The controversy is served in a country in which the issue is precisely more in the spotlight than ever. We refer to the right to abortion in the US and to individuals results displayed by Google when looking for a clinic that practices it on its map: instead of indicating it, it gives you locations of pro-life centers.
Google, again in the spotlight
Google has been allowing a somewhat particular and partisan dynamic in its map searches for some time. This is how they denounce it from VICE, Medium that collects quite serious evidence and accusations against the company. According to this publication, the firm led by Sundar Pichai continues to throw wrong results when searching for abortion centers in regions of the United States where the right to abortion is under threat. Not only do they not offer the correct information; instead, what they indicate are the positions of pro-life clinics, which are precisely in charge of trying to convince people determined to abort not to do so.
We have said before that it "continues" to show erroneous results and it is by no means the first time that Google has been accused of this. Without going any further, last year, during his famous conference for developers Google I/O, a group of activists stood outside the event to protest this practice and demand that the company take action on it once and for all. A few years ago, she was also forced to withdraw advertisements paid by centers of dubious ethics due to popular pressure: they were "clinics" that are in charge of giving women erroneous information about the abortion process and trying to persuade them with inappropriate and intimidating practices. . Then Google was accused of being an "accomplice" of this type of organization.
Now the subject returns on the table after the investigation of VICE, where they collect how serious this situation is, indicating that there are erroneous labels and a absolute misunderstanding by the company. If, for example, you look for an abortion in Bismarck, in North Dakota -screenshot below these lines-, the only clinic that practices it, located in Fargo, does not appear; instead, results come from centers founded by political groups opposed to abortion rights and even the National Memorial For the Unborn, a memorial for unborn children.
The Carter Sherman investigation y David Uberti, journalists in charge of the article, is much more extensive, of course, indicating that in up to 21 different cities they found results that did not correspond to what they were looking for or were related to confusing labels ("to do a pregnancy test", " women's health care") that have nothing to do with the process.
Paul Pennington, as a spokesman for Google, has indicated to the publication that the company is aware of these problems which are due to the fact that both pro-abortion and anti-abortion centers often use similar keywords -intentionally by the seconds, of course-, causing the automated systems of Maps to get messed up and that the analysts (humans) are not able to correct it either. In addition, it indicates that many times the pro-abortion clinics are very far from the city and therefore Maps may not consider them a "local result". Another spokesperson also acknowledges that there may have been "mistakes" in the approval process, considering valid abortion centers that in reality are not...
Even with this, since last year Google has done important work to correct this -more than anything after an article published in 2018 by Gizmodo in which the same thing was denounced-, however, it is still insufficient for a company of its caliber and for a topic as serious as this.
Note to the reader: Derogatory comments, which incite hatred or in which the right or not to abortion is debated will not be tolerated. If you want to comment on it, please stick to the subject of the news.