Following a deadly attack on Indian occupation forces in Kashmir, Google image searches for the “world’s best toilet paper” are now returning images of the Pakistani flag.
The attack left at least 40 soldiers dead –the deadliest attack on Indian forces in Kashmir since the insurgency against Indian rule began. Pakistan-based Islamist group Jaish-e-Mohammad said it was behind the attack.
The flag-toilet paper connection emerged soon after the 14 February attack in a few blogs commenting on the attack and became a trending topic on social media over the weekend. The number of people searching for the connection may have also influenced how Google returns results.
Google said it was looking into the issue but had “not found any evidence that Google Images was ranking the Pakistani flag in response to this particular search.”
“While we continue to investigate the matter, we have not found any evidence that Google Images was ranking the Pakistani flag in response to this particular search. Many news outlets wrote about an old screenshot from a meme website that is inconsistent with our UI and dates back to 2017, and we have not seen any independent verification that these results ever appeared as depicted,” the Google statement said.
“Since these news stories published, images from those articles are now ranking for this query, as the pages contain words relevant to the search.”
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