Simon Weckert managed to make Google Maps believe there was a traffic jam when in fact there were hardly any cars, and we already know how he did it.
Google Maps is one of the most useful tools that can be used in a city for various purposes. It can be used to carry out tasks as simple as finding nearby restaurants, to obtaining much more complex information, such as how much pollution there is in a place. Among these functions, it is interesting to use Google Maps on a day-to-day basis since has real-time information on the state of traffic or possible accidents.
The reality behind this function is that it is based on the number of users of the application to be able to know some data. And, knowing this, Simon Weckert decided to put Google to the test. From this idea, he went for a walk through the streets of Berlin, and got all users to see a traffic jam and recommend alternate routes when, in reality, he was pretty much alone on the road.
This is how the artist Simon Weckert managed to fool Google Maps
As we mentioned, an artist from Berlin had a brilliant idea in order to fool Google and make Maps think that an area was too crowded. He was relatively simple, because what he did was collect a total of 99 mobile phones, which he put in a cart and carried while walking on the streets.
As can be seen in the experiment available on YouTube, for any user who decided to visit the area of Germany through Google Maps the streets would appear in red, indicating that there was traffic congestion. However, as can be seen in the video, the reality is that all that could be found on the street was the artist Simon Weckert with his cart of smartphones.
“99 smartphones are transported on a wheelbarrow to generate virtual traffic jams on Google Maps. Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red, which has an impact in the physical world by making cars follow another route to avoid getting stuck in the traffic. traffic.”
It is quite curious the fact that there is the option to trick Google Maps as this artist has done. We must also take into account that, at the moment in which a route seems to be congested, Google’s AI tries to send users by another route in order to arrive earlier. With this experiment you can see the dependency of maps on signature maps and how they can affect users.