Google Autocomplete amplifies Texas massacre shooter Antifa conspiracy
Occurred: November 2017
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Google was accused of amplifying conspiracy theories about a US mass shooter in the wake of a massacre of 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a gunman killed 26 people.
In the aftermath of the shooting, misinformation quickly spread on Twitter and other platforms with right-wing politicians, activists and others attempting to link the shooter, former US Air Force member Devin Kelley, to various groups such as anti-fascist umbrella group Antifa and radical leftists.
Despite no evidence supporting these claims, Google's Autocomplete search prediction system featured suggestions that connected Kelley to these unfounded narratives, misleading users searching for information about him.
The incident raised concerns about the role Google and social media systems are playing in amplifying false information.
It also prompted questions about Autocomplete's accuracy, reliability and governance.
Autocomplete
Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text.
Source: Wikipedia 🔗
System 🤖
Operator: Alphabet/Google/YouTube
Developer: Alphabet/Google/YouTube
Country: USA
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Predict search results
Technology: NLP/text analysis; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Mis/disinformation
Research, advocacy 🧮
Al-Rawi, A., Celestini, C., Stewart, N., Worku, N. (2022). How Google Autocomplete Algorithms about Conspiracy Theorists Mislead the Public
News, commentary, analysis 🗞️
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-devin-patrick-kelley-24725.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/06/google-youtube-texas-shooting-fake-news
https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-autocompletes-antifa-conspiracy-theory-after-texas-massacre
https://searchengineland.com/google-promises-improve-accuracy-tweets-shown-search-results-286295
https://gizmodo.com/once-again-google-promoted-disinformation-and-propagan-1820166979
https://www.fastcompany.com/40492081/googles-popular-on-twitter-feature-was-full-of-misinformation-about-the-sutherland-springs-shooting
https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/google-twitter-results-misinformation/
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: September 2023