Americans report Google’s tone-deaf fireworks animation over news of mass shooting

Google celebrates the American Fourth of July holiday with animated fireworks that light up its page and images of the American flag. It might seem like a harmless feature, but multiple American Twitter users have reported that the fireworks animation landed on their Top Stories page—which showed news of the recent mass shooting.

It seems like a dark parody of sorts—seeing happy animations of fireworks over a layout of news showing the recent mass shooting in a northern suburb of Chicago. The shooting, which took place during a Fourth of July parade, left six dead and sent more than two dozen people to hospitals.

Googling the Fourth of July here in Malaysia, I wasn’t given the firework animation feature. However, the page of search results left me with a Wiki explanation of what the Fourth of July is, as well as a few videos of the recent Chicago mass shooting.

FYI, the American Fourth of July is celebrated in the U.S. because it was “the day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress“. However, a lot of Americans reportedly don’t feel as patriotic due to several reasons—including the June 24 Supreme Court ruling on abortion, children in the US worrying about about shootings, the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in the world… amongst other things. And with the amount of mass shootings reported, the lack of patriotism makes sense.

A Twitter user reported that the animation keeps going even when you want to type something else. So, if you want to look up the mass shooting, the animation would still play—which makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.

“This Google animation fireworks & American flags over searches for “fourth of July” really sells how horrifically murderously dystopian things are…” wrote another user on Twitter.

[ SOURCE, IMAGE SOURCE ]