Abstract
Billions of people turn to Google to find information, but there is no guarantee that what you find there is accurate. As awareness of fake news has risen in recent years, so has the pressure on Google to find ways of modifying its algorithms so that trustworthy content rises to the top. Fake news is not limited to Google’s main web search platform—deceptive and harmful content also play a role on other Google products such as Google Maps, Google News, and Google Images, and it also shows up on Google’s autocomplete tool that feeds into all these different products. In this chapter, I’ll look at the role fake news plays in all these contexts and what Google has done about it over the years. In doing so, I’ll take a somewhat more expansive view of the term “fake news” compared with previous chapters to include hateful racist stereotypes and bigoted misinformation.
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Notes
- 1.
Philip Bump, “Google’s top news link for ‘final election results’ goes to a fake news site with false numbers,” Washington Post, November 14, 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/14/googles-top-news-link-for-final-election-results-goes-to-a-fake-news-site-with-false-numbers/.
- 2.
Richard Nieva, “Google admits it messed up with fake election story,” CNET, November 14, 2016: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-fake-news-election-donald-trump-popular-vote/.
- 3.
Kamal Ahmed, “Google commits to £1bn UK investment plan,” BBC News, November 15, 2016: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37988095.
- 4.
Austin Carr, “Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt On Fake News, Russia, And ‘Information Warfare’,” Fast Company, October 29, 2017: https://www.fastcompany.com/40488115/alphabets-eric-schmidt-on-fake-news-russia-and-information-warfare.
- 5.
Gerrit De Vynck, “Google Displayed Fake News in Wake of Las Vegas Shooting,” Bloomberg, October 2, 2017: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/fake-news-fills-information-vacuum-in-wake-of-las-vegas-shooting.
- 6.
Kathleen Chaykowski, “Facebook And Google Still Have A ‘Fake News’ Problem, Las Vegas Shooting Reveals,” Forbes, October 2, 2017: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2017/10/02/facebook-and-google-still-have-a-fake-news-problem-las-vegas-shooting-reveals/.
- 7.
Liam Tung, “Google Alphabet’s Schmidt: Here’s why we can’t keep fake news out of search results,” ZDNET, November 23, 2017: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-alphabets-schmidt-heres-why-we-cant-keep-fake-news-out-of-search-results/.
- 8.
Sara Salinas, “The top trending video on YouTube was a false conspiracy that a survivor of the Florida school shooting was an actor,” CNBC, February 21, 2018: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/21/fake-news-item-on-parkland-shooting-become-top-youtube-video.html.
- 9.
Brian Fung, “If you search Google Maps for the N-word, it gives you the White House,” Washington Post, May 19, 2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/19/if-you-search-google-maps-for-the-n-word-it-gives-you-the-white-house/.
- 10.
Rory Sullivan, “Artist uses 99 phones to trick Google into traffic jam alert,” CNN, February 4, 2020: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/artist-google-traffic-jam-alert-trick-scli-intl/index.html.
- 11.
Rob Copeland and Katherine Bindley, “Millions of Business Listings on Google Maps Are Fake—and Google Profits,” Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2019: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-maps-littered-with-fake-business-listings-harming-consumers-and-competitors-11561042283.
- 12.
Ethan Russell, “How we fight fake business profiles on Google Maps,” Google blog, June 20, 2019: https://www.blog.google/products/maps/how-we-fight-fake-business-profiles-google-maps/.
- 13.
Kevin Reece, “Google Maps 101: how contributed content makes a more helpful map,” Google blog, February 19, 2020: https://www.blog.google/products/maps/google-maps-101-how-contributed-content-makes-maps-helpful/.
- 14.
Leigh Alexander, “Do Google’s ‘unprofessional hair’ results show it is racist?” Guardian, April 8, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/08/does-google-unprofessional-hair-results-prove-algorithms-racist-.
- 15.
Caitlin Dewey, “Study: Image results for the Google search ‘ugly woman’ are disproportionately black,” Washington Post, August 10, 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/10/study-image-results-for-the-google-search-ugly-woman-are-disproportionately-black/.
- 16.
Loren Grush, “Google engineer apologizes after Photos app tags two black people as gorillas,” The Verge, July 1, 2015: https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/1/8880363/google-apologizes-photos-app-tags-two-black-people-gorillas.
- 17.
Tom Simonite, “When It Comes to Gorillas, Google Photos Remains Blind,” Wired, January 11, 2018: https://www.wired.com/story/when-it-comes-to-gorillas-google-photos-remains-blind/.
- 18.
Rozina Sini, “‘Three black teenagers’ Google search sparks Twitter row,” BBC News, June 9, 2016: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36487495.
- 19.
Carole Cadwalladr, “Google, democracy and the truth about internet search,” Guardian, December 4, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook.
- 20.
Samuel Gibbs, “Google alters search autocomplete to remove ‘are Jews evil’ suggestion,” Guardian, December 5, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/05/google-alters-search-autocomplete-remove-are-jews-evil-suggestion.
- 21.
Danny Sullivan, “How Google autocomplete works in Search,” Google blog, April 20, 2020: https://www.blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocomplete-works-search/.
- 22.
This general idea of next-word prediction is somewhat similar to the GPT-3 system discussed in Chapter 2. However, GPT-3 was pre-trained on huge volumes of written text and then in real time considers only the prompt text. Google’s autocomplete, on the other hand, uses pre-training data that is more focused on searches, and its real-time calculation uses not just the text typed into the prompt so far but also many other factors, as discussed shortly.
- 23.
See Footnote 20.
- 24.
Issie Lapowsky, “Google Autocomplete Still Makes Vile Suggestions,” Wired, February 12, 2018: https://www.wired.com/story/google-autocomplete-vile-suggestions/.
- 25.
Barry Schwartz, “Google Defends False, Offensive & Fake Search Suggestions As People’s Real Searches,” Search Engine Round Table, February 23, 2018: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-defends-false-fake-search-suggestions-25294.html.
- 26.
Of course, most of the preceding examples are also factually wrong—but I am trying to separate the topic of hate speech from the topic of fake news in this treatment of Google autocompletes. The dividing line, however, is admittedly quite blurred.
- 27.
Hannah Roberts, “How Google’s ‘autocomplete’ search results spread fake news around the web,” Business Insider, December 5, 2016: https://www.businessinsider.com/autocomplete-feature-influenced-by-fake-news-stories-misleads-users-2016-12.
- 28.
See Footnote 24.
- 29.
Pandu Nayak, “Our latest investments in information quality in Search and News,” Google blog, September 10, 2020: https://blog.google/products/search/our-latest-investments-information-quality-search-and-news/.
- 30.
Tom Simonite, “Google’s Autocomplete Ban on Politics Has Some Glitches,” Wired, September 11, 2020: https://www.wired.com/story/googles-autocomplete-ban-politics-glitches/.
- 31.
Danny Sullivan, “How Google autocomplete predictions are generated,” Google blog, October 8, 2020: https://blog.google/products/search/how-google-autocomplete-predictions-work/.
- 32.
Guillaume Chaslot, “Google Autocomplete Pushed Civil War narrative, Covid Disinfo, and Global Warming Denial,” Medium, February 9, 2021: https://guillaumechaslot.medium.com/google-autocomplete-pushed-civil-war-narrative-covid-disinfo-and-global-warming-denial-c1e7769ab191.
- 33.
Richard Gingras, “A look at how news at Google works,” Google blog, May 6, 2019: https://blog.google/products/news/look-how-news-google-works/.
- 34.
- 35.
Robert Epstein and Ronald Robertson, “The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), August 18, 2015, 112 (33), E4512-E4521: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1419828112.
- 36.
Robert Epstein, “How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election,” Politico, August 19, 2015: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548/.
- 37.
Daniel Strauss, “Racist manifesto linked to Dylann Roof emerges online,” Politico, June 20, 2015: https://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/dylan-roofs-racist-manifesto-emerges-online-119254.
- 38.
- 39.
Carole Cadwalladr, “Google ‘must review its search rankings because of rightwing manipulation’,” Guardian, December 5, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/05/google-must-review-its-search-rankings-because-of-rightwing-manipulation.
- 40.
Ben Gomes, “Our latest quality improvements for Search,” Google blog, April 25, 2017: https://blog.google/products/search/our-latest-quality-improvements-search/.
- 41.
Kevin Roose, “Google Pledges $300 Million to Clean Up False News,” New York Times, March 20, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/business/media/google-false-news.html.
- 42.
Richard Gingras, “Elevating quality journalism on the open web,” Google blog, March 20, 2018: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/elevating-quality-journalism/.
- 43.
Rory Cellan-Jones, “Google’s fake news Snippets,” BBC News, March 6, 2017: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39180855.
- 44.
Danny Sullivan, “A reintroduction to Google’s featured snippets,” Google blog, January 30, 2018: https://blog.google/products/search/reintroduction-googles-featured-snippets/.
- 45.
Andrea Fuller, Kirsten Grind, and Joe Palazzolo, “Google Hides News, Tricked by Fake Claims,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2020: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-dmca-copyright-claims-takedown-online-reputation-11589557001.
- 46.
Pandu Nayak, “Understanding searches better than ever before,” Google blog, October 25, 2019: https://blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/.
- 47.
Prabhakar Raghavan, “How AI is powering a more helpful Google,” Google blog, October 15, 2020: https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-on/.
- 48.
Pandu Nayak, “Our latest investments in information quality in Search and News,” Google blog, September 2020: https://blog.google/products/search/our-latest-investments-information-quality-search-and-news.
- 49.
Bobby Allyn, “Google AI Team Demands Ousted Black Researcher Be Rehired And Promoted,” NPR, December 17, 2020: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/17/947413170/google-ai-team-demands-ousted-black-researcher-be-rehired-and-promoted.
- 50.
Kristie Canegallo, “Fighting disinformation across our products,” Google blog, February 16, 2019: https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/fighting-disinformation-across-our-products/.
- 51.
“Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust,” House of Lords, Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, Report of Session 2019–21: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1634/documents/17731/default/.
- 52.
Kirsten Grind, Sam Schechner, Robert McMillan, and John West, “How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2019: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753.
- 53.
These announcements typically appear in Google blog posts, but a convenient list and description of the substantial ones has been collected by a third-party organization called the Search Engine Journal: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/.
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Giansiracusa, N. (2021). Gravitating to Google. In: How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7155-1_6
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