The publicly available Wikipedia changelog showed on May 24 that an anonymous user added ‘Nazism’ to the entry for California GOP. The rectification came via another editor about a week after.
There was a similar instance yesterday, May 31, and the rectification came a minute later, thanks to Google. It appeared in its information box and was screen-captured by Vice News during the afternoon.
Google did not just remove the term but actually removed the section Ideology under California GOP. It has even blamed Wikipedia for vandalism. Californian House Leader for Republicans said that the result of Google is a ‘disgrace.’
Cynthia Bryant, the executive director for the party, termed the result ‘libelous,’ adding that Google and Wikipedia should show more responsibility for the contents of what’s being published.
We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened here. This would have been fixed systematically once we processed the removal from Wikipedia, but when we noticed the vandalism we worked quickly to accelerate this process to remove the erroneous information. – Google
In a similar context, a couple of months ago, Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, said at the SXSW technology conference that her site would want to make Wikipedia one of its companions. It would include YouTube depending on Wikipedia entries, creating a ‘companion unit.’
The contents will be shown with conspiracy theory videos in an effort to support the truth. Wojcicki added that the aim was to provide alternative sources of info for encouraging users to explore multiple platforms conveniently and relevantly.
