Just tonight, I saw a Tweet come across my feed that seemed so incredibly stupid, I assumed it was a meme. Asof January 18th, 2020, if you ask Siri who the President of Israel is, the answer she spits out sounds like it was written by Hamas, or a woke college student which is basically one in the same group now. "Reuven Rivlin is the President of the Zionist occupation state."
This is my screen shot.
Yes, that's right. The nation of Israel which in the eyes of the rest of the world has been around since May 14th, 1948, first recognized in America by President Truman, and as of 2019 has 162 UN member states recognizing it as a state of is, apparently a Zionist occupation state.
Unsurprisingly, Siri's answer has a few people upset.
HEY @Apple WTF IS THIS???? pic.twitter.com/Bcjxzod9Zh
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) January 19, 2020
FYI I’m a stockholder too. EXPLAIN! @apple
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) January 19, 2020
As am I. This is reprehensible @Apple.
— Asa (@asascott1975) January 19, 2020
Yikes! Siri's lost her shit.
— Gingerbread Florida Man (@Junebagio) January 19, 2020
Hey everyone, ask #SIRI who is the president of #Israel. @Apple @AppleSupport pic.twitter.com/nzzD4zlkJU
— Mayer Fertig (@MayerFertig) January 19, 2020
I did this on my desktop (one asks verbally) and got the same (verbal) response.
— Charles X Proxy™ (@Charlemagne0814) January 19, 2020
Hey #Siri, WTF?
Can you correct this please @Apple and @tim_cook so I would continue feel comfortable using your products?
Note: screenshot was taken by me, using my #iPhone. pic.twitter.com/vOmJGnnCrm— Elad Strohmayer (@EladStr) January 19, 2020
With the Jewish community in America and abroad threatened by growing anti-Semitism, this is a needlessly divisive provocation. However, it isn't exactly Apple to blame for it but one user who changed a Wikimedia commons answer that Siri linked to. That's right. One user.
This is a brilliant Wikipedia hack and it has nothing to do with Siri, but with a link to a link to a link of data on the Wikimedia Commons:https://t.co/Ivkz9QBOfp https://t.co/rqpqxdHQ5p
— Russel Neiss (@russelneiss) January 19, 2020
Here's the change which apparently happened yesterday: https://t.co/3T3FC4mKRY
— Russel Neiss (@russelneiss) January 19, 2020
to the folks asking me why it hasn't been fixed yet --
it's likely that Siri caches some results to queries to speed response time....
probably will be fixed in another few hours assuming no one messes with the wikimedia data page again.....
— Russel Neiss (@russelneiss) January 19, 2020
And I love that the activist who made this change has managed to spark an international incident....
***slow clap***
— Russel Neiss (@russelneiss) January 19, 2020
Regardless of your thoughts on Israel, this should alarm everyone. The internet was meant to be decentralized, not centralized. The fact that one user on Wikipedia can change the answer to a question that then potentially appears on tens of millions of iPhones is "Black Mirror" levels of totalitarianism. And if it happened with this answer, what other bits of misinformation are we carrying around in our pockets?
At the time of publication, in response to public outrage, they have managed to change this back to normal.