Google studying ways to deal with offensive search suggestions and results

Good.

We often forget that machine recommendation algorithms do not operate in a vacuum. Strange and offensive suggestions in Google search results often appear because curious users notice an odd suggestion and click on it, causing it to rank higher -- not because the suggestion is inherently good or useful.

The problem is only worse on some other sites, incidentally. The prominence of suggested videos on YouTube has some really strange effects on the popularity of certain videos. Similar effects exist with some Amazon products too (as "customers also shopped for…"), as well as with many other recommendation algorithms.

To me part of the problem is that they suggest an entire search phrase based on a few words. It's ludicrous that typing "how to" suggests "make money" and "make love". I feel like it would be better if they only provided suggestions when there was a smaller spectrum of possibilities available. Sometimes it feels like someone is trying to put ideas into your head. At best, the line between helpful and harmful is very blurred.

I switched to duckduckgo after google started putting up political messages on their homepage in 2015. I don't need google to tell me what's fake and what isn't, and what's offensive and what isn't.

I built www.thehivemind.online using the google suggestion apis, for a bit of fun.

Only works in chrome, was trying to get around to finishing it for showHN, but now I might never get a chance it seems.

Not photoshopped: http://i.imgur.com/GbQ4CSf.png

I don't get the problem. Google suggests what people are looking for. If people wonders whether the holocaust happened, maybe the question should be answered?

More Orwellian censorship perhaps.

I mean how are you going to find "offensive" stuff in the first place unless you were looking for it and want to read about it?

This reminds me of the time Google manipulated their SERP to hide holocaust revisionist information.