The Rise of Hate Search

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-hate-search.html

by pmcpinto • 11 years ago

26 36 11 years ago

seren• 11 years ago

Really interesting to see that a political speech has a direct and measurable effect.

Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time.

coldtea5• 11 years ago

Maybe the future of poll is a kind of a global real time sentiment analysis. Imagine someone delivering a speech or participating in a political debate and having a feedback in real time.

PR companies for politicians etc have been doing these sort of things (with Twitter etc) for several years...

coldtea5• 11 years ago

People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter? Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

I hate it that we're so spineless to venture an actual judgment without the support of some "study" or "statistic" stating the obvious.

Of course tons of people searching for "kill Muslim" matters.

In fact, it would matter even if it wasn't correlated with increase with hate crimes (though, of course, it obviously is).

richthegeek• 11 years ago

Yes, it's real problem when we pass judgement without proof... /s

coldtea5• 11 years ago

It would have been more sarcastic if it was "with proof" (as you probably meant).

And yes, it can be a real problem if people can't reason out the simplest things without assistance from "experts" and "research".

Especially since ideally they should be able to judge those experts and that research too, not take it as a gospel.

Common sense can get you a long way. And if you lack common sense, then the finest and more interest-free research wont really save you.

V-25• 11 years ago

Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round. Or both are caused by a third factor (say, Boston bombings), but don't affect eachother directly.

coldtea5• 11 years ago

Correlation is not causation though, so it could be the other way round: reported anti-Muslim crimes lead to a spike of interest in the subject, not necessarily the other way round.

Yeah, but my point is we could just use mere prior knowledge of how the world works to rule that out. I wouldn't expect many people to be typing "kill muslims" in order find muslim related hate-crime reports, especially in the aftermath of an terrorist attack attributed to muslims (and I wouldn't expect reality to be counter-intuitive to such an expectation either).

jkot• 11 years ago

In November, there were about 3,600 searches in the United States for “I hate Muslims” and about 2,400 for “kill Muslims.”

It is sad that NY Times had turned into yet another "news generator".

mahouse• 11 years ago

I wonder if you know the same NYT that I know, because they have been shitty for years now.

slavik812• 11 years ago

A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks. Searches for “I hate Muslims” are even clearer.

Is it actually clear what the searcher thinks? I enter phrases I'm searching for into Google. I don't just type my current thoughts in there to let Google know.

logicallee3• 11 years ago

I think both "are all Muslims terrorists" and "I hate Muslims" are perfectly reasonable searches when hearing that someone has decided to exercise free speech, expressing a political viewpoint, simultaneously with deciding to commit heinous, psychopathic, immoral and of course illegal murder - when this person personally expresses that their religious views tie these unrelated things together.

In response to "are all Muslims terrorists" I would expect to get an informative page detailing that no, obviously they are not (I know muslims personally who are as western, educated, and civilized as any of my Christian friends) while also explaining why some muslims or muslim countries are uncivilized places that have not been exposed to basic things humanity figured out during the enlightenment. (In these places Apostasy is a crime punishable by death, for example.)

So it's a reasonable question with a reasonable answer.

The search "I hate muslims" is also quite reasonable, and I would expect a reasonable search result to be about how to deal with personal bigotry in the face of a mixed population. For example, if a shop owner has 17-30 cases of armed robbery occurring every year, and all of them are by African-Americans, I might expect this person to search for "I hate blacks" and get an informative page about why the fact that some African-Americans are thugs is no reason to generalize and be bigotted. At the end of the day, the shop owner's next hire might be an African-American, and one who wouldn't think of armed robbery any more than the HN readership does.

Here possibly I'm being hopelessly optimistic. I do think it's up to Google to return search results that are not hate-speech based. In the United STates with good reason, blind hatred advocating violence against a group is not protected political speech - you couldn't just publish a book advocating lynching every (minority group). But that doesn't extend to the whole of the Internet, and people can say whatever bigoted stuff they want.

That doesn't mean search engines need to return those pages. They can return reasonable pages instead.

throwaway77672• 11 years ago

In response to "are all Muslims terrorists" I would expect to get an informative page detailing that no, obviously they are not (I know muslims personally who are as western, educated, and civilized as any of my Christian friends) while also explaining why some muslims or muslim countries are uncivilized places that have not been exposed to basic things humanity figured out during the enlightenment. (In these places Apostasy is a crime punishable by death, for example.)

Your search results there will already have been filtered by google to things you agree with based on your previous search history. So if you search for that kind of thing a lot, you'll likely see a lot of news items about Trump and rants by angry people talking about how all muslims are indeed terrorists.

Just one of the many ways our modern technology works to create divisions between us, all based on the best of (marketing) intentions.

rl33• 11 years ago

Is it actually clear what the searcher thinks?

Of course it is. Otherwise there would be little basis for the article.

It's not like these otherwise repulsive phrases may be (in part) the result of ironic or dark humor, or that they were searched out of curiosity—perhaps even concern.

That might imply searches have some sort of greater context beyond a mere string of text.

JulianMorrison• 11 years ago

Let's say that it makes it clear which way the person is leaning. You've bought into nine tenths of the paradigm and are assuming its premises to direct your questioning attention.

Despite being a bias this feels like nothing, because your beliefs about reality are aligned with the paradigm. You can only feel the bias when your beliefs are very much not aligned with the paradigm.

"Are all white people racists?" You can feel that one, can't you?

rl33• 11 years ago

Let's say that it makes it clear which way the person is leaning.

Unless they're searching those phrases for a myriad of other reasons that have nothing to do with that person being a racist. In which case, your argument kind of falls apart.

"Are all white people racists?" You can feel that one, can't you?

I'm not sure if that comment is more presumptuous than it is condescending, or vice versa.

slavik812• 11 years ago

Not at all. Consider the same sort of thing with a different topic. The search "spy on Americans" is also an action stated as a search, but probably represents someone wanting information about people who spy on Americans.

The searches phrased as questions strike me as likely to have a more unified intent, but even then there may be a lot of variation.

brianjoseff• 11 years ago

I wonder why Google has become a sort of window into the hidden recesses of the public mind. It's a search box, built to return relevant web pages, but it seems people use it as a repository for unfiltered thoughts as well. Perhaps because the search box is a totally dispassionate, nonjudgemental listener. And it even responds! It serves up links that it thinks are relevant to what we say to it. It's like the stuffed teddy bears we confided in as children...but algorithmically powered, antiseptic white, and it talks back to us...albeit in a garbled speech comprised entirely of links and ads.

okasaki• 11 years ago

While hate searches were about 20 percent of all top searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it.
The search data also tells us that changes in Americans’ policy concerns have been dramatic. They happened, quite literally, within minutes of the terror attacks.

I don't know how they got this "within hours" and "literally, within minutes" data, when they previously say the data was weekly

Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

golergka• 11 years ago

They didn't say that they have access _only_ to weekly data. But using week as a period to draw correlation between crimes and searches makes much more sense than trying to make this correlation on a minute-per-minute basis.

stinos• 11 years ago

A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks

Actually it does. I know I'm proably a minority, but I have typed such questions into google (well, DDG to be fair) to find such topics on sites likes skeptics.stackexchange.com or just when I'm bored and feel like reading some of the huge crap which is out there on the internet.

Omniusaspirer• 11 years ago

Yep, there's weird people like myself who find it entertaining to read viewpoints normally sequestered away by the more "civilized" part of the internet. I like seeing wildly different perspectives from my own so long as I can do so from a distance from the comfort of my own home. If anyone tried to take my internet searches and theorize what sort of person I am they almost certainly would paint an unflattering and utterly bizarre picture.

It really is amazing how different the internet looks if you do searches in other languages, or phrased in such a way as to imply you're from a specific country, a certain race, gender, hold a certain political belief, etc etc

V-25• 11 years ago

If someone truly believes that all Muslims are terrorists, they aren't all that likely to be searching for websites that question this point of view. I'm not googling for "are all humans mammals?" etc.

xupybd• 11 years ago

I can't help but wonder if this is the aim of groups like ISIS, to drive a wedge between Muslims in the west and the non Muslims. It certainly would help them recruit. Also I'm not sure if Google searches are the best indicator, perhaps trumps support after suggesting banning Muslims is a stronger indicator.

HaseebR7• 11 years ago

That is exactly what ISIS wants Westerners to do.

http://www.thenation.com/article/assault-on-life/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-marshall/want-to-help-i...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/16...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-...

acqq2• 11 years ago

What exactly ISIS actually wants:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terr...

rl33• 11 years ago

There are about 1,600 searches for “I hate my boss” every month in the United States.

That sounds far too low. Since most people don't search like that, I'd imagine "hate boss" probably has a far higher amount, with the collective tally for queries that have near-identical semantics being astronomical.

compbio• 11 years ago

Absolute and utter FUD article, with zero basis in science and all the markings of another self-fulfilling social research trick.

Of to Google "Are all The New York Times articles shitty journalism?" Our research shows that in the months after these searches, the number of shitty articles on The New York Times seems to rise. We know this before the FBI does so, because we wield the power of Google Trends.

V-25• 11 years ago

No science like social science based on google search statistics and correlation ; ) And what would you make of that? https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=i%20hate%20jews%2C%2... I would also recommend http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

acqq2• 11 years ago

Better: proof that hate against Muslims doesn't increase in comparison with the raise of ISIS:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ISIS%2C%20i%20hate%2...

leni536• 11 years ago

What could be actually interesting how it affects Google's suggestions. Now if I type "are all muslim" into google then it gives two suggestions:

are all muslim extremists
are all muslim marriages arranged

There was a pretty bad "accidentally" racist search correction of Google. If you searched "white people stole my car" it responded with "Did you mean: black people stole my car". Apparently they fixed it by now.

The Rise of Hate Search

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