Here's Why Some People Think Google's Results Are Racist

People have been flagging racial bias in the search engine’s results – but Google says it’s only reflecting the way society searches.

google.co.uk

worldwhiteweb.net

When Johana Burai, a graphic designer from Sweden, began to research pictures of "hands" a couple of years ago she was surprised to find that almost all of the images that showed up in her Google search were white.

Then she searched for "black hands" or "African hands", and found they tended to come with added subtext, such as a white hand reaching out to offer help, or the hands working in the earth.

As a result, she set up World White Web, which seeks to stop the search engine only showing images of white hands by encouraging people to link to and share images of nonwhite hands, in a bid to push them up Google's results. At the time of writing it has yielded one result.

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