Amazon Says Technology, Not Ideology, Skewed (Abortion) Results

[LiberalHeart]

Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organization complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books.

Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion.

(snip)

Patty Smith, an Amazon spokeswoman, said there was no intent by the company to offer biased search results. She said the question "Did you mean adoption?" was an automated response based on past customer behavior combined with the site's spelling correction technology.

She said Amazon's software suggested adoption-related sources because "abortion" and "adoption" have similar spellings, and because many past customers who have searched for "abortion" have also searched for "adoption."

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/technology/20amazon.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1142842442-lKkEYsmf/maVtaayNXZcwA

[murielm99]

1. Riiight.

:rofl:

[Toucano]

2. Seems perfectly plausible to me. n/t

[Mithras61]

3. Riiiiight...

That almost makes sense to me, except for the little tidbit that most spelling correction engines check to see if a word is spelled correctly before it checks for alternative spellings and words with similar spellings.

Nice try, though. Thanks for playing... buh bye, now...

[KittyWampus]

4. Also, wouldn't "abortion" come up when searching for "adoption"

since their search engine can't tell the difference?

[Mithras61]

5. Only if it considers...

"abortion" and "adoption" to be interchangeable. If it considers "abortion" to be a misspelling of "adoption" then it would not suggest "abortion" when "adoption" was the search term.

[LiberalHeart]

6. I wonder if...

...a search for "liberal" would summon the question "Do you mean conservative?" I mean, the spelling's almost identical.

[Matariki]

7. i worked at amazon - the explanation makes perfect sense

the automated system often produced amusing results - like the christian marriage guides showing up in the bdsm section (true!)

and don't forget Amazon is located in liberal, liberal Seattle...

[slampoet]

8. I lived three blocks from Amazon for two years

and Amazon employees come in all stripes.

I would share the bus with them and sometimes get religious handouts or prostlitized at.

Saying that Seattle is liberal liberal is forgetting that Snohomish is a bicycle ride away, and Seatac, Tacoma, and a thousand other places where bible enthusists live are a simple commute.

Seattle has a lot of intense people of all political stripes.

[Matariki]

10. oh lord, i was being light-hearted in my statement

of course Seattle has it's share of conservatives and fringe christians. however, my point is that i'm fairly certain that the truth about amazon's search results is their automation, not some nefarious right-wing takeover of the company.

i was editing customer reviews and they were trying to automate the system more and more, the software they had would filter out reviews (for instance) with the word "Jew" - obviously discarding lots of reviews on European and Middle Eastern history. Also the words "pig" and "cow". Go figure. It was just bad software and Amazon's cheapness.

Still my favorite was the christian books on "wifely submission" ending up in the bdsm browse section - right where they belonged, imo.

[Mithras61]

9. Well, they've changed their terminology...

now it has it as a "related" search (search term: abortion returned books on abortion but listed the "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice" arguments books first, with a "related searches" entry for "pro-life" and "adoption") instead of as a spelling correction...

Just for grins I did a search on pro-life, and it came back with "(Related Searches: abortion, american government, christianity)" and the third entry on the list was "Panasonic KX-TG5050W 5.8 GHz Cordless Phone (White) by Panasonic"...

Anyway, it's just one more reason to like Google searches... they only suggest other terms when your search term isn't in their dictionary...

[LiberalHeart]

11. I understand the cordless phone thing...

If women had more phone sex, there wouldn't be all these unwanted pregnancies. Or something.