Google Autocomplete amplifies Texas massacre shooter Antifa conspiracy
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 f eatured 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 🤖 Google Autocomplete Operator: Alphabet/Google/YouTube Developer: Alphabet/Google/YouTube Country: U SA Sector: Politics Purpose: Predict search results Technology: NLP/text analysis; Deep learning; Machine learning Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Mis/disinformation
- Date it happened
- 2017-11-01
- Organisation involved
- YouTube
- Product, system or model
- Google Autocomplete
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