Many media have reported on it, some uncritically headline-oriented, others skeptically delving deeper: It's about the artist who, according to his own statements, wanted to create a traffic jam on Google Maps with a handcart full of smartphones.

The most important thing about the handcart and Google Maps in brief:

  • Artist from Berlin claims to have manipulated Google Maps using 99 smartphones in a handcart
  • Some media reports are uncritical, Twitter users express criticism
  • Fact check cannot be carried out due to lack of transparency, outcome unclear

What happened according to Berlin artist Simon Weckert: He transported 99 smartphones in a handcart to create a virtual traffic jam on Google Maps. This activity made it possible to transform a street with a green traffic line into a red traffic jam.

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Weckert describes himself on Twitter as an “artist from Berlin with the focus in digital world – including everything related to code and electronics under the reflection on current social aspects.” With this action he wanted to point out that the virtual activities follow on Google Maps have very real, sometimes negative effects. Because it's now about navigation and routes that refer to Google Maps and the routes change as a result of this manipulation.

There is a video about this campaign that can be viewed publicly on YouTube and shows the entire campaign.

to the FAZ how he came up with the idea: At a demo on May 1st, he noticed that Google Maps showed a traffic jam for Kreuzberg (where the demo was) even though there were no vehicles on the road, just people .

Here he looked for the connection and came up with the idea that many smartphones that move slowly could simulate a traffic jam for the map service. He now wanted to take this situation to the extreme by slowly pulling 99 smartphones down the street in a handcart.

His results

According to the company's own information, all smartphones were activated and had a GPS connection switched on. Google Maps was also turned on and all devices had the same address set as their navigation destination.

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Weckert wants to show that a traffic jam was displayed on his route due to his manipulative behavior (which is shown in the video). According to his explanation, there will be consequences for Google Maps: For example, the map service would govern and reroute vehicles around the congestion zone, including via paths that would not be suitable as alternative routes.

Quite an important learning aspect in this: We trust (especially) Google too much. In everyday life, we simply assume that the results shown are correct. This line of thought is definitely worth agreeing with, as we also know the same behavior with search results relating to normal search engines.

As the market leader, Google simply has great power, which, interestingly enough, people rely on blindly. Be it with the search results or with route planning. Basically, you shouldn't forget that Google tracks Android users and therefore data is of course drawn from their behavior.

Criticisms of the “Google Maps Hack”

First of all: Of course it wasn't a real hack. Of course, the service was not hacked in the classic sense, but rather an attempt at manipulation using an artificially created situation was made or presented.

What is problematic for a fact check at this point is the lack of information on the comprehensibility of the situation. There is no documentation from (independent) third parties. There is no time information to be able to understand the traffic jam that, according to the artist, was staged. It was only stated that the campaign took place in the summer of 2019 and was now published to mark the 15th anniversary of Google Maps. This leaves many questions unanswered, which can also be found in the form of comments on his tweet.

Some users note that they already think the smartphones are fake ( compare ). The displays would appear unrealistically the same and would all have the same position, which is often not the case in reality. Different phones would like to have different levels of accuracy.

An article by Marcel Weiss on Neunetz.com critical of the campaign. The author wonders whether Google Maps shouldn't have noticed that something was wrong:

Only streets that are already empty can then be successfully transformed into traffic jams on Google Maps. Because busy roads send conflicting data back to Google Maps. Since slow speeds can have various reasons, but faster speeds clearly imply “no traffic jams” for the platform, the faster-moving cars with Google Maps on board are always likely to weigh heavier than the slow ones.

In his article, Weiss also points to the role of the media, which publishes the experiment in good faith and uncritically. In his eyes, the narrative of the campaign probably corresponds to the ideas of the media and is therefore not questioned enough.

The website Watson.ch also took a critical look at the topic and asked Google for a statement. Google initially responded with a fairly general statement, later became a bit more specific, but doesn't give a clear answer:

«Google is committed to providing maps that are as comprehensive, accurate, and user-friendly as possible.
Traffic information comes from a variety of sources, including aggregated and anonymized data from people who have location services enabled and contributions from the Google Maps community. Traffic data is continually updated and we only publish results if we have a high level of confidence in their accuracy.” Matthias Meyer, Google Switzerland

[…]

“Whether by car, cart or camel, we welcome creative use of Google Maps as it allows us to improve the way maps work over time.”

Max Hoppenstedt from the Südddeutsche Zeitung asked mobility researcher Ilja Radusch from the Fraunhofer Institute about this. Although he believes it is possible that the Google Maps traffic display can be influenced by 99 smartphones, he also calls the algorithm behind it opaque (“magic and voodoo for outsiders”). Hoppenstedt also brings up the problem of the lack of transparency in this experiment:

Whether Weckert succeeded in manipulating the traffic jam display, as he claims in his video, cannot be verified with absolute certainty.

Fact check: Uncertain!

Of course, without transparent information it is not possible to come to a conclusion. As already mentioned, there is a lack of documentation from independent third parties, representations of the preparations, monitoring of the results and time information in order to be able to reconstruct the situation. The video and the artist's statements are neither sufficient for verification nor for falsification .

However, where we agree with all other reporting media is Google's market power and the often unrestricted trust that users have in the company.

This means: You can be manipulated by Google from inside and outside ( Amnesty has already criticized Google, among others). Google itself has the power to present users with results in a certain way, but at the same time it may also be possible to cleverly manipulate Google itself so that results are not displayed correctly. At least the handcart campaign is intended to show the latter.

And quite apart from that: the artist Simon Weckert probably uses an iPhone. At least when it comes to his activities on Twitter. This is a fact:

Google Maps tweet
Google Maps tweet

 


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )