Jews, Women And Muslims Are Not Evil, Bad: Google Autocomplete Suggestions Deemed Racist, Sexist

Google is tweaking its autocomplete suggestions to tamper antisemitic, sexist and racists entries. The internet giant said the suggestions reflect users’ search activity and interests, but it wants to do away with offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, the Guardian reported Monday.

The feature that suggests common searches previously provided the words "evil" and "bad" when users typed in the words "are Jews" and "are women" before Google said it removed the suggestions Friday. The results for "are Jews evil" included pages such as "Top 10 major reasons why people hate Jews" and "What world-famous men have said about the Jews."

"We took action within hours of being notified on Friday of the autocomplete results," a Google spokesperson said. "Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures."

After the change, however, when users searched "are Muslims," the suggestion "bad" still popped up.

Google's autocomplete feature has angered social media users before. In May 2015, anyone who searched a racial epithet for African-Americans and the words "house" or "king" within Google maps were directed to the White House, where President Barack Obama, his wife and children, the first black first family, live. In July 2015, an auto-suggested photo tag pronounced two black teenagers "Gorillas." More recently, Google apologized in April after a search for “unprofessional hairstyles for work” showed black women with natural hair.

Despite its vow to crackdown on hateful suggestions based on common searches, Google might have a hard time keeping up with racist searches in the U.S. moving forward. Civil rights groups have reported a surge in hate rhetoric as white supremacists celebrate Donald Trump’s election to the White House. In the days following the November election, there were almost 900 acts of harassment and intimidation reported across the nation, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported.