After it was recently found that Google’s first search result for “did the Holocaust happen?” was a white supremacist site, Google has decided to change their search algorithm to remove Holocaust denial sites.
- Initially Google expressed reluctance to alter the search results, telling Fortune that they only remove content “in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines” despite being disagreeing with the message of such pages, but they’ve since changed the search results. Other similar antisemitic and racist search queries were also affected, though there is no catch-all solution. [Gizmodo & Digital Trends]
- Kevin Rose has a new app called Zero to help track intermittent fasting. [Medium]
- Facebook’s safety check-in feature, which it recently tweaked to be trigger algorithmically by trending news, activated in Thailand today following a small fireworks explosion. However, the security alert linked to unrelated 2015 events, and not news related to the actual incident in which a man threw firecrackers at a government building. It’s a relatively minor gaffe demonstrating the challenges Facebook must overcome while striving for a purely algorithm-driven news site. [The Verge]
- Kotaku unravels the mystery of Frog Fractions 2, a sequel to a viral online game. It is, evidently, hidden within another game. [Kotaku]