Germany's Former First Lady Sues Google for 'Prostitute' Algorithm: Whose Side Are You On?

by AdriHead Posted 2012/09/12 22:21:28

Related Topics: Germany, Google, Bettina Wulff, First Lady, Google Search

579 votes
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	Team Bettina Wulff!	210 votes	36%
	Team Google!	369 votes	64%

Bettina Wulff, Germany's former first lady, is not a prostitute -- and she want you to know it. The wife of former German President Christian Wulff is suing Google over its autocomplete function while searching, which shows the words "prostitute" and "escort" after Wulff's name is typed out.

The former German first lady says she's never been a prostitute but that rumors circulated about her allegedly racy past around 2006, most likely to harm her husband's political career. Wulff may not be a prostitute, but do you think the lawsuit is fair? Or is Google being sued for all the wrong reasons?

NYDAILYNEWS.COM reports:
Germany’s former first lady is not happy with her Google results. Bettina Wulff, 38, is suing the search giant over their autocomplete function, which she argues perpetuates rumors that she was once a prostitute.

38 suing search giant autocomplete function argues perpetuates rumors prostitute

+11

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Mog of War 2012/09/12 22:29:44

Team Google!

+12
Google's autocomplete feature is base on popular searches. Deal with it. Google could probably filter this from their autocomplete, and likely will, so this lawsuit is pointless.
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More polls by AdriHead

Barbara to johnnyg 2012/09/17 07:35:17

+1
Really Dumb JohnnygAnd how will that effect me!!!!! how many Barbara's are out there...Jeesh! some peoples mentality...

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johnnyg to Barbara 2012/09/19 15:01:56

Search "Johnny G really dumb" 100 times. LOL

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Barbara to johnnyg 2012/09/20 06:06:54

+1
Boring!!!

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johnnyg to Barbara 2012/09/20 18:36:22

Why?? Did you try it?? LOL

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Barbara to johnnyg 2012/09/21 02:22:15

No fun!!!...like I said Boring!

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Barbara to Chris La 2012/09/17 07:31:25

No, it just wouldn't happen! I don't think a college, university or corp company would take a search engine a gospel....silly you!!!

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Georgia50 2012/09/13 05:17:18

Team Google!

+3
Now people can use google to research harmful rumors.

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Sagan 2012/09/13 04:39:44

Team Google!

+5
Search: Obama is...
Results: Obama is gay, Obama is a muslim, Obama is the antichrist

oh... oh..... oh.......

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nicstr2... to Sagan 2012/09/13 16:24:49

+1
Hahahaha...well he is. DOH!

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Jon Bergen to Sagan 2012/09/13 16:25:06

+1
Excellent point! If she has a case, then Obama has a landmark lawsuit!

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johnnyg to Sagan 2012/09/13 19:15:39

+1
It's on Google it must be true!!

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ZenerSix 2012/09/13 04:27:20 (edited)

Team Google!

+4
I side with Google because it's completely unintentional. Google's search engine is based on associating character strings that appear most often together on webpages and give priority to those string pairs that appear most recently. The rumors of "Bettina Wulff" being a 'prostitute' must have have appeared on a lot of blogs and forums and that's why those terms appear with her name in Google search.

I understand why she's suing but what I don't understand is why people are so negative about prostitution. It's completely arbitrary. If people weren't so arbitrarily negative about sex without holy matrimony, people who's careers depend on maintaining a positive public image wouldn't have to sue to protect themselves from it. Another reason I'm an atheist.

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Chris La to ZenerSix 2012/09/13 07:30:51

+2
Do you see people slipping on the floors of the grocery stores constantly? No, Because a professional business knows their lunch will be devoured in court if they don't force someone to 'clean up on aisle 4'. Why didn't Google be proactive and CleanUp their site?-They were just too lazy.

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ZenerSix to Chris La 2012/09/13 08:36:46 (edited)

+4
Because Google has no way of knowing in advance how words are going to be associated. What you're asking Google to do is go out of their way to make sure that certain names of special people are protected from perceived defamation in their search results, or to omit name associations altogether. Not only would that censor out all the webpages that may contain information you're looking for, it would destroy the search engine.

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Smuwf, ... to Chris La 2012/09/13 14:14:33

+4
That would require searching for a 3 word sequence among hundreds of trillions seperate lines of coding,anyway someone will search it again sueing would be a fruitless effort,just posting on this topic adds hundreds more lines of code and another search under bettina,prostitute

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Nuke 2012/09/13 04:17:41

Team Google!

+6
It's an algorithm... They aren't intentionally posting it and it's not their fault...

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Chris La to Nuke 2012/09/13 07:31:50

Your kidding, right? Or maybe you just don't get it.

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Smuwf, ... to Chris La 2012/09/13 14:16:05

+5
Chris...you dont understand the sheer complexity of that search engine,she will never win

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Nuke to Chris La 2012/09/14 02:44:18

No I'm not kidding and you obviously don't get it... your irony is sad.

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Sumātogai 2012/09/13 03:44:12

Team Bettina Wulff!

+2
Sure why not.

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/13 22:02:00

Because it's a:
waste of time & taxpayer money
&
another way for her to get attention.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/13 22:05:15

Another way?

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/13 22:11:27

Yeah... as if the initial story wasn't enough.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/13 23:06:28

Remind me?

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/14 00:14:48

You mean "tell" you.
Look it up... try Google, why don't you.
Pathetic, little idiot.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/14 13:06:07

Remind me and tell you are the same thing. And what is with the personal attacks?

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/14 13:16:39

Stop stalking me, you pathetic, little idiot.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/14 13:38:59

And now for something completly different. Why do women hate me when they know nothing about me?

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/14 18:29:04

Probably because you are the kind of person who would relate a broken heart to being raped. It's called narcissism.
You're a pathetic, little idiot. Stop stalking me.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/14 21:31:18

They both equal pain, sorrow and they both will not serve you. Just because you're closed minded doesn't mean you have to act like a twat. Why can't we all just along?

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Grammar... to Sumātogai 2012/09/15 12:11:26

We'll get along fine when you leave me alone.
Stop stalking me.

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Sumātogai to Grammar... 2012/09/16 15:02:01

Shouldn't you be on a ledge somewhere? I'm not stalking you,I am on the other side of the world. You are the one being stupid calling people names because of an disagreement. You say you want to get along yet you do the opposite.

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overlord rai 2012/09/13 03:03:16 (edited)

Team Bettina Wulff!

+4
it's libel slander, not that i would have sued goggle, but they have every right to sue them.

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Nuke to overlor... 2012/09/13 04:19:50

+5
No they don't, they didn't intentionally write it, Not sure you know how Google works.

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overlor... to Nuke 2012/09/13 04:23:19

+3
Google, or any major website or search engine has the ability to moderate what shows up. It's slander plain and simple.

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Nuke to overlor... 2012/09/13 04:26:33

+4
But they're not intentionally writing it, they can't help what people are searching for, there's millions of searches a day to moderate every one of them.

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overlor... to Nuke 2012/09/13 05:14:08

+1
i get what you're saying. it's just the fact that they are still libel, i don't really think this woman should be sueing goggle but they have a case, y'know?

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Nuke to overlor... 2012/09/13 05:15:35

+3
I get that but if you wrote an AI that just put words together then you aren't responsible for the way the AI is putting those words together

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Dawn to Nuke 2012/09/15 01:30:19 (edited)

If you break a law your intentions are invalid. Germans are relatively proud people and usually have less sexist views then in this case so I think she was pretty shocked. They changed the thing where if you say 'white people broke into my car' it suggests 'black people' instead.

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Nuke to Dawn 2012/09/16 02:57:29

No, it wasn't Google, they didn't change anything, do you know how an algorithm works?
Google is a computer program that takes the most searched for phrases and then suggests to the searcher what they might be looking for, so in fact enough people searched "black people broke into my car" that it pops up.
IF however more people searched for White people broke into my car then that would pop up more often for suggestion but since people don't search that often as you can see, it doesn't get suggested by the Google engine.
Google is not controlling what the engine pops up because they cannot control what people are putting into their search engine...

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