Internet tool shows French web surfers 'Jewish-curious' (AFP)

Sunday, February 20, 2011 4:01 PM

PARIS (AFP) – An Internet agency that flags up favourite see text has impromptu revealed a deeper trend: land scheme surfers' exceeding peculiarity most whether their politicians are Jewish.

Observers say the phenomenon betrays an obsession in a land with a sensitive story of anti-Semitism.

The device, famous as "Autocomplete" on the most favourite see engine Google, is fashioned to save scheme surfers instance by offering, for example, to see for "car parts" or "car rental" to a individual typewriting in "car".

But essay entering the study of a leader much as chicken Strauss-Kahn -- the International Monetary Fund nous who could contest for the land presidency next assemblage -- in the land version, Google.fr.

As you type, a itemize of suggestions appears beneath the see field, disclosing what text added scheme surfers commonly assort with the name.

Along with cost much as "IMF" and "2012" -- for those fascinated in his orbicular direction impact or prospects in next year's land statesmanly election -- the fourth commonest see offered in land is "dominique strauss kahn juif" (Jewish).

The "Jewish" constituent is also offered for searches most France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, his Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and several added members of his three-month older cabinet.

The newspaper Le Monde said that a comparability of searches on different module versions of Google revealed that Autocomplete linked Jewishness to politicians farther more commonly in communicator than in added countries.

The same gist occurs on the land edition of added major see engine, Yahoo!

"The auto-completion technology utilised by Google could in theory expose the attitude of the land where these propositions originate," said histrion Ertzscheid, an Internet specialist at metropolis University.

"It is not by quantity if the word 'Jewish' appears linked to more see queries in communicator than elsewhere. It goes back to something in the story of the land in question," he told AFP.

French Jews' agonized story dates to before the Nazi occupation of the 1940s. The so-called Dreyfus intimacy in the New 19th century became a by-word for anti-Semitism -- a gossip over king Dreyfus, a mortal military tar exiled for treason and after pardoned, which sparked semipolitical upheaval.

The issue ease raises its nous in equal politics. Allies of Strauss-Kahn, who is Jewish, saw inherent anti-Semitism in a recent verify by an contestant that the IMF honcho did not symbolize "the ikon of agricultural France".

Autocomplete on the arts module Google.com appears not to flag up "Jew" or "Jewish" regularly for striking US or nation semipolitical figures, though much text do appear for whatever external leaders.

But Google.fr reveals Francophone peculiarity most Britain's maturity minister, substance "David Cameron juif."

Google says that if Autocomplete turns discover text judged complete offensive, it removes these on a case-by-case foundation -- but but associating a mortal and a religion does not necessarily qualify.

"The see queries that you see as conception of Autocomplete are a alikeness of the see state of every scheme users," Google communicator spokeswoman Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce explained in an telecommunicate to AFP.

"While we ever strain to neutrally and objectively reflect the heterogeneity of noesis on the scheme -- whatever good, whatever objectionable -- we also administer a narrowing ordered of remotion policies for pornography, violence, and dislike speech," she wrote.

In Ertzscheid's view, "what complicates things is that we undergo that Google corrects destined results, but we do not undergo which ones.

"It is doable that on Google.com there is more cleaning-up finished to withdraw opprobrious keywords" than on the added module versions, he suggested.

The Le Monde report's communicator Stephane Foucart wrote that his findings reflected "a subtle and latent form of anti-Semitism, which seems only to manifest itself when grappling to grappling with a computer."

Jean-Yves Camus, a mortal semipolitical scientist specialising in anti-Semitism, interpreted the Autcomplete gist differently, seeing it as a natural "phenomenon of curiosity" in a land with by farther the biggest mortal accord in Europe.

"It is totally normal that the phenomenon is more distributed in France, because there are more Jews, and because there are more mortal personalities in semipolitical life" than most dweller countries, he told AFP.

"The difficulty is that what you encounter on the Internet is often rumour and exaggeration."


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