Google scraps autocomplete suggestions for voting

This means predictions like “you can vote by phone”, “you can’t vote by phone”, or “donate to” any party or candidate, will not appear in autocomplete.

Google will remove autocomplete suggestions targeted at elections, voters or bias towards any political candidate. Autocomplete feature helps complete a search quickly.

The search giant has also taken measures to improve the quality and reliability of its search results and news products.

“We expanded our autocomplete policies related to elections, and we will remove predictions that could be interpreted as claims for or against any candidate or political party,” said Pandu Nayak, Vice President, Search at Google.

The US-based company will also remove predictions that could be interpreted as a claim about participation in the election, like statements about voting methods, requirements, status of voting locations, and legitimacy of electoral processes.

This means predictions like “you can vote by phone”, “you can’t vote by phone”, or “donate to” any party or candidate, will not appear in autocomplete.

Google confirmed that they have long-standing policies to protect against hateful and inappropriate predictions from appearing in autocomplete.

“We design our systems to approximate those policies automatically, and have improved our automated systems to not show predictions if we detect that the query may not lead to reliable content,” Nayak said.

The technology company has created an…

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