I’m Andrea and I have a strange problem with Google that I’m wondering if any of you here can advise about. It’s affecting several people with the same name as me, whose lives are being impacted.
In January 2021, I published a non-fiction book about a difficult, traumatic topic: my victimization and sex crimes that I witnessed toward other women. Because I am a victim, I chose not to put a photo of myself online. In fact, I have never ever taken a selfie nor had a photo of myself online.
Four months after I published my book, Google created a knowledge panel for me and, because I didn’t have a photo online, they just grabbed a photo of another Andrea Vassell who lives in Canada and displayed it alongside my book and claimed this woman was the author. After spending weeks sending feedback and trying to get help from Google support, they finally deleted the woman’s photo, but then promptly replaced it with another Andrea Vassell who is a pastor in New York. She, the pastor in New York, wrote to me that she has been “attacked” because people believe she is me.
I contacted Google again and asked them to please delete the knowledge panel because I did not have a photo on the Internet; therefore, any photo that they displayed alongside my book would be of the wrong person. By this time, some of the characters in my book were also being negatively affected because now it seemed they had harmed a pastor of a church.
I kept contacting Google and finally at the end of May, the knowledge panel was deleted, only to return a week later with a photo of a man who had been fired for his threats toward me. That photo remained until July 2021, and was then replaced with the pastor in New York again, although this time it’s a different photo of her.
I know that I am not a celebrity or an important person, but I spent two years writing a very difficult and personal book and to have a large corporation come along and continuously and consistently misrepresent my work and cause distress to others is becoming exceedingly stressful for everyone involved.
I contacted the Federal Trade Commission and they told me to contact the BBB and IC3.gov. I received an automated response from BBB and I don’t understand the reasoning behind contacting IC3.gov. I am currently working on a second book which I assume will be added to this knowledge panel with the photo of the wrong woman.
I would greatly appreciate any input about how to get this corrected so that I and others can move on. I know this is probably just an algorithmic glitch, but it’s affecting not only me but several others, and at this point I have no idea how to get Google to take it seriously.
As others suggested, this needs to hit the court and be brought to the notice of regulators too. What if one day this deceptive "knowledge box" gets someone lynched? Am sure this has already happened if the lens is broad enough. Nevertheless they cannot be allowed to associate random photos with unrelated content without repercussions. At the very least they should have a channel where the general public can reach them and they take prompt action based on the merits of the case.
It's laughable how feudal, unaccountable, unreachable and unregulated the tech industry is, while they have a deliberately cultivated oversized impact on society.
“We, and I personally, believe
very strongly that more information
is better, even if it’s wrong,”
said Eric Schmidt, executive
chairman of Google[1]
It is distressing (but not really surprising) to hear they are having disastrous consequences about more complex and obviously ambiguous queries, queries that no so-called "AI" should ever be answering, without a prominent disclaimer that the information was generated by a fuzzy-logic computer program without the ability to actually comprehend the topic at hand, and that therefore the information may be completely and utterly incorrect. (Such a disclaimer would obviously destory this "feature", though.)
I've always charitably assumed that Schmidt was trying to make some point that is less insane than the quote first sounds, like "correct information will eventually triumph over incorrect information if you just give people all the 'information' you can". But Google increasingly offers me information in ways that seem like he and they just, like, literally meant that quote as it reads.
(Also, even if that was the point he was trying to make, it's been thoroughly disproven over the past several years.)
[1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/17/google-eric-schmidt-cyb...
Even one person's life inconvenienced is one too many. People working at Google: where is your conscience? If one of your family member was affected like this by a service provider who you have no control over, how would you feel?
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
Then post it online and claim it as your own. That way nobody gets hurt and you can move on.
Should you have to do this? No of course not, but sometimes it's easier to win a small battle.
Good luck.
As with many things that touch on legal matters submitting paperwork in this manner can be tremendously helpful. Having a police report, or having submitted a complaint to IC3 and contacting a companies legal department (mentioning that the report has been submitted) can provoke a stronger and faster response than you might get elsewhere.
In addition because Google took action to remove the panel previously there is a stronger argument to be made that they know what they are doing is wrong. So not only do you have multiple parties who have been either impersonated, misrepresented, or harmed you have an actor that arguably has admitted fault and demonstrated the ability to remedy the situation.
We allow for knowledge panels to be claimed. I checked, and yours isn't. This explains more how to do that: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534902
When a panel is claimed, then when we get feedback about change requests or possible issues, we know they are coming from a verified source and can work better to resolve the issues. This explains more about that process: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534842
Normally people just don't like the image we show, so we have a mechanism for them to upload a preferred image. That's very easy to use. But in your case, I understand your reasons for not wanting to have an image used at all. I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed.
I'll check on this further, but right now, I see that no image is being shown at all. So I suspect that we've gotten the feedback here somehow and taken action to block any image from showing at all. But again, I'll check on this.
Even if you tweet at Danny Sullivan @dannysullivan they probably can't/won't help you. But that's the most direct method I can think of. https://mobile.twitter.com/PatentScholar/status/142519790286...
One way to mitigate inaccurate stuff being online about you is to try to get more accurate info ranked as the top search. This HN post may help but you might also need to do an SEO blog post or something.
I'm sorry you are going through this.
Name collisions of somewhat uncommon but not unique names were a thing long before there was a Web, much less a Google. A friend of mine in NYC shared a name with a local individual who got into a very public spat with the owner of a local sports team. My friend literally got death threats left on his answering machine.
I'm not sure what the answer is. People should probably think more carefully about putting their True Name out there attached to writing and social media presences if they don't otherwise want to have a public presence. But that's pretty useless advice retrospectively and, of course, doesn't help the people confused with someone who does want a public presence.
It's easy to lay this on Google. But if you share a name with a few other people, especially if one of them is notorious in some way, you're going to get conflated with them in searches by any search provider if e.g. a recruiter plugs your name in--so just hope you're not likely to be confused with them.
They're displaying my full name, along with an invalid phone number at my address on Google Maps. That means my name has been on multiple maps used by others using Google Maps as a map source.
I've tried contacting them through their "remove my data form" but they don't reply. I would like to try something else before reporting them to the authorities and risking getting my Google account shut down.
The practical one is to choose an image (abstract icon, conceptual photo, artistic silhouette that could be considered representative of you but is not you) and put it on your personal website as your photo, along with any other social media presences you have. Knowledge Base isn't wired, at a very fundamental level of its design, to understand the notion that somebody would have no photos of themselves online and be known by people at the same time. The system is "thirsty" to fill that gap in data, and will continue to do so, forever, no matter how many times Google intervenes to manually break the link. If you feed it something intentionally to fill that gap, it will be satisfied (the system can understand a concept like the artist Sia not revealing her face in public as part of her aesthetic... It doesn't understand somebody who has no photo whatsoever).
The alternative is to tell your story to media outlets and be very loud about this problem. You are not the only one in the world who wants to be online without providing a photo, and it's not "okay" that Google doesn't understand your use case and is building products that don't understand your use case. A public discourse about this issue is the only way that Google will be incentivized to change the fundamental design of Knowledge Base and similar products. The bad news is that will be an uphill climb and take a long time (and, to be perfectly level, isn't guaranteed to bear fruit... There's no guarantee enough people care about this problem to make a big enough noise for the problem to be addressed :( ).
Sounds exactly how they handle false positives in the Google Safe Browsing list.
I get that they want to avoid costs by automating everything, but if the automation has already failed for something it should not be allowed to modify that again without human review.
I’ve had people think it’s me, several times, and likely more times than I know.
I’ve contacted google a few times, but like with most things google, it’s just a black hole.
This is likely not exactly the same, but you can hopefully be able to either request this yourself, or guide the pastor to fill in this request for possibly removing some of this data. I know this isn't exactly what you likely need, but hopefully it helps some.
Your post has probably been seen by a few dozen senior engineers at Google and I'm sure someone is already working to fix the issue.
I assume this is what happened: Google associated a local sports team with a stadium (old) that they used to play at, and then somehow associated the new stadium with the old stadium. The names of the stadiums were different, addresses different, they were miles away from each other, addresses on the team website were all at the new stadium... but the knowledge panel treated them as one and the same and the location ... the location of the old stadium, and the panel even swapped names here and there.
I used their feedback widget a number of times to notify them. Then for a day it would be fixed .... and somehow whatever script or 'ai' would takeover again and connect the wrong dots again and the address and names would be a jumble / wrong. I kept checking it as it was pretty amusing.
I assume someone at google had to eventually intervene, maybe many times to get things right, perhaps identify a wonky data set or something.
I assumed it only got fixed because it was a major location / sports team.
It is probably amazing tech behind the scenes but the associations / mistakes are just way too high to be left to the status quo of "no customer service, too bad for you if it is wrong". The human consequences in some cases is just too high.
Here is the link maybe it's interesting to you. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cristina-Fernandez-Score...
The first thing that needs to be done is that YOU need to claim the KP. It appears that it's not claimed right now, and you can have control over what appears there (and suggest edits/changes/updates). If you haven't claimed the KP, then you can just leave feedback that seems to just go into a "black hole" and it's never addressed.
I know there are ways legally to deal with this, but the best way to deal with it is to claim the Knowledge Panel.
Then, there are ways to increase the knowledge that is in the Knowledge Graph so that the information there is not confusing--they're reaching for a photo, for example, and there are ways to overcome that. For example, you can use other photos (even they're not photos of yourself) to get them to populate on the KG and of someone else.
The issue here is the Knowledge Graph doesn't have enough information about you, so it's just taking the next most "prominent" data that it has. You can help define the information in the Knowledge Graph by feeding it information. You don't need to be "fighting" the KG, you should be doing quite the opposite: give it the right information so it's correct.
The Knowledge Graph is not all controlled by Google--other search engines use it, such as Bing. The issue appears to be with Google's Knowledge Panel, but the issue is actually with the Knowledge Graph itself, and not Google.
The Knowledge Graph is made up of sources (see the list here: https://kalicube.pro/trusted-sources) and by working on your own KG entry and feeding it more information, you'll be strengthening your own KG entry for your name, and all these issues with confusion and the wrong information being displayed will go away.
There's really no need to do anything legally around this, it's just a case that the KG doesn't have enough information about to make the right decisions on what to display. I don't see the FTC, BBB or IC3 helping in any way. Fastest way to correct this is to feed the KG the right information.
Let somebody create a pseudo realistic drawing of a imaginary person which is "not you" and try to make Google use that. The not the drawing looks like it could be a photo with a filter the better.
I have no idea if this will work, and it's not right that such a think might be needed but the idea is " if Google wants a picture give it a picture (of a person which doesn't exist)".
I don't know if it would work because I suspect Google has algorithms to detect faces and won't let you set something that doesn't look like a "real" face to your profile picture.
And setting a random stock image photo of someone seems like a bad idea. There's software out there that can generate a fake face that might pass the Google "real" face test, but for how long? When Google changes their algorithm, will that face get rejected and then you're back to square one.
Doing ridiculous things is often the only way to deal with ridiculous problems. This seems to fit all your constraints (i.e. your face isn't visible online, and Google stops bothering innocent bystanders). That it isn't really you - who is to know? What is the harm?
Two things: there needs to be a photo online, even something as simple “no photo for this person exists”.
Take this opportunity to put out an artwork. Something that takes your silhouette and paints in colors going across. With facial features changed to emphasize the subjects you write about. Make this the cover of your book or something. Put it up on Amazon profile.
I don’t know why this was not mentioned before. Ridiculous!
I know this isn't a solution, but it might be worthwhile to reach out to your representatives and your state's Attorney General office.
https://www.meritalk.com/articles/sen-wyden-to-reintroduce-a...
Searching from the UK and I'm still seeing a picture of the reverend.
I've clicked the 'feedback' button and send a note to Google to flag the issue and suggest anyone else who wants to help does too.
It's not clear from your post whether this has already been tried, but I would expect the best thing to do is take ownership by clicking "Claim this knowledge panel" and working forward from there.
Can one claim and opt out of knowledge panel at all?
My knowledge panel is bare except for my birth date which is correct but not something I want to go around sharing publicly.
Can I remove my birth date from the knowledge panel?
Should I claim the panel and try to add generic information or just ignore it? I would much prefer the 2nd option.
From the google knowledge graph wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Knowledge_Graph
> There is no official documentation of how the Google Knowledge Graph is implemented...It has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution or citation.
The Google Knowledge Graph is built on an internally defined semantics or ontology, which specifies different kinds of things represented online, like human beings. It's built on Leibniz-inspired companies like the ironically-named Freebase, which they acquired in 2010. They are cagey about the implementation, because they doubtless have some "secret-sauce" ontology. Feels weird when Google Engineers are in charge of defining essences.
Google is trawling the Web for content they don't own to produce a derived work in the form of a knowledge panel, no?
On the other, I would ask: Isn't this better? Having someone else's photo and location attached to your work means you would never be identified in public, not receive death threats, nor be at risk of swatting. And you get to keep collecting royalties on your duly attributed work in the meantime. It sounds like a blessing in disguise.
Please note, I'm not trying to belittle your experience or your work. What you went through was incredibly traumatic and deserves to be written about. I just fail to see the harm in this. If you really want to be recognized for your work, the fix is simple. Just supply Google with your photo and they will rectify it on the page.
Likely Google has avenues for handling their requests to keep them on side.
I hope someone here can help you solve this issue. I won't be surprised if you got more press coverage that it will help.
You were close to the root of the problem when you wrote "...to have a large corporation come along and continuously and consistently misrepresent my work and cause distress..." - the thing which is misrepresenting you and causing distress is an unmoral computer program. (Unmoral: Lacking awareness of moral standards, in contrast to immoral, intentionally rejecting morality, or amoral, aware of but acting without regard to morals.) The computer program doesn't have a concept of distress or harm. All it knows to do is to display its best guess of a portrait of an author when someone searches for the author's name. It has no ability - was not programmed with the ability - to understand that sometimes there may not be a photo of the person or that sometimes this is not good. That's still anthropomorphizing the program - it does not understand anything and does not know what is good. It just creates knowledge boxes with photos to accompany searches for author names, always.
When you contacted Google, the person who responded to you may not have been a person - instead, the entity behind your email was likely another computer program, designed to handle complaints about faulty knowledge boxes. If it was a human being (unlikely), they did not go to the source code file for the website google.com/search?q=andrea and delete the \ What other comments seem to be suggesting is that tech companies ought not run algorithms that work well 99% of the time, nor fault handling algorithms that handle 99% of the faults effectively. I'd take a slightly more nuanced approach and suggest that instead, programmers and spec authors should consider fault handling first, and expected operation second. It's very simple to follow the expected path, when you have to handle forks in the road it does get exponentially more complicated. Eventually, you always need a "defer to human" option. It would be prohibitively difficult (expensive) to defer to a human every time, or even 1% of the time, but that option needs to be available.
Hopefully.