Safari’s Siri Suggested Websites Feature Caught Promoting Fake News

• Siri Suggested websites on Apple Safari have been caught recommending low-quality conspiracy websites and fake news.
• The suggestions feature shows up at the top of the browser’s search bar for Safari users.
• Apple has already addressed the issue, and users no longer see the low-quality suggestions.

If you are a Safari user and have noticed that the Siri suggested websites at the top of your browser’s search bar have been weird, it’s because Safari has been actively recommending low-quality conspiracy and fake news websites. A report has revealed that Safari users are troubled by the onslaught of fake news, misinformation and conspiracy websites on the web browser.

Users have reported conspiracy videos and websites that cover topics like the Holocaust and Pizzagate without any valid facts or information. Searching for controversial topics led to a lot of unreliable sources being listed on the results via the Siri Suggested Websites feature.

Apple has already addressed the issue and users should no longer see such low-quality suggestions from Siri appearing anytime soon. Apple resolved the issue by changing how Siri’s algorithm and human curation works. The offensive suggestions should not appear for anyone after an internal update to the browser for all platforms.

Image Courtesy of Buzzfeed

Buzzfeed revealed in its report “The search algorithms directed us toward low-quality websites, message boards, or YouTube conspiracy videos rather than reliable information or debunks about those topics. Meanwhile, Google does not feature such unreliable pages in its top search results.”

Apple was using Bing search results for a long time before moving to Google’s search results. However, searching controversial topics on Google’s own search engine does not lead to any conspiracy websites being suggested at the top of the search results. It confirms that the Siri Suggested Websites feature was bugged at Apple’s end.

Fake news and misinformation have led to a lot of debate in the recent past with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp being laden with posts that spread misinformation. WhatsApp recently appointed a representative to handle complaints in India while Facebook has been actively banning pages that are guilty of spreading misinformation.

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