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fact-check:wurst-is-not-a-virus

Fact-Check: Is the Wurst Client a Virus?

Question: Is the Wurst hacked client a virus?

Answer: No, of course not! Wurst has been around since 2014 an is trusted by millions of users around the world. It is also open source, meaning that anyone can see the full source code on GitHub1) and see exactly what it is doing.

Google's Algorithm Accidentally Spreads Misinformation

If you google almost anything related to the Wurst Client, you will sometimes see an FAQ box like this, with of the questions being “Is the Wurst hacked client a virus?”.

Screenshot of Google's automatically generated FAQ box.

Unfortunately, the algorithm at Google that automatically generates these FAQ boxes has selected a very dubious claim as its official answer.

Screenshot of dubious claim displayed as the official answer in Google's FAQ box.

At first, this might seem quite alarming: The official Minecraft Wiki saying that Wurst might be a virus?!

However, if you click on the link below the answer to see its source, it quickly becomes obvious that the Minecraft Wiki never actually said this.

https://minecraft-archive.fandom.com/f/p/3111877215257119098

Instead, Google has pulled this result from a comment, left by an anonymous commenter in 2017 on the Minecraft Wiki's community forum. Many other commenters in the same thread have already pointed out that this claim is false, yet (at the time of writing) Google is still displaying it as the official answer.

Google, You're Drunk, Go Home

An obscure comment from over 5 years ago, left by someone who has probably never used Wurst or even glanced at the source code, is obviously not a credible source. However, if you know a little bit about the way Google's algorithm works, it's easy to see how it might have ended up selecting this as an “official” answer.

Google uses a system called domain authority, which basically means any website that has a lot of in-depth content about a certain topic is considered an authority about that subject. The Minecraft Wiki obviously has a lot of content about Minecraft and Google has correctly identified it as an expert website about Minecraft-related topics.

However, while a human can instantly see that this random comment thread is not actually a part of the Minecraft Wiki, Googlebot only saw that it was published under the minecraft-archive.fandom.com domain. Thus, Google's algorithm sees this like any other content on the Minecraft Wiki and actually thinks that the Minecraft Wiki has accused us of being malicious.

Giving Feedback

It's a pretty obvious error once you click on the source link, but not everyone is going to do that. Sometimes people are distracted, or they don't actually know that the link at the bottom is where that Google result actually comes from.

Every FAQ box on Google has a little “Give Feedback” button in the bottom right corner. While we can only hope that Google will eventually fix this bug, giving them feedback might help to accelerate this process a little.

Screenshot of Google's feedback form with a sample message.

If you would like to submit the same report, here is a copy-paste-able version of the message:

The Wurst Client is not a virus and the official Minecraft Wiki never claimed otherwise. The displayed claim is from an anonymous commenter on a Minecraft Wiki Q&A forum. The commenter clearly has no idea what they are talking about, yet their claim is displayed here as if it was an official statement from the Minecraft Wiki itself.

It shouldn't be necessary for more than one person to submit this report. But then again, it shouldn't be possible for Google to mislabel a random 5 year old comment as an official statement from the Minecraft Wiki.

fact-check/wurst-is-not-a-virus.txt · Last modified: 2023/01/06 01:21 by alexander01998