This week Twitter user Kabir Alli posted a video of him carrying out two specific searches on Google. The search for “three white teenagers” produced smiling and happy generic images of white teenagers, while the search for “three black teenagers” produced some generic happy images too – alongside far too many mug shots and what could be perceived as negative images of black teenagers.

The video of the search was put up without any explanation, and people predictably reacted emotively; it’s been shared more than 60,000 times. It brought back an internet meme I debunked back in March this year, in which, on the basis of such search results, people on social media called Google “racist”.

The outrage towards Google as a result of those searches makes sense if a person isn’t aware of the nature of search engine optimisation (SEO), algorithms, alt tagging and stock photography.

But once you have that knowledge, it enables you to direct your outrage more accurately. In short, Google doesn’t produce or tag the images themselves. Google is a search engine; search engines collect data from the internet. The most popular and most accurate search results make their way to the top. Websites and companies use SEO to get their images, products and articles to the top of the search engine. So you, the viewer, can see them.

(More at the link.)