Street graffiti critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping was blurred from Google Street View, but the company told Hong Kong media it was due to "an algorithm error," the Daily Mail reports.
Photographs show a wall on a main street below a row of bushes with Chinese writing on it. The graffiti is reportedly spray-painted by pro-democracy protesters and reads: "Anti-communist. Xi Jinping must die for the sake of the world."
But a screenshot of the same scene from Google Street View, which was updated last October during the time the area was experiencing massive demonstrations, shows the words blurred.
A Google spokesperson told the Hong Kong Free Press the blurring was due to an algorithm error. "Our automatic blurring technology aims to blur faces and license plates so they can't be identified, but it looks like we didn't get it right in this instance."
The blurring also covers a slogan reading "Liberate Hong Kong; the revolution of our times."