Google Will Block Some Search Suggestions to Fight 'Election Misinformation'
Tech giant Google has promised to block certain autocomplete search suggestions ahead of the November election in an effort to fight misinformation.
One search suggestion given as an example of election misinformation isYou can vote yourself into socialism given as a search suggestion when You can vote is typed in.
The autocomplete program regularly recommends full queries to users once they begin typing words, but Google now says it will remove predictions that could be seen as claims for or against candidates or political parties.
Google also plans to pull claims from the autocomplete program about participation in the election including statements about voting methods, requirements, the status of voting locations, and election security.
If a user types for example you can vote into Googles search engine, autocomplete may suggest a query that includes misleading information according to the company.
Bloomberg claims that typing the phrase into Google recently yielded the suggestion You can vote yourself into socialism, as the top query.
David Graff, thesenior director of global policy & standards at Google, commented on the decision stating:That might mean some perfectly benign predictions get swept up in this.
The searches were conducted through proxy servers to make it hard for the companies to identify the researchers and personalize results and suggestions.
It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any Clinton-related suggestions when one types a negative search term.
The term Hillary Clinton is awesome, was suggested ahead of Hillary Clinton is a liar despite the negative search term being far more popular according to Google Trends.
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