Does everybody get this result on Google?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Try entering this: women killed in 2017. See what the first page of results looks like. I'll post a screenshot of what I got in a bit.

There's a thread about this from November last.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3090164-Google-women-killed-in-2016-you-won-t-believe-the-result?pg=1

The journalist Carole Cadwalladr found that Googling "are jews" had been gamed to give anti-Semitic autofills and search results. Then she tried similar Googling "are women"

It's a long article, but absolutely essential reading.

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search
Tech-savvy rightwingers have been able to ‘game’ the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and… Donald Trump becomes president
www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook

Long story short, you're not imagining it and it's not just your personalized Google results.

Cadwalladr: Albright’s map also provides a clue to understanding the Google search results I found. What these rightwing news sites have done, he explains, is what most commercial websites try to do. They try to find the tricks that will move them up Google’s PageRank system. They try and “game” the algorithm. And what his map shows is how well they’re doing that.

That’s what my searches are showing too. That the right has colonised the digital space around these subjects – Muslims, women, Jews, the Holocaust, black people – far more effectively than the liberal left.

She's done a lot of follow-up articles on this, and the picture doesn't get any less horrifying.

I got 2 trans ones at the top

She also discusses whether to call it a conspiracy or not. (Although this may now be out of date, as we're getting a better understanding of the way bot-farms are amplifying some messages.)

Last week Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina, published the first detailed research on how rightwing websites had spread their message. “I took a list of these fake news sites that was circulating, I had an initial list of 306 of them and I used a tool – like the one Google uses – to scrape them for links and then I mapped them. So I looked at where the links went – into YouTube and Facebook, and between each other, millions of them… and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“They have created a web that is bleeding through on to our web. This isn’t a conspiracy. There isn’t one person who’s created this. It’s a vast system of hundreds of different sites that are using all the same tricks that all websites use. They’re sending out thousands of links to other sites and together this has created a vast satellite system of rightwing news and propaganda that has completely surrounded the mainstream media system.”

I might have reached my own personal tipping point on this issue.

This 3rd result I got

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/10/women-killed-at-home-refuges-womens-aid-survey

I got 4 out of 6 trans women results. Thought for balance I’d search men killed in 2017 and the top six results were all about men killed by police and all in the US. Odd result when I live in UK.

Another Cadwalladr article:

How to bump Holocaust deniers off Google’s top spot? Pay Google
www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/17/holocaust-deniers-google-search-top-spot

And still, anyone searching for information about the Holocaust – if it was real, if it happened, if it was a hoax, if it was fake – was being served up neo-Nazi propaganda as the top result.

Until Friday. When I gamed Google’s algorithm. I succeeded in doing what Google said was impossible. I, a journalist with almost zero computer knowhow, succeeded in changing the search order of Google’s results for “did the Holocaust happen” and “was the Holocaust a hoax”. I knocked Stormfront off the top of the list. I inserted Wikipedia’s entry on the Holocaust as the number one result. I displaced a lie with a fact.

I can confirm that this happens on a phone with all the microphone settings and shit turned off. I was recently accused of being paranoid to think my phone uses voice to determine things about me but now you're telling me it does.

That's very disturbing.

Boycott Google

Use DuckDuckGo. And they don't track you

I got the same, every single result on the first page is about transgender.

So I’ve just regoogled it and the results have all changed. Now it’s showing results of actual women sans penises. Perhaps the reporting to Google actually worked!!!!

I don't get that at all. I get a full page of results of women being killed in 2017. Nothing about trans people. But then I'm not in the UK.

Oh, sorry, I was on Yahoo. I switched to Google and yes, got a result of mostly trans stories.

I’m still getting the trans stuff. I’m not in th UK either.

OK this is wierd, this is what comes up on Tor using duckduckgo. As AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth said this is not supposed to track.

Slightly off topic but if you are price checking online try google on your phone, google on a pc and duckduckgo - you might get 3 different prices.

I got the same and I dont google trans issues or pay particular attention to them on news sites etc.

"Enjoy your erasure" Paris Lees

In Ireland, mostly google kids stuff so no relevant history.
8 of 10 results are trans with "Women killed / murdered in 2017".
Same if I leave out the "in".
"Females murdered in 2017" gives 2 trans results at the bottom.

Coming back to read later. Sorry for placemarking.

Interesting that I got a very different result in Bing just now. Admittedly, the second link is 'women who killed it in 2017', which is not quite what I expected , but still, absolutely nothing about transwomen till nearly the bottom of the page. I never use Bing. Maybe I should.