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

[Backingvocals]

Even with all the bs we are dealing with right now. This is erasure of women. Who knows how we tackle this?

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

I was just wondering that hackmum

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)

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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"

'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.

Suggest - gah, I think my autocorrect has been gamed to make me look like a fool.

I don't think the right are safe from division. Both Trump and Brexit are causing major breeches. And both are alleged to have been influenced by external actors.

this is really interesting, as when I did it, I couldn't see what your problem was based on my results page.
Top 3 articles about women, 1st one was "men killed 900 women in 6 years"
4 articles on the whole page were about trans, the rest (8) were women and domestic violence.
The related searches as the bottom of the page (8 of them) were all about women, domestic violence and honour killings)

So the google must also be geared to you and your searches.