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posted by on Friday December 30 2016, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the meet-the-google-police dept.

Last week an article from the BBC said:

Google has said it is 'thinking deeply' about ways to improve search, after criticism over how some results - including ones discussing the Holocaust - were ranked.

[...] Google - which processes five billion searches a day - was keen to come up with a solution that was broadly applicable across all searches, rather than just those that have been noticed by users.

"It's very easy to take a search here and there and demand Google change something," explained Mr Sullivan, "and then the next day you find a different search and say, 'why didn't you fix that?' "

This week we see the results of their efforts: Google has modified PageRank to surface "more high-quality, credible content on the web":

Google's technology was changed again after people spoke out about how typing in "are Jews evil" in the autocorrect function resulted in offensive terms. Also, when people searched "who runs Hollywood?" the result, "Jews," was scrubbed last year. Google said its algorithm incorrectly gave "authority" to a site that suggested so because it was linked to over and over again.

But Heidi Beirich, intelligence project director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Tuesday that Google has a long way to go to "clean up its act." While searching for "did the Holocaust happen?" no longer shows one white supremacist site at the top, searching for "is the Holocaust real?" still provides a site up high that claims it's a hoax.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 31 2016, @12:42AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 31 2016, @12:42AM (#447685) Journal

    vetusware? Obviously a spam site. OS2? Subversive! MS-DOS 6.0? REGRESSIVE!! Oh, God, there's Wordstar! Whacko science fiction writers are known to use that! Vetusware needs to be censored right out of the universe!

    /sarcasm

    The games list is pretty impressive too. Errr, I mean, LET'S STOMP OUT THAT ABANDONWARE!!!

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @04:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @04:02AM (#447747)

    That most of these sites don't have a darknet presence and the foresight to nudge their collective userbases to learn to use such software to help protect themselves and the service hosters from easily tracked future enforcement actions.

    • (Score: 2) by Webweasel on Saturday December 31 2016, @02:11PM

      by Webweasel (567) on Saturday December 31 2016, @02:11PM (#447846) Homepage Journal

      Funny that.

      Using a darknet or VPN instantly flags you with the authorities. Use either of these services and GCHQ/NSA will have a file on you. A lot of sites in the TOR network are honey traps made by TLA's and the like.

      --
      Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956