It's not a good day when you see this:
* Red “disinformation” stamp not included on actual Google searches!
(Note the NSFW topic! All links are academic discussions of this.)
You can do the same search in Google to see the problem yourself.
What has happened to arrive at the above screenshot?
Google takes from a Skeptics answer part of a quote that was analysed in that answer and found to be untrue. Only Google didn't understand what quotes are and presented this part as a factual answer in its snippet view on some searches.
But the answer isn't telling you what Google's Featured Snippet is showing. Google is showing you a quote from the answer that's only there to explain why it's wrong! No rules were broken (and in fact the answer was otherwise a good answer), but in the end we seemed to accomplish the exact opposite of what the site is here for.
Demonstrated by the screenshot included above, the Google snippet presents something the Skeptics answer shows to be untrue, and Google users finding this snippet concluded that Google shows "disinformation". Since that Google result is based on the reference from Skeptics:SE, they might be lead to conclude that Skeptics is the source for "disinformation". In any case, an upset Google user then stamps a screenshot of his snippet view with "disinformation" and the Skeptics-URL is included.
This came to my attention via an anonymous suggested edit. I think I did what I thought was the right thing there, removing the entire offending part of the quote, though it will take a while for Google to see this. The edit summary linked to the article FSC's Mike Stabile Helps Debunk Google Disinformation About Adult Performer Life Expectancy (source of the image above), which explains that Google is looking into the issue. But I doubt disinformation will be an easy issue for them to fix (other than on a case by case basis).
That shows three problems:
Google is using Skeptics inappropriately, like: takes quotes out of a quote context, and thereby may actually help to spread disinformation.
They way Google presents these misleading snippets as shortened second-hand can taint the reputation of this site.
Answers on Skeptics might be abused by selective quoting, whether in any automated fashion or by actual humans.
What can we do? How can search results like this be found and remediated before it causes harm? Hopefully getting the word out is a good first step.
Update: It seems like the time for Google to update is less than 24 hours. Now it’s pulling the snippet from the question and I’m struggling to think of a way to make this better with edits. It’s one thing to remove the quote from the answer, but almost every question here is just a quote of a source that can’t be trusted and many of them don’t even have answers.