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Not sure what to think here... Google's 'public liaison for search' says "Google briefly carried tweets with dubious info "[0] without defining further what tha
by runesoerensen 9y ago
Not sure what to think here... Google's 'public liaison for search' says "Google briefly carried tweets with dubious info "[0] without defining further what that means - except their Twitter results are changing "second by second"[1], and later assuring that it "only happened for a few thousands who searched for his name"[2].
This was not my experience. I took a screenshot of my search results at 9:06PM ET [3], e.g. 1-2+ hours after the egregious tweets (which were already prominently featured within 30-40 minutes, if not earlier, as several other sources suggest[4]).
I might be missing something, but it seems disingenuous to suggest that this only happened for a short period of time, while downplaying the matter by vaguely and generally hinting at second-by-second dynamic tweet update algorithms.
Also I even think the claim that only a few thousand people saw this may be disproven by Google's own statistics. According to Google Trends, searches for Devis Patrick Kelly peaked between 7-9PM ET [5] - so before I took the screenshot that night.
I find it very hard to believe that only a few thousand people saw this over the 2+ hours when this peaked on that night. Based on the Google Trends graph[6] it seems the vast majority of searches happened during the peak, and I suspect it's reasonable to assume that millions have searched for his name since his name was publicly revealed?
[0] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137
[1] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440
[2] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120
[3] https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK
[4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake_news/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake...
[5] https://imgur.com/a/lAh12 https://imgur.com/a/lAh12
[6] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%202017-11-08T06&q=Devin%20Patrick%20Kelly https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%...
- csydas 9y agoMore than likely it is Google trying to downplay it, but it's their search being gamed - the BBC article is actually inaccurate as far as I'm aware, as at least in the case of Sam Hyde, I was under the impression he was in on the joke, though I may be wrong. Regardless, the length of time probably isn't as important as the frequency with which this occurs, as the search frequently returning verifiably wrong or fake information is probably a bigger issue. The length of time it lasts is just a symptom of the tool providing news without the news being curated.