Google denies charges that it biases search results to help Hillary Clinton's campaign
Google defended itself Friday against allegations stemming from a viral video by SourceFed that the internet giant manipulates search results to repress information which could harm Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
The video argues that Google's autocomplete function favors less popular but more favorable search terms. For example, when users type "Hillary Clinton ind," Google suggests options like "Hillary Clinton Indiana" over the more-searched — but also more damaging — "Hillary Clinton indictment."
Google executive Tamar Yehoshua wrote in a blog post that the autocomplete filters out "offensive, hurtful or inappropriate queries about people...no matter who the person is." But when the video makers tested Google's autocorrects for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, hurtful but popular suggestions topped the lists.
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Watch the original SourceFed video below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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