She advocates for the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ and references a librarian who questions the ethics of digitising all information, uploading it and making it available on the open web when the information originally belonged to a small community with shared values.

Essentially, this is a question of consent, as often marginalised groups are unable to take part in the decision-making process about the information that pertains to them. For me, this was reminiscent of the notion that big consumer-facing companies are collecting as much data possible about their customers just because they can but need to think about whether they should. I feel the key point here is that informed consent is essential.

There is the examination of the idea that classification and cataloguing, that are part of library and information science, inherited and perpetuate biased systems. This is exemplified with the fact that until the 1970s the Library of Congress Subject Headings included problematic labels such as “Yellow Peril” and “Jewish Question.” Noble also referred to another library practitioner who warns of the increasing, what one might call. ‘Googlification’ of library discovery systems that return lists of results without nuance or context.

She calls for several things including more search engine alternatives as well as public policy that addresses the increasing number of problems posed by unregulated commercial search engines, and a redesign of web indexes.

Helpfully she suggests and sketches out an alternative way of presenting search results that is more transparent than the current ranking system, The Imagine Engine. Looking similar to a colour wheel results are plotted according to where they sit in relation to entertainment, commercial, non-commercial and sex. Crucially, it would allows the user to block out racist, sexist, homophobic or pornographic results.

In her conclusion, she takes the focus away from Google and onto Yelp, a consumer review website of restaurants and businesses. By speaking to a Black hair salon owner in a college town on the east coast, she gets a first-hand account of how the people who have created the technology platform and the weightings they used when programming the algorithm work to her detriment. “I think Yelp looks at people as their clients, not mine. If they are your clients who are loyal to your business and you, they are not interested,” said Kandis.

“Algorithms are and will continue to be contextually relevant and loaded with power,” Noble also wrote in her conclusion adding that this book has opened more lines of inquiry using a black feminist technology studies approach to Internet research.

She also said that public funding and adequate information is needed to protect the rights of fair representation online so the erosion of quality information to inform the public doesn’t continue. She also calls for public policy that advocates protections from the effects of unregulated and unethical artificial intelligence.

This publication is extremely helpful in breaking down the fundamental aspects of search, the inequities that arise from the status quo and what can be done to make the internet fairer for all.