Google “women killed in 2016” - you won’t believe the result

'It's strange because it's only for that specific term. Domestic violence 2016 is OK, as is female murders.'

That is suspicious! To have one specific term affected while other similar terms aren't, does suggesting the algorithm has been gamed.

I think Helen Lewis is spot on with that article.

"The goal is not to convince anyone of anything, but to trap them in pointless cycles of offence and outrage: Huis Clos with super-fast broadband"

I think the Left is intrinsically fragile because there are so many intersecting factions, classes and blind spots. The right on the other hand are cohesive in the sense that they believe in atomised individualism as a model for social formation. Cracks in the left can easily be levered wide apart by political crowbars - divisive issues, from exogenous actors wishing to spread discord. Leftist movements such as Unity can only go so far unfortunately. It's crumbling both from within and being externally cracked apart.

Shocking. Someone on twitter should tweet this thread to Janice Turner.

‘How many women murdered 2016’ works normally, what is going on??!!

It's strange because it's only for that specific term. Domestic violence 2016 is OK, as is female murders.

From the first 10 results 7 are about transwomen. They should not be killed for any reason let alone for what they identify as - before the TERF label gang start quoting. However they as victims should not be listed with women.

This is so upsetting, shocking and disturbing.
Why is the Daily Mail, usually so quick to get all over right wing issues, not picking this up?

I used the Duck Duck go app in an Android phone. I got the same results with the app in a Windows phone making no modifications to the default settings of either.

Just searched google - first 2 results about women, next five about trans people, on my phone at least.

Here's a screenshot I took last month from trans-supporting "Boston Antifa" when it was targetting the American NFL (during the Take A Knee protest about Black Lives).

"Boston Antifa" have been outed as being based in... Vladivostok, Russia.

Fake antifa Twitter account fools media on right and left
Right-wing actors appear to have taken their trolling game to another level.
thinkprogress.org/boston-antifa-russia-tweet-adb3b2ab4918/

Google "Boston Antifa" and you'll see they've been claiming other people's protests as their own.

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

I only get 1 trans result using DuckDuckGo Lass in a long list. Using firefox with ghostery add on blocking trackers and cookies though.

Yahoo results for women murdered in 2017 look like this. Most of the subsequent results deal with trans women.

The first is Bing app on Android phone

The second is Duck Duck go app on Android phone.

The only results which don't look like this are Yahoo searches- either Yahoo app or browsers such as CM Browser or Dolphin which use Yahoo as the default search engine.(third is Dolphin)

I agree, MakeMisogyny. Imagine the skill you need to manipulate a result like that. This isn't some spotty teenage would-be men's rights activist sitting in his bedroom in High Wycombe. This is serious stuff.

One interesting question for me is whether people like Owen Jones are innocent dupes in all this or deliberate plants. I'm inclined to think the former, but who knows?

Fucking hell. That's some very clever use of SEO. When you can't google a basic question like the number of women killed in 2016 without finding inaccurate information then you know we are up shit creek and the paddle is long, long gone.

Yes, and I should add that it's not about sowing "discord amongst the left" by random means: misogyny and maintaining male privilege are active aims of many of (diverse) groups carrying out this media manipulation.

Although there are far right groups involved, I don't think this should be limited to being seen as a left-vs-right issue.

It's an attempt to use trans issues to attack women's rights any which way.

Knusper: I think so. When you look at some of the stuff that transactivists are coming out with - punching Terfs, cotton ceilings, getting women's libraries shut down etc - it is so very extreme that I feel it can't have risen organically. (See also attempts to shut down feminists who protest about the exploitation of prostitutes by calling them "whorephobic" and banning them from speaking.)

I think someone somewhere is pulling the strings. And whoever that person - or rather, organisation - is, they are also deliberately manipulating google results.

It makes a lot of sense to me that the same people manipulating the Google results for searches on women who have been murdered are the same ones manipulating the results about Jews and so on. So whoever is behind getting Trump elected is also probably stoking the flames of transactivism.

Helen Lewis hinted at the same thing a couple of days ago:

www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2017/11/i-m-beginning-believe-there-s-russian-conspiracy-churn-out-online

This Guardian article is interesting. Skip most of it until you get to the part near the end about the sacking of another engineer and the reason why- querying the use of non- binary pronouns.

'I see things differently': James Damore on his autism and the Google memo | Technology | The Guardian www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-damore-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets

Cross posted hackmum. Interesting.

So you mean that the search result was possibly not manipulated by transactivists but by someone with other, more general, political aims? I find this strangely comforting but not sure why. It makes the undermining of women feel less hateful, perhaps.

FlaviaAlbia You're right, it's important to be sure.

I'm speechless. This is heartbreaking. And so cynically self-serving. How could someone sit at their computer and deliberately erase murdered women in this way?

I have never searched Google or elsewhere for the T word, not posted about that subject on any platform or in e mails.

The top result, and 5 out of the top 10 results, were about T women.

Tho’ the numbers are far, far lower.

This is really interesting. I've been following Carole Cadwalladr's investigations for a while, and she - along with the excellent Luke Harding of the Guardian - has shown that there is a connected group of right-wing extremists from Russia, the US and elsewhere who are deliberately targeting social media to influence elections and attack those with progressive political views.

To me this search result is strong evidence that transactivists aren't just a small group of people with ludicrous views who have somehow, against the odds, managed to achieve an undue degree of influence. It suggests that there has been a concerted attempt by outsiders to push the trans agenda as a way of spreading discord amongst the left and sabotaging the political process.

Of course, that immediately sounds like a conspiracy theory - I realise that. But then look at the huge social media storm about the photo of the Muslim woman who supposedly walked uncaringly past injured Westminster Bridge victims. The fuss was started from a fake Twitter account by a Russian troll.

I wonder if Cadwalladr would be able to take this on?

So it is google then?

Yes. My work phone is a Windows mobile. The default search there brings up the same results as the non Google browser using Yahoo search did.