Today I saw Tony Comstock Twittering about something he called the Google “No Fly List,” and sending tweets about who was and wasn’t on it. I was reading Twitter on my phone when I first saw his tweets, so I couldn’t visit his links and find out exactly what he was talking about until I got home tonight. He put up two posts about the issue today, and another one earlier this week.
Turns out this is the same issue I had read about on ErosBlog in September. Somehow it had fallen off my radar though. Tony’s blog posts and Twitter updates piqued my interest again, and naturally I was curious as to whether I was on “the list.”
Apparently, I am. Hey, it’s official: I’m objectionable!
It’s not as if there aren’t search results for “amber rhea” or even “amber rhe” - but Google is specifically filtering them out of it’s auto-suggest feature.
Obviously the next person I tried was Rusty. He’s there… interesting!
Of course you can still get to any search results for any search term if you type in the full term and hit Enter. But that’s not the point here. The point is, why blacklist some search terms and not others? I think we all know the answer to that. “Objectionable” is code for “sexual.”
As Tony points out, racism is apparently just fine by Google Suggest; start typing in “stormfront” and you get no shortage of suggestions.
So then I started thinking, well, this is all very interesting, but let’s try a few other things to see if it really is specifically targeting sexual content as objectionable - not those naughty searches for porn, but information about sex.
Sure enough - start typing “sex education,” and it’s crickets from Google Suggest:
Similarly, “sex work” draws a big blank:
And the only suggestions that do show up for “sex” are very telling:
What’s important? Sex and the City. What’s objectionable? Sex education.
Things like this that some people would argue are minor or not a big deal are very, very revealing. It really shows where our collective priorities are. White supremacy? Eh, who cares. Sex? Oh god no!!
READ ME: Disclaimer
19 Responses to "Google’s No Fly List: Racism? A-OK! Sex education? Not so much."
I tried to do this, but apparently we don’t have this feature in Canada (I tried Google.com, but was redirected to Google.ca).
Nevertheless, this is bothersome, but it doesn’t exactly surprise me, coming from Google. Does anyone know if other search engines are doing similar things?
Thanks for this, Amber. Great post.
I looked up, “making a n” and “making a noose” came up. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
[...] Sex education . Things like this that some people would argue are minor or not a big deal are very, very revealing. It really shows where our collective priorities are. Original post [...]
Fascinating. I never thought about the issue. Quick question though… couldn’t it also be that your name doesn’t show up for other reasons, such as if they think enough people are searching for it, or some other algorithmic reason? For example, I looked up a friend’s name that doesn’t really have much of an internet presence, and his name didn’t autofill. For that matter, my name doesn’t either. Not shooting down your theory, but just posing some additional questions.
[...] Prude - Eros Blog Google’s No-Fly List: How did we get on it… - Tony Comstock Google’s No-Fly List - Amber [...]
Dipika,
Theoretically it could be that, but I know there *are* enough people searching for me. Look at the screenshots I linked on the search term for my name - there are 140,000 results. Rusty is in Google Suggest with 61,900 results. I also searched a few other friends’/acquaintances’ names who have fewer results than that. And the number of people who find my blog, according to StatCounter, by Googling “Amber Rhea” also tells me that’s not the problem.
Any questions about search volume or volume of search returns can be answered using Google’s own tools. Long and the short is that is had NOTHING to do with either search volume or return numbers.
What is *seems* to have something to do with is what sorts of websites appear in the search results. If a site like comstockfilms.com or tinynibbles.com gets a top return, it’s highly likely that the search string will not autofill. That’s why [comstock film podcast] or [peggy comstock] do autofill, but [comstock films] or [tony comstock] do not.
What that suggests this that Google is keeping a list of offlimit domain names. That’s the No Fly List, the autofill is just a symptom.
Ridiculous.
One question: were you logged in to any Google service when you did the searches? It seems to me that they could turn off any filtering to the autofill if those searching were over [x] age. I still wouldn’t like the filtering, since folks will search what they want anyhow. You can’t legislate morality via autofill filtering if people are going to type the full search anyhow, you’re just degrading your product if you’re Google.
What a silly thing to do. I wonder if you can change your safe search settings to route around this “feature” and vote with your clicks that you’d like autofill for whatever *you* damned please.
Anyhow, thanks for bringing this up. I wonder what other things Google doesn’t like?
Seth,
Yes, I was logged in.
As the ErosBlog post points out, the autofill filtering happens even if you have Safe Search turned off.
Sorry for not reading all the links that thoroughly.
That’s crazy. Why would a company disrespect their users like that?
Thanks, Amber.
Matt Cutts responds:
http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/2008/11/14/googles-matt-cutts-responds/
Tony,
I’m glad he responded, but wow, his response is very frustrating. And I can’t imagine how irritated *you* must be feeling!
I’m quoting a portion of your post here because I want to make sure people see it:
What I would really love Matt to answer is why “sex education” is filtered out of Google Suggests?
Tony’s “Matt Cutts Responds” link is going 404 for me. : ( What did Matt respond?
[...] Amber Rhea has been investigating also, and guess what? No sex education in the auto-fill for you! [...]
Hrmm. None of my blog names come up, and neither do the names of a lot of much-higher-profile bloggers that I read.
That said, my work site is in the autosuggest, as is my work NAME, adn as are several adult establishments I’ve worked in. And my site is definitely not passing for anything other than adult content.
[...] so now you’ve read about it here, at Being Amber Rhea, and at Bacchus’s Eros Blog. Google Suggest will autofill somethings, like [stormfront] or [...]
Doh… sorry hexy, I just now fished your comment out of my spam filter. I don’t check it all that often and had no idea you got stuck in there. :P
It’s been happening to me a bit lately! I’m trying not to take it personally :)
[...] is very reminiscent of Google’s indexing, which makes it all the more disturbing. It’s like the internet’s being “cleaned [...]