Google Maps Is Misleading Users Searching For Abortion Clinics… And The GOP Is Threatening The Company If It Fixes That
Earlier this week, Bloomberg released a well-investigated, and somewhat damning article highlighting how people searching for abortion clinics on Google Maps are often being misled to go to crisis pregnancy centers," which are sketchy organizations designed to try to convince women to give birth.
Google Maps routinely misleads people looking for abortion providers, a new analysis by Bloomberg News has found. When users type the words abortion clinic" into the Maps search bar, crisis pregnancy centers account for about a quarter of the top 10 search results on average across all 50 US states, plus Washington D.C., according to data Bloomberg collected in July. In 13 states, including Arkansas, South Carolina and Idaho where the procedure is newly limited, five or more of the top 10 results were for CPCs, not abortion clinics.
The article has a nice interactive graphic showing details of each state. I recommend clicking through to see the interactive bits, but here's the static image:
Interactive image via BloombergThe article also has a fun (I mean, depending on your definition of fun) abortion clinic or crisis center" quiz that shows how the two often look nearly identical and can be indistinguishable from each other.
The article makes a credible case that women are being fooled by these misleading results on Google Maps. And, also, that these mistakes can be tremendously harmful to those women.
But, what it leaves out is the absolutely stupid political fight behind some of this, driven by now years of media and politicians arguing over how every internet company should moderate, with threats going back and forth if sites don't moderate the way this or that politician wants.
Indeed, the crisis pregnancy center story is a prime example of this and one that we've covered before. Democrats have told Google it should demote the crisis pregnancy centers in its search results. Meanwhile, Republican Attorneys General have literally threatened to take the company to court if they do that.
The objectively correct thing to do is for Google to remove those results, or at the very least, make it abundantly clear that they are not abortion clinics and do not have medical professionals on staff.
But, all of this highlights how fraught it is when politicians start demanding how websites moderate. It also highlights how trust and safety and content moderation decisions can be about a lot more consequential stuff than when do we ban the harassing asshole?"
The fact that we're now politicizing trust & safety issues is a dangerous turn. Companies need to be free to figure out how to best moderate without fear of having to litigate every decision. That's the point of Section 230... and all the grandstanding over this is also part of the reason why politicians of both parties are trying to dismantle that law.