Jewish Groups Call for Solution After Google Autocomplete Function is Found to Offer Wildly Anti-Semitic Suggestions

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googleTry typing “Jews should” into the Google search bar, and the tech giant’s autocomplete function will present you with an array of wildly anti-Semitic options, The Algemeiner reports.

“Jews should be wiped out,” and “Jews should get over the Holocaust” are among the offensive popular searches listed, along with “Jews should all die,” and “Jews should apologize for killing Jesus.”

E-commerce executive, civil rights activist, and Algemeiner blogger Eli Federman alerted The Algemeiner to the troubling discovery.

“I was deeply disturbed,” Federman said of the discovery. “What surprised me most was the theological anti-Semitic result where the search ‘Jews should…’ auto-populated ‘Jews should be perfected,’ echoing old notions that Jews can only be complete by accepting J-and rejecting traditional Judaism.”

Jewish rights groups expressed concern, although not surprise, about the findings. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Algemeiner that he hoped the discovery would “wake up everyone in our community to understand how much effort bigots and racists put into the internet.”

He called for Google to figure out a solution to the problem, saying that the company has a “responsibility” to “take a look at their system or remove the entire (autocomplete) service from the users.”

It is a reminder, Cooper said that “there are responsibilities that come along with all the bells and whistles and the profits.”

Deborah Lauter, a Civil Rights Director at the Anti-Defamation League, pointed out that the issue is not confined to Google, or for that matter to Jews and Women. Other search engines including Yahoo and Bing produce similar results, and entering searches for blacks can also elicit hateful autocomplete suggestions, she said.

“The issue of hate on the internet is global and is growing and is a big concern” Lauter told The Algemeiner.

“We will certainly flag it for them and we hope that they will be responsive” she said, adding, “Our hope is that the community, and anyone that sees these results will similarly flag it because the companies want to see communities engaged in the fight.”

“They are as overwhelmed by this as we are,” Lauter concluded, “and they are looking for thoughtful solutions.”

On its website, Google claims that it has no oversight over the autocomplete results, and explains that the “Autocomplete predictions are algorithmically determined based on a number of factors (including popularity of search terms) without any human intervention.”

“It is, in many ways, a neutral reflection of society,” Chis Taylor of Mashable writes.

But Google also claims that it does step in to moderate the autocomplete results in certain cases. “While we always strive to reflect the diversity of content on the web (some good, some objectionable), we also apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, hate speech, and terms that are frequently used to find content that infringes copyrights,” the company writes on its support pages.

“Google may be violating its own policies by not excluding these flagrantly anti-Semitic search queries,” Federman said, citing the company’s stipulation. He would not, however, like to see the autocomplete results censored. “The best answer to false speech and hate speech is not censorship, it is truthfulness. Exposing the truth that anti-Semitism and sexism are alive and well is a good thing,” he opined.

Last year, Google faced legal action in France over its autocomplete function. The company was sued by six anti-defamation groups “who argued that Google was unintentionally breaking the law with its suggested search results that offered ‘unsolicited and almost systematic association’ of the word ‘Jew’ with well-known politicians, media personalities and business people,” PC Mag reported.

Ultimately the groups reached a deal under mediation, with Google, but at the time both parties declined to comment on the specifics of the arrangement.

Google did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner’s request for comment.

THE ALGEMEINER JOURNAL

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


20 COMMENTS

  1. Who ae they kidding they know and as long as they r making money and Jews are gentlemen they will allow it there are more Arabs then Jews

  2. if you google” blacks should” you get racist stuff too why do these people only mention jews (and it’s not only google, yahoo too)is there an agenda here?

  3. just look at the autocomplete suggestions for “muslims should” and be relieved! Seriously, this isn’t google being antisemitic, it’s the world being. Do a lot of searches for “jews should learn torah” and the like and see it move up in the algorithm

  4. Jews should….

    … Keep Kosher.
    … Wear Tzitzits
    … Read Tanakh
    … Wear Tefillin

    Now if you add those, you will really make a few people angry I think.

  5. Don’t try this one at home. I just did and what I saw made me a little sick. Real, real bigotry. I also tried “Blacks should” and got a lot of the same stuff. Anti-Semitism, racism, whatever, Google should get its act together and make sure it isn’t aiding and abetting it.

  6. try typing any other country or religion and see what comes up… bottom line we are very sensitive- and have good reason to be so, but I tried typing arabs should…

  7. These suggestions are created automatically based on what people search for. This function was created by Google Israel.

    Please don’t jump to call them anti Semites

  8. it’s not limited to jews try typing any minority in a google search and horrible things come up and these people who are trying to fight anti-Semitism are just promoting it by only caring about themselves, and also why are they picking only on google any other search engine will get the same results.

  9. oh my, I just noticed the dictionary is also terribly antisemite and filled with lots of racial insults. I’m going to burn mine right away. I’ll also write letters to all the dictionary publishers, demanding those words are censored, or even better, their definitions substituted with those of medieval music instruments and robotic assembly chain components. That’ll teach those racists! They will surely get so confused they’ll immediately drop their evil ways.

  10. The word ‘should’ will ALWAYS bring negative results in a search about any individual or group – plain and simple! By definition, the word ‘should’ implies criticism. Such a search reflect what people are looking for, and if the reality is that there are lots of anti-Semites out there who think that Jews ‘should’ disappear from the face of the earth. But as so many others posted, we’re not the only unpopular group on the planet; there are many other vicious ‘should’ options for blacks, whites, Americans, Muslims, Mexicans and so on.

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