Typing a combination of a racial slur and the word “house” into Google Maps is leading to the White House for some users, according to USA Today.
Google has reportedly apologized for the incident and told the Washington Post that they are working to fix it.
“Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused,” a Google spokesperson stated.
“Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly.”
Howard University alumni Bomani Buckhalter reportedly told the Huffington Post that friends told him that searching the N word with house in Google Maps pulls up 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Some users have reported that the search takes them to other locations, including Disney World and historically black colleges and universities like Howard University and Morehouse College, according to the website AJC.com.
“It is location-based, so for some of the students that are not currently in D.C., the search result was different. However, even if you’re not in D.C., (N word) House Washington D.C.’ shows the same results,” stated Buckhalter.
This reportedly isn’t the first time Google Maps has been used in an offensive manner. Google had reportedly previously shut down its Map Maker function after a user drew an Android icon urinating on an Apple logo.
“We have been experiencing escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months. The most recent incident was particularly troubling and unfortunate. A strong user in our community chose to go and create a large scale prank on the Map,” Pavithra Kanakarajan, a Google Map Maker team member wrote in a post after the Google Maps hack.
As the problems seem to be occurring because of Google’s crowd-editing system, where users can edit details about maps and searchers, Google will reportedly be suspending the function.
“We are temporarily disabling editing on Map Maker starting today, while we continue to work towards making the moderation system more robust,” wrote Kanakarajan.
