When your google search is about some fact, Google often gives you an answer directly.

This is called a Fact Box (see example in attached image).

Many of us just assume that this is the correct answer.

But it is often wrong.

Thread.
Let's start with Poonam Yadav's height, which, for a while, Google thought was 10 feet. (This has now been fixed) https://twitter.com/_logik/status/1324061973789634560
Google thinks that Central Park's value is 39 trillion dollars. (It still shows this value).

Check out this lovely thread of how that value has come from a mistake made in a random comment by a random person on the internet on a Guardian article https://twitter.com/davidbauer/status/1317452038658281472
Who cares about irrelevant factoids like the value of Central Park or the height of Poonam Yadav, right?

Well, Google makes mistakes like this with medical information.

Here it is picking its "facts" from a predatory fake journal https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1315931067526733825
And @_logik points out that Poonam Yadav's Height is still ten feet. They just fixed the use case that went viral, using a hack. As I said: "Cobbled together" https://twitter.com/_logik/status/1327227654559264768
Misinformation is all around us, and the misinformers are learning all the different ways in which to misuse the modern web and social media infrastructure to mislead us.

I'm teaching a course on this for for 12-16-year-olds. Details here: https://twitter.com/NGKabra/status/1327234588167479296
You can follow @NGKabra.
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