Google Ad Portal Equated “Black Girls” with Porn | Hacker News Reader

Google Ad Portal Equated “Black Girls” with Porn

themarkup.org

7 pointsantibland12 comments

Surely this is a result of the underlying titles of said adult content and not something Google imposed? But "Porn titles include the race of an actress when she is not white" wouldn't get as many clicks I guess.

The internet is a porn service that also does some other stuff. Google's search suggestions just reflect that, when not otherwise massaged. This is what our collective passion looks like. It isn't pretty, but you can't improve it by changing the mirror.

And it can be very useful to study that mirror to see the shape of the world. If "<race> girls" were protected from knowing about that passion they would be more vulnerable to its danger and less able to leverage its power.

Find a narrative, then write an article to support said narrative

Sigh, not this inane shit again.

What percentage of people searching for "black girls" or "asian boys" do you think are looking for porn?

It's a porn query. Porn queries invite porn suggestions. If some of them didn't show porn suggestions, the only difference was whether one term was just below/above whatever automatic threshold Google was using for today's filtering algorithm.

I have also incidentally noticed Google equating ghetto girls to black girls when doing a site specific search.

And equated "white girls" with underage porn.

> Searches for “White girls” and “White boys,” however, returned no suggested terms at all.

Doesn't that suggest those terms are denylisted? It doesn't seem very plausible that those terms would return no results unless they've been denylisted.

> UCLA professor Safiya Noble wrote an article for Bitch magazine describing how searches for “Black girls” regularly brought up porn sites in top results. “These search engine results, for women whose identities are already maligned in the media, only further debase and erode efforts for social, political, and economic recognition and justice,” she wrote in the article.

Perhaps it's just my media bubble, but I hardly ever (if ever) see black women maligned in the media. Certainly nothing as obvious as an article titled "The trouble with black women". Perhaps it's so subtle that I missed it, or limited to Fox News?

Wow, there is actually a Bitch magazine.

I'm sure their name extends beyond recent events, but good lord that name should be changed.

> Bitch is an independent, quarterly magazine published in Portland, Oregon.[1] Its tagline is "a feminist response to pop culture".[2] Bitch is published by the non-profit Bitch Media feminist media organization. The magazine includes analysis of current political events, social and cultural trends, television shows, movies, books, music, advertising, and artwork. It has about 80,000 readers. Its editor-in-chief is Evette Dionne.

This is a self-described feminist magazine who's editor is a black woman. If that's the name they like for their magazine, why should they change it? Just because it's a little too edgy for you? Are you even in their target demographic?

>why should they change it?

As we've seen, the only real reason you need to change anything is that someone feels offended by it. Being edgy isn't a defense any more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com