PR/Social Media Blog #6 - The moral bias behind your search results

The moral bias behind your search results

Andreas Ekström talked about "The moral bias behind your search results" at TED Talks.  

"Why do you Google?"
"Why is Google the search engine of choice for you?"
At the beginning, he asked these questions. Is it true that Google always give us the best, unbiased search result? He explains it with two examples.

- Michelle Obama

In 2009, Michelle Obama was the victim of a racist campaign. There was a picture distributed widely over the internet, a didtorted monkey picture. Therefore, when you picture-Googled for "Michelle Obama" in 2009, the picture showed up among the first results. However, Google fixed the search results.

- Anders Behring Breivik

In 2011, he blew up a couple of government buildings, killed a group of kids, and controlled the image of himself in his search results. Also in this case, there was a picture distributed widely on the internet, dog poop. However, this time, Google did not intervene.


There is no different between what happened to Michelle Obama and what happened to Anders Behring Breivik, but Google intervened in one case and not in the other.
An evaluation of a person by Google has an influence on search results.


Google is not always a good idea to look for knowledge because there is a bias. To get to knowledge, you should research by myself with true story.