There’s no proof that Devin Patrick Kelley was connected to antifa or any other left-wing organization before he killed 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on Sunday.
But if you Googled his name on Monday, the third suggested search result that came up was “devin patrick kelley antifa.”
And the third hit on those terms was “DEVIN PATRICK KELLEY ANTIFA CONFIRMED *PROOF*.”
That hit wasn’t a news story about the Texas shooter but a YouTube video that portrayed the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history as an incident that was pushed by the anti-fascist movement in concert with the “George Soros Communist Revolution.”
READ MORE: Texas church shooter Devin Kelley fired at least 450 founds
The searches are just the latest indication as to how fake news can proliferate in the wake of a major news event like the Sutherland Springs shooting.
They’re also a sign that there’s more work for major websites to do after YouTube revised its algorithm following criticism that the video-sharing site surfaced conspiracy theory videos in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting.
Coverage of the Texas shooting on Globalnews.ca:
The appearance of a YouTube video touting Kelley’s alleged antifa links isn’t the only example that has heaped criticism on Google for results that have popped up after the Texas massacre.
The Guardian reported on Monday that Google’s “Popular on Twitter” function showed a number of tweets touting unverified claims that Kelley was a member of a pro-Bernie Sanders group, and that he was a convert to Islam.
Authorities have not identified a motive for the shooting, it noted.
The results were enough to stir a company response that was tweeted by Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for search.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The statement said search results from Twitter that appear on Google are based on the site’s “ranking algorithms” which change “second by second and represent a dynamic conversation that is going on in near real-time.”
“For the queries in question, they are not the first results we show on the page,” it added.
“Instead, they appear after news sources, including our Top Stories carousel which we have been constantly updating.”
In the statement, the company pledged to “continue to look at ways to improve how we rank tweets that appear in search.”
When conspiracy theories showed up high in results for “Las Vegas shooting,” YouTube changed its search algorithms so that more established news organizations such as CNN, BBC and The New York Times showed up higher.
Such changes were reportedly being prepared for months before the shooting happened but they were accelerated following criticism over the results.
- With files from Rahul Kalvapalle