Correct The Internet!

Correct The Internet!

Have you ever searched on the internet for something related to women’s sports, but instead been over flooded by search results on male athletes? Annoying, right? Well, the internet has been taught our human bias to prioritise men over women on search engines. For example, despite countless of sporting records being held by female athletes, search results on the internet prioritise sportsmen.

 

Truth is, many of the world’s best athletes are women. But if you search “Who has scored the most tries in Rugby World Cups?”, the internet will say Bryan Habana, who has scored a total of 15 tries. It is actually Portia Woodman with 20 tries. Some of you might also remember the outrage on social media last year when a popular podcast posted a photo listing the most capped front-row forwards for England but left out the most capped forward — the former Red Rose, Rocky Clark. This is the same type of gender bias that is deep-rooted in the algorithms of search engines which therefore prioritise male athletes.

 

The ‘Correct the Internet’ campaign was started to change this bias. All search engines have feedback functions where users can correct wrong search results, which is what the campaign aims to do. The campaign website has gathered lots of incorrect search results that visitors can help fix by reporting them. There is even a tool which visitors can use to send in their feedback, with only a couple of clicks. Super easy, and super important!

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