I know that sort of thing happens sometimes (Google presenting a spurious statement as a categorical answer) but those are bugs. As long as they are very rare, and fixed quickly when they occur, I don’t see them causing much harm.
OK, some people believe anything they read (especially if it confirms their existing biases), but that problem has always existed. I think Google’s occasional snippet fuck-ups are a drop in the ocean compared to the spread of false information through social networks.
There's the modern news-cycle axis, where Google can and should devote full-time engineers.
But the long tail is important too. It's fixed now (yay) but for years you could search for "calories in corn" and Google would confidently present an answer 5x the true value, scraped from a site with profoundly wrong information. As Google moves to present more direct answers and fewer links, this risk increases.
It looks like they have backed off on the direct answers somewhat which is good news.
OK, some people believe anything they read (especially if it confirms their existing biases), but that problem has always existed. I think Google’s occasional snippet fuck-ups are a drop in the ocean compared to the spread of false information through social networks.