What do search engines want to show you?
Pictures are worth a thousand words. If you want a visual of what Big Tech thinks of white people, black people, or any people, do an image search on your preferred engine of the following terms. You will be unsurprised at the results.
I don't like to promote companies that hate me, so I will just say that the search engine I used rhymes with "luck, luck, no."
First, I typed "shoplifter." The image search shows white people stealing — white hands stuffing things into purses, a white thug in a hoodie looking shady in a store aisle, old white people stealing medicine, young white people stealing makeup. It took quite a bit of scrolling to find a non-white person shoplifting...then it was an Asian woman.
Next I typed "rioter." Apparently there has been only one riot ever in all of human history. You know which one. If you are really dedicated to scrolling down, eventually, you will find a picture of a peaceful but fiery protest...but it takes some dedication, and don't blink, because you might miss it.
Then I typed "white people." I was surprised that the images shown didn't include white robes with hoods. But over half the images were of black people, either with white people or alone.
I followed up that search with "black people." No white people appeared at all on that one.
If you type "gay people," you get a lot of images of white, male liberals acting like circus freaks. It takes quite a bit of scrolling to find an image of black gay people, or female gay people, or straight-looking gay people.
"Gay Republicans" was the third search that had absolutely no black people (in the first hundred or so images). "Shoplifter" was the first, "rioter" the second...this search result could pass for a Les Nessman (WKRP's news guy) lookalike contest, right down to the bow tie.
"Republican voters" has images of black people in the top three, and about a quarter of the images thereafter.
Perhaps the most telling is "Democratic voters," which shows a bunch of regular black folks (looking concerned) and a bunch of white candidates...and Stacey Abrams.
By far the saddest image search for me was "Patriot," which yielded a bunch of missile systems, FBI agents provocateurs, and a Jeep product. "Patriotic people" gives a much better result.
If you want to know what a "racist" looks like, you are out of luck. Ironically, most of the top ranked pics in this category are BLM protesters. If you scroll down, eventually, there's a picture of Mitch McConnell. I will give "luck, luck, no" credit for resisting the urge to plaster Donald Trump's image all over the top results, although it did eventually come up not long after Mitch.
I don't think for a second that these search results are "organic" (the actual top result). It is obviously manipulated. If they weren't manipulated, and January 6 were actually the only riot in history, QAnon Shaman would be the actual top result for "rioter." He isn't. Not even close.
Big Tech is using manipulated results to warp our perceptions. Think it's had to prove? A quick image search of common everyday terms should show expected results. When they don't, it is evidence that the hidden hand is up to no good.
Typing image via Pexels.