Prankster vandals with a fine appreciation for animal traits may have taken it upon themselves Monday to update the Democrat logo on the Google results page for “Democratic Party”–from the tired old red, white, and blue donkey to a more suitable rat.
Search for “Democratic Party” in Google right now. pic.twitter.com/QDr7gKsQkZ
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 16, 2020
The apparent hack remained in place for at least 90 minutes before being corrected by Google’s emergency responders.
Interestingly, a Google spokesperson told Mashable that the Democrat Party has only themselves to blame because they hadn’t claimed their “Knowledge Panel,” an info box on the right side of the search results page that Google explains is “meant to help you get a quick snapshot of information on a topic based on Google’s understanding of available content on the web.”
“Most images in Knowledge Panels are automatically generated from pages on the web,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed response. “When errors are reported, we fix them quickly. We encourage people and organizations to claim their Knowledge Panels, which allows them to select a representative image.”
It’s not known who may have manipulated the Knowledge Panel result, or if in fact it was some kind of random, algorithmic, karmic retribution for an incident in 2018 in which Nazism was listed on a Google Knowledge Panel as the ideology of the California Republican Party.
It’s easy to speculate that a growing number of online comments about Dem politicians may have influenced the great Googly Moogly behind the curtain to choose a more apropos symbol than the donkey to reveal enlightenment to those seeking wisdom and insight.
David Adams