Google gives up on data voids

A deep learning model they built to analyze the queries suggested that the warnings should have appeared between 29 and 58 times as often as they did in practice. For motivated conspiracy peddlers, they were easy to evade: just adding quotation marks or a single letter to a query was typically enough to make the banner disappear.

The study also found that conspiracy peddlers could ensure that no banners were displayed by including a site operator in the URL in the links they share. Site operators (such as “site:platformer.news”) direct Google to only search one specific domain. Google likely did not trigger warnings on such searches because it assumes anyone sophisticated e... See more