Thanks to Google, anybody on the Internet can suggest changes to its maps. As a flat out troll, an anonymous user thought that Theodor-Heuss-Platz in Germany should be named after the murderous Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, and not its first federal president. There’s a small group of Google assistants that moderate all submissions to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, but apparently someone thought the change was correct and made it visible to the public. So, for three days, the park was called “Adolf Hitler Plaz” in Google Maps.
And in a flash, there was backlash. All Nazi issues are taken seriously, especially by Germans, and LandkartenBlog pinpointed the discrepancy. User “Anonym5394” suggested the name, and moderator “Vishali” (who has approved over 24,000 edits in the past year and a half) accepted the changes. He loved it so much that he made it the primary name, and not the alternative as “Anonym5394” had suggested. After a few days, users noticed the change and it was eventually changed by another moderator.
Google has since issued an apology, but for future instances, they might want to evaluate their moderators a tad bit more carefully before handing them the position.
[via TechCrunch]
