Type ‘anti-national’, Google Maps will take you to JNU

Ask for sedition or patriotism; Google directs you to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in both cases. Meanwhile, vice-president of JNU Students’ Union claimed that the propaganda was pre-planned by RSS and now they are again branding the university as anti-national.

Since Friday afternoon, social media was abuzz that Google is directing users to JNU if they search for ‘Anti-National’ on its map but later a reality check revealed that several key words like ‘patriotism’, ‘sedition’, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ etc too will land you to JNU on Google Maps. Not only this, but if you search ‘anti-national university in India’, again you will be again landed in JNU.

Explaining the reason behind the phenomena, Pawan Duggal, cyber expert told Millennium Post: “Google search engine is based on automatic algorithm and when something is searched on Google, it picks up the keywords and match it with the popular words to show the result. Typing anti-national or other key words were used during the JNU controversy  and due to error ambulance Google is showing JNU as the result.”

Meanwhile, Shehla Rashid Vora, who is vice-president of JNU Students Union said: “It is a serious issue and we will hold a meeting on it to send an official communication to Google in this regard. The thing is, Google locations are linked with the user reviews. We have been protesting against the branding of an institution as anti-national and now the search giant has gone a step ahead in certifying that.”

She added: “RSS trolls have systematically flooded the Google reviews of the place (JNU) with tags like anti-national, terrorist, etc. And then, when the algorithm was successfully manipulated, they took screenshots and are now circulating it. This is all based on algorithms, which RSS is expert at manipulating, just like they doctored videos related to JNU.”

JNU has been in the news since last month over an event against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. Three students — Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya —  were arrested in a sedition case, kicking a debate on nationalism across the country. They are now out on bail.

This is not the first time Google has made such a glitch. Last year, the users were directed to White House when they searched for keyword “nigger house” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name reflected in a search of top 10 criminals. In both cases, Google had apologised.