Google encourages Star Trek: Picard fans to read latest news on neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer
Google recommended Star Trek fans read an article on neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.
The recommendation came as part of Google's news feature, which is supposed to recommend stories and websites that might be of interest to users, based on their previous browsing.
The tool appears to have picked up that certain people were interested in Picard, the recently released Star Trek series. But it then directed those people to look at an article on the far-right website, popping up a link on their screen.
The article was advancing a conspiracy theory that everyone talking positively about the series in comment sections were being paid by the studio behind it.
The Daily Stormer regularly pushes white supremacist stories as well as Holocaust denial and other neo-Nazi talking points.
When the problem was raised on Twitter, Google's Danny Sullivan, who works as the company's search liaison, explained that the issue had arisen in Google's discover feed.
He said that content in that feed was supposed to keep to the same rules as Google News, meaning that such content should be filtered out. But he explained that the problem had arisen because the site had moved to a different site.
"Our apologies for this," he wrote. "The site had previously been blocked from showing in Google News surfaces, including Discover, for violating our news content policies. It shifted domains.
"We should've caught the change but didn't. We're taking steps to avoid this in the future."
The Daily Stormer has been forced to move around the internet as it attempts to stay online. Various companies that provide the infrastructure that keep it on the web have refused to support it because of the views espoused on the site.
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