Last but not least: The Internet lies - now and then (2)
The story has already made the rounds, but it's still worth taking a closer look at it based on recent findings. We are talking about the fall in United Airlines' share price due to a false news item on Google News.
The story has already made the rounds, but it's still worth taking a closer look at it based on recent findings. We are talking about the fall in United Airlines' share price due to a false news item on Google News.
Sometime on Sunday night, September 7, a reader retrieves the news about the bankruptcy of United Airlines in 2002 from the archives on the website of the Sun Sentinel provincial newspaper. Because there is otherwise hardly any traffic on the site, the news item, once clicked on, ends up in the "Most read" section and thus on the radar of Google's search robot. It doesn't realize that the message is already six years old - archive messages are not dated - and assigns it the current date. So far, so bad.
The news ends up on Google News, one of the most visited websites on the planet. A stock market analyst saw it there on Monday morning and included it in a newsletter for the Bloomberg news agency. By 11.00 a.m., the UAL share had already lost a lot of ground. Having lost almost 76 percent of its value, the sale is suspended. In the meantime, however, following the clarification of the misinformation, the share is back on track.
The point of the mishap, which was ultimately caused by a search robot, is the fact that the massive price drop was not triggered by humans but by computers, which automatically dumped UAL shares en masse based on a new risk assessment. To be continued.
Sometime on Sunday night, September 7, a reader retrieves the news about the bankruptcy of United Airlines in 2002 from the archives on the website of the Sun Sentinel provincial newspaper. Because there is otherwise hardly any traffic on the site, the news item, once clicked on, ends up in the "Most read" section and thus on the radar of Google's search robot. It doesn't realize that the message is already six years old - archive messages are not dated - and assigns it the current date. So far, so bad.
The news ends up on Google News, one of the most visited websites on the planet. A stock market analyst saw it there on Monday morning and included it in a newsletter for the Bloomberg news agency. By 11.00 a.m., the UAL share had already lost a lot of ground. Having lost almost 76 percent of its value, the sale is suspended. In the meantime, however, following the clarification of the misinformation, the share is back on track.
The point of the mishap, which was ultimately caused by a search robot, is the fact that the massive price drop was not triggered by humans but by computers, which automatically dumped UAL shares en masse based on a new risk assessment. To be continued.
