by\u00a0Shudeep Chandrasekhar
\n1reddrop.com<\/p>\n
And, suddenly, weird gets even weirder. After the months-long discussion around fake news and how Facebook and Google are fighting to control it in the U.S. and around Europe, Google Home now appears to be gossip-mongering, according to a report<\/a> by Quartz.<\/p>\n Apparently, Google Home appears to be picking up fake news from Google Search and feeding that to its users. We know that Google Home piggybacks on Google\u2019s search capability, so it\u2019s possible that it is picking out news without realizing whether it\u2019s from a verified source or a hoax.<\/p>\n That leads us to a very important fact about Google itself. The search engine crawls billions of pages every day, not knowing what\u2019s true and what\u2019s not. Google Home\u2019s response would be no different from what Google Search will throw out for a particular search query.<\/p>\n For example, Marketing Land and Search Land founder Danny Sullivan asked his Google Home whether Republicans were fascist, and Google Home reportedly replied: \u201cYes, republicans = nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked by BBC News\u2019 tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones whether former U.S. president Barack Obama was planning a coup, Google Home confirmed that \u201cObama is in bed with the Communist Chinese and may, in fact, be planning a Communist coup\u00a0d\u2019\u00e9tat at the end of his term.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s obviously false information on both counts, but how does Google Home actually get these answers?<\/p>\n The clue to this lies in the way the questions are asked, and the information that Google Search is able to find within its indexed database of webpages. If only spurious or malicious sources have written about that particular topic, that\u2019s what Google will show \u2013 and that\u2019s what Google Home is parroting as well.<\/p>\n The Internet can be a very useful tool, but it\u2019s not an infallible source of information. Unfortunately, a lot of people don\u2019t realize that. They assume that just because something has been published online, that the information is credible.<\/p>\n Media houses and news websites take great pains to ensure that their information is as accurate as possible, even when talking about leaks and rumors. That credibility is destroyed when other sites claiming to be genuine spread false news, hoaxes and generally inaccurate information.<\/p>\n Does that mean the Internet should be curated? Not at all. In fact, that\u2019s what net neutrality is about, in spirit. No single entity or group should be allowed to control what people can and cannot access on the Internet. However, that leaves a big gap for malicious websites to come in and spread fake news reports.<\/p>\n The incidents with Google Home merely highlight a bigger problem we have, not only with the authenticity of information found on the Internet, but the massive amount of trust that users place on it.<\/p>\n