An attendee inspects the new Nexus 5X phone during a Google media event on September 29, 2015 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Justin Sullivan)
Google has been forced to admit that their search engine algorithm failed because a blog with inaccurate information managed to stay on top of results.
Silicon Valley has been accused of playing a role in helping Donald Trump win the elections in the United States and the recent mishap with the blog certainly does not help. A rightwing blog has claimed that Donald Trump won more votes than Hillary Clinton at the time despite not citing reputable sources.
Google's algorithm paved the way for the blog site called 70News to be on top of the results even though it had misrepresented information, Financial Times has learned. After the site was criticized for having inaccurate information, the author said that the figures were just sourced from Twitter posts which are not reliable in the first place.
When users searched for the "final election results," 70News was in the top spot at the time. During the evening, it was still in second place even though it was already debunked by a Washington Post article.
Facebook was also put under the spotlight after it was criticized for not taking care of the fake news proliferating around the social network. Zuckerberg said that the hoaxes and fake news only accounted for about 1 percent of the total news circulating and it did not certainly affect the election since both sides had them.
Google is now updating their policies which will now block fake news sites from using their Google AdSense service, Fast Company reported. It is unclear how and when the changes will take place.
Both social media and search engine results can play a huge role in feeding information to the masses. One wrong source and it can ripple down across the Internet.
Users also need to distinguish if what their reading does provide a reliable source and if the information is true. However, the search engine results could be more complicated seeing as it is the source of information for those who want to seek the truth.
