profit-driven advertising company,” or a “feature,” depending on your politics, religion or employer.

Source.

So guys and gals, what is your opinion on this? I doubt it's a "bug" or a problem of inappropriate words, maybe Google is too scared to be involved with anything having to do with Islam?

 

[7tx]

Yeah they're probably just scared of being accused of something. Google does have some funny recommendations though. (eg is...)

 

[Force Fire]

They're American what do you expect?

 

[Axle Helios]

Although now that someone's talked about this, they're going to remove 'Christianity is' and 'Buddhism is'. It was probably a complaint, most likely because it said something about terrorism.

Autocomplete Me has some other great examples of Google suggestions gone bad.

 

[Fig]

I tend to think removing "Christianity is" and "Buddhism is" is actually the way to go here. As is, I suspect aggressive atheists (and/or aggressive Christians for everything not Christianity) have been link-spamming to get the results they wanted...

 

[Eredar Warlock]

It's more likely political correctness. I honestly thought Google had more of a spine.

 

[Fig]

You mean like that bit of crawling before China?

As I said. I don't support removing Islam alone, but if religions in general are taken off, I'm fine with it. Too many idiots out there who think that bashing religions is a sign of how intelligent they are (not).

 

[Axle Helios]

And I'm pretty sure the suggestions are based on what's most searched, so a bot could easily keep putting in 'Christianity is evil' or 'Islam is a lie' and suddenly there's your suggestions.

 

[Goodbye Blue Monday]

I'm pretty divided in how I feel about this.

On one hand, I'm very opposed to any sort of censorship. Even removing all "[X-religion] is" listings is still suggesting that oppression based on religion is somehow worse than other forms of oppression. What about the often-sexist "men are" and "women are" results? Also, will they be extending the same courtesy to atheism and agnosticism? (Because, as we know, the "Christians vs. atheists" thing goes both ways. Given that 51% of Americans say they'll never vote for an atheist for president, obviously there are a lot of people out there who think not believing in God makes one amoral.) Will they extend it to religions that even a lot of reasonable people view in a strongly unfavorable light, e.g. Satanism?

On the other hand, I don't think the First Amendment applies to private companies like Google; they might be allowed some control over content. And as someone who grew up around a lot of Muslims, I'm often appalled by how many people who've never met a Muslim in their life think that belonging to the religion automatically makes one an Al Qaeda sympathizer, and annoyed by how often I have to point out things that, really, should go without saying. I think that Google might also worry that by listing anti-Islamic statements in the first ten results for "Islam is..." people might think those are Google's opinions or ones they condone. It's not like they're completely de-listing these sites from their search results; they're just not given the bonus of being in the top ten.

Additionally - I don't know if "Buddhism is not what you think" would necessarily lead to an anti-Buddhist site. The Eastern religions have been commercialized a lot in the West, and some of the Hindus and Buddhists I know get more than a little annoyed at how many people treat their religion like it's just the latest fad. So those might be an actual Buddhist site explaining to people that it takes more than a gold Buddha statue and some karma beads to be a practicing Buddhist.

 

[hurristat]

GoodbyeBlueMonday: Nope, Google is public. They have stocks, right? Public.

 

[Phoenicks]

Makes little difference, as the First Amendment applies to government laws only.

 

[Fig]

Not the same private/public distinction, hurristat.

Private/Public the way you are talking about it distinguish between whether a small group of people own the whole company privately without the general public ever being offered a chance to purchase action.

The private/public distinction GoodbyeBlueMonday is amking is between private = owned by individuals and public = owned by the public as a whole (eg, the government).

Google is definitely private by the second definition, and it's the one that matters when looking at Constitutional rights.

 

[hurristat]

Not the same private/public distinction, hurristat.

Private/Public the way you are talking about it distinguish between whether a small group of people own the whole company privately without the general public ever being offered a chance to purchase action.

The private/public distinction GoodbyeBlueMonday is amking is between private = owned by individuals and public = owned by the public as a whole (eg, the government).

Google is definitely private by the second definition, and it's the one that matters when looking at Constitutional rights.

I stand corrected.

 

[Falconwing]

Islam is another religion. Google is apparently anti-muslim.

 

[Axle Helios]

GoodbyeBlueMonday: Nope, Google is public. They have stocks, right? Public.

It's still privately owned, just spread widely among many people, that's the premise of the stock market.

 

[Jeff]

Not to get nitpicky but Google is public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_company

I think what you mean is that Google is not a government-owned company.

 

[Axle Helios]

It is public in the business sense (anyone can buy into ownership), but not the legal sense (everyone owns it).

 

[Fig]

Jeff, public has both meanings (as one might guess from the fact that Wiki even bothers to disambig to government-owned). Just because Wiki prefer "government-owned" doesn't make it any less so.