Remember last week, when a website posing as NBC* wrote that Yelp was suing Comedy Central’s “South Park” for $10 million? Recall that it fooled many of us online, Google included?
No, There’s No ‘Breaking Bad’ Season 6. Yes, It’s Still Really Easy to Fool Google.
Jesse Pinkman could figure this one out. But Google can’t.
AMC
It happened again.
This time, it is with a farcical (horribly written) article from the same site, NBC.com.co, claiming that Vince Gilligan, the show creator behind AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” is returning the show for a sixth season. Not true.
Might seem true, however, if you went to Google inquiring about the sixth season of “Breaking Bad.” The satire site is, as of Wednesday afternoon, atop the search results, with the false NBC tag.
We reached out to Google for comment. The search engine’s complex algorithm privileges popular content, which this satire probably is (it’s blowing up on Twitter), but claims to label satire as such. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Google has recently begun handing over the reins of its search algorithm to an artificial intelligence system for the first time. RankBrain, the system’s nickname, now handles a “very large fraction” of the search queries. Apparently this one snuck by.
In Google’s defense, the satire also managed to trick actual NBC employees.
https://twitter.com/arlowhite/status/659326294010822656
* Disclosure: NBCU is an investor in Vox Media, which owns Re/code.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
