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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Google Knowledge Graph says Israeli journalist born in "State of Palestine"

A few years ago, Google started putting automated summary responses to queries on the margin of the search page, so for example autobiographical details of the person being searched for would appear without an additional click. Google calls these "Knowledge Graphs."

Google relies a lot on Wikipedia and similar sources to generate these Knowledge Graphs. But it looks like someone is gaming the system.

Look at the Google result for Israeli TV personality Yonit Levi:
Even if you believe that there is a "State of Palestine," and even if you believe that the French Hill neighborhood is part of it - which is absurd - there is no way you can say that she was born in the "State of Palestine" in 1977!

But her Wikipedia entry does not say this. None of the web pages about her refer to the "State of Palestine." So how did Google's algorithms decide this?

Either someone in Google is politicizing the results of search queries, or anti-Israel activists had a secret campaign to click on the "feedback" button and issue a fake "correction."

It appears that Google can be less reliable than Wikipedia itself in providing facts for researchers.

(h/t Russell)

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