Quoted by C. Cadwalladr, 'Google 'must review its search rankings because of rightwing manipulation'', The Guardian, Monday 5th Dec. 2016.
Description:

'Google must urgently review its search ranking system because of “compelling” evidence that it is being “manipulated and controlled” by rightwing propagandists, leading academics have said, after the Observer reported that hate sites are now dominating searches on Muslims, Jews, Hitler and women.

Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist and the author of Weapons on Math Destruction, said that unless Google acknowledged responsibility for the problem, it would be a “co-conspirator” with the propagandists. “This is the end for Google pretending to be a neutral platform,” she said. “It clearly has a terrible problem here and it has to own and acknowledge that.

“It simply can’t go on pretending that it has no editorial responsibilities when it is delivering these kinds of results. It is simply not defensible for it go on claiming ‘plausible deniability’. It has clearly become a conduit for rightwing hate sites and it must urgently take action.”'

...

O’Neil said that she believed Google would ultimately have to hire human editors. She said: “There’s a a growing list of social media empires that have been attempting with all their power and might to claim that they don’t have editorial responsibility, but they have been proven wrong.

“They have been proven wrong by this troll army, and quite clearly when it comes to the questions that require a subtle understanding of the truth versus lies, they are going to have to use human judgment.

“It is clearly very frightening what is going on here. Google has done a huge amount of work to avoid exactly this scenario. And yet the troll army has still managed to break through all its resources and defences. It is very troubling and they are clearly very, very good at this, but it’s why Google has to own this problem. It is doing a terrible job here.

“Twenty years ago, these sites with these views … they would have been completely shut out by the mainstream press, but we have replaced our guardians of information with algorithms that are dumb and that can be toyed with and manipulated.”'

Quoted by C. Cadwalladr, 'Google is not ‘just’ a platform. It frames, shapes and distorts how we see the world', The Observer, Sunday 11th Dec. 2016.
Description:

'This is hate speech. It’s lies. It’s racist propaganda. And Google is disseminating it. It is what the data scientist Cathy O’Neil calls a “co-conspirator”. And so are we. Because what happens next is entirely down to us. This is our internet. And we need to make a decision: do we believe it’s acceptable to spread hate speech, to promulgate lies as the world becomes a darker, murkier place?'