7 ms·
Google Rewrites Its Powerful Search Rankings to Bury Fake News
- criddell 9y agoSounds good to me. The use of the adjective powerful stood out to me. If Microsoft does the same thing with Bing, would a different adjective be chosen? Would it even be news?
- r00fus 9y agoYeah, it's a sloppy way of saying "market-dominating", ultimately an unnecessary puff-piece worthy adjective.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- criddell 9y agoI thought it was unnecessary as well. I assume Bloomberg knows their audience and if that's not something their readers know I guess it makes sense to include it.
- cryptarch 9y agoMicrosoft Expands Its Search Rankings to Include Relevant Results?
- nvr219 9y agoWill they let fake news providers buy ads still?
- eplanit 9y agoIndeed. Buying ads would be an act of redemption, and will bring Legitimacy.
- mtgx 9y agoI wonder what else it will be burying, going by its recent fiasco of demonetizing legitimate YouTube channels that weren't "brand-friendly" (quite different than "extremist").
- virmundi 9y agoI don't think that view is popular here, even if it is supported [1]. You should only read and watch videos approved by the intersection of the DNC and Bernie. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RslP2HGBqWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RslP2HGBqWI
- Tanegashima 9y agoGoogle… I don't understand the praise of it's search engine. For example, when I search for my App name, pirate sites come first, and when I search for functionality keywords, 2011 blog posts from Apps that have been disappeared off the map appear first. When I was writing my thesis, Google Scholar offered no help. Engineering Village did everything. Google emphasises too much on blogs and other ephemeral content, which as we all know, is often written in a careless manner, rarely maintained, and even just completely made-up. Google doesn't understand that, and I don't think it's accidental.
- monkpit 9y agoSounds like your seo game needs some work.
- Tanegashima 9y ago1. It's not a game. 2. No it doesn't, I did everything. 3. It appears first result on the AppStore.
- Mendenhall 9y agoMy thoughts exactly.Your search experience with them sounds like mine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mnglkhn2 9y agoAt this moment, is there a general consensus or definition as to what is a "fake news" and how and who decides upon it?
- justncase80 9y agoInformation the rich don't want you to see.
- danso 9y agoNo. There's not even a good definition of what "fake" and "news" is as separate terms. Not trying to be contrarian here, but the "news" of a Bill Cosby's rape allegations, as disseminated by a shaky bootleg YouTube video of an old Hannibal Burress routine would have been considered "fake news" by many standards of newsworthiness: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-hannibal-buress-and-why-did-he-call-bill-cosby-a-rapist/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-hannibal-buress-and-why-d...
- Larrikin 9y agoCouldn't you just look up the actual cases in that instance? He is known for publicizing the details of public record.
- danso 9y agoI don't know how much of the information was easy to find at the time, other than the People Magazine (!) investigation in 2006: http://people.com/crime/bill-cosby-under-fire-peoples-original-story-about-sex-abuse-claims/ http://people.com/crime/bill-cosby-under-fire-peoples-origin... I mean, obviously, it was Googleable, as Buress said in his routine. And yet the question isn't whether or not it is "fake" -- though clearly many people thought it was fake, or outrageous, which is why it was such a funny bit in Buress's routine. But there's also the question of whether it was news. Because it was a big deal, and then it dropped off the news cycle because nothing big came from it. And then Buress simply reminded people that the cases existed and then it blew up in such a way that it's hard to believe that Bill Cosby, just a few years ago, was pretty much a hero. The rape claims were such old news that a highly senior CNN journalist wrote Cosby's biography and just left out the rape accusations because he "didn't want to print allegations that I couldn't confirm independently". The Buress incident came about the time that the biography was published, and the biography pretty much died on the shelves: http://www.newsweek.com/cosby-biography-mark-whitaker-i-was-wrong-not-address-rape-allegations-book-287141 http://www.newsweek.com/cosby-biography-mark-whitaker-i-was-... Hell, you could make the case that the famous Boston Globe Pulitzer-winning investigation [0] into the Catholic Church would have been deemed "fake news" at the time. The Globe itself covered accusations of priest abuse a decade earlier and the Church argued that such cases were horrific anomalies, and the Globe editor at the time apparently agreed that there wasn't a systemic scandal. It wasn't until the Globe got a brand new editor that a renewed focus was made on cases that victims' lawyers had revealed years prior. [0] http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/boston-globe-1 http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/boston-globe-1
- KernlPanik 9y agoWho decides what is and isn't fake news? Surely an enormous corporation whose leaders are active in only one political party will be a fair and impartial judge.
- tarr11 9y agoUntil Google has a monopoly on disseminating truth, they are still a private corporation. This means that they decide what is truth within Google properties.
- wnevets 9y agoIf it's from alex jones, it's fake news.
- kneel 9y agoAlso theonion
- EGreg 9y agoWe seem to be witnessing the death of accuracy in reporting. And maybe a post-truth era on the internet. "I am sure 3 million illegal aliens voted while global warming is a hoax! Obama paid off all the scientists." - I literally have friends on facebook who say stuff like that every time I repost articles from HN about rising temperatures or CO2 concentrations.
- Neliquat 9y agoThe problem with Infowars or any other fringe source, is that they are right often enough. Sure obama didnt turn the frogs gay, but there were plenty of other factual stories covered in a factual way, before being spun into insanity. But you could argue many msm outlets also have very variable scruples, depending on the subject. Ie. Infowars is generally poor quality, but not always false. I only read it for a giggle on occasion fwiw.
- wnevets 9y ago
- justncase80 9y agoThey should just rebrand it as the ministry of truth already.
- rem1212 9y agoGoogle Pravda, perhaps.
- Mendenhall 9y agoGee I wonder if the 10'000 "raters" will have a bias. I have no problem with such an idea in concept, but I know the process and what is being driven down will be opaque as possible. I wish they would change their search engine to how it worked years ago instead. The search results now are so packed with nonsense that I had to stop using them.
- tyingq 9y agoReally skeptical about the false positives/negatives. The ML they are using around "rich snippets" is pretty lousy. I can find lots of bad autogenerated answers in just a few minutes. Or would this use some approach radically different, and more accurate[1], from what's driving rich snippets? [1] well, as much as you can be accurate for subjective measures
- neuro 9y agoAre there any alternative search engines? I would rather decide what's fake.
- taude 9y agoI've been using DuckDuckGo [1] as my default search engine for a couple years. By adding a !g to your duckduckgo, you can then search Google easily if you're not finding desired results. [1] https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com Edit: added actual url to DuckDuckGo
- cookiecaper 9y agoIs there any way for DDG to confirm that it's not engaging in the same type of censorship? IMO this is really the time for a Ethereum-esque solution to shine. These algos should be adaptable, confirmable, pluggable.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- monochromatic 9y agoOne man's unpopular idea is another man's fake news. I'm not sure I want google making such editorial decisions. Also: > We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com That is VERY fake news right there.
- taurath 9y agoGoogles algorithms already make decisions about what people see, though not based on the editorial content. I don't consider it a real difference whatever scale they use - it will always be biased to something.
- nck4222 9y agoThat's neither fake nor news. 1) You'd have to have a pretty loose definition of news to include that message as news. And 2) Ad-blockers obviously affect page content (by you know, blocking it). I don't have the data to support it but anecdotally I've definitely seen it affect performance via javascript issues that arise.
- gragas 9y agoHe didn't mean it was literally news.
- nck4222 9y agoIn a thread that's mostly discussing how fake news is defined, I thought it relevant to comment on it. To me it came off that he was calling it fake news and not being sarcastic. If that's not the case so be it but it wasn't obvious to me.
- faet 9y agoIt does affect performance, it makes it faster.
- EGreg 9y agoWe should have a crowdsourced website that backs up claims with facts (and has evidence either way), and then journalists can write stories that would link their claims to it. Or the links be added automatically by visitors.
- LeeHwang 9y agoIn light of this new politico article: The media bubble is real. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubb... I think this is a bad idea. Fake news is already a loaded term combined with the media bubble it will just make things exponentially worse. We need to deal with the media bubble bias first, to restore faith in real news.
- notliketherest 9y agoThis whole "fake news" problem feels like a giant ruse. Their candidate (Hillary) lost, thanks in a large part to the democratization of media on the internet and right leaning online media outlets, and now they're trying to bury those same sources from being on the front page. The thousands of liberal / globalist engineers and business people feel so guilty that they helped get Donald Trump elected president that now they're actively censoring websites. All under the guise of "fake news". Sure there are some blatantly fake news articles, but it's nothing I don't see on the magazine rack at the super market and laugh off. This is much more than that, this is active censorship from the left wing globalist who control Google.
- konradb 9y agoHi - can you define what a 'globalist' engineer is please? How would I tell if I was one?
- notliketherest 9y agoA globalist is someone who believes that the United States' interests should be secondary to the interests of all people in the world. You have a disdain for borders and those who advocate for strengthing them. You think it's okay that we have a policy of mass immigration and believe anyone who wants to be admitted to the united States should be allowed. And shudder and cringe when President Trump uses the words "America First" and believe he is morally wrong and should be stopped at all costs. A globalist engineer is someone who builds software to advance these ideas.
- Neliquat 9y agoThat sounds more like you mixed in humanism, which is not nessarrily inherent to globalism. Globalism is usually tied almost explicitly to economics and trade. They are related, but distinct.
- ksk 9y agoIf the plan is to remove misleading results, most of the advertisements need to be removed as well.
- segmondy 9y agoGoogle is playing a dangerous game. What else is there "powerful search ranking" burying? If I decide to compete with Google tomorrow, would they bury every site that mentions my business?
- cookiecaper 9y agoYes. You wouldn't get far. Falling out of Google's favor is a disaster for any company that relies on "organic" search traffic. Many have died from this. I don't think many people really appreciate the extent of influence Google has over individual behavior. Local businesses die when they get pushed out of the "local box". Platform vendors have a huge amount of control over the ecosystem. We need to update our legal structures to make the internet available for open competition instead of locking it up in Google/FB server farms. Of course, there's no reason to do so as long as Google is playing ball with the elites.
- vlunkr 9y agoI think there's an interesting question here that I haven't really seen discussed: Is it the responsibility of Google/Facebook to filter out "fake news"? Obviously both of them already do some content filtering for illegal content etc. but where do we draw the line? Personally I think it's unfair to be blaming them, considering they never claimed to filter this type of content. Also, if it is decided that they should be responsible, how do you determine what is and isn't fake? Seems like a dangerous thing to be in charge of. edit: since it took me so long to finish typing this, everyone is now asking similar questions. whatever
- xienze 9y ago> Is it the responsibility of Google/Facebook to filter out "fake news"? Their employees certainly think it is. The reason Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. are so obsessed with fake news at the moment is because their employees believe that their product, which was supposed to "change the world for the better!" inadvertently helped Trump be elected. I'm sure more than a few Valley employees have had nervous breakdowns over this. Now, banning Trump from Facebook or Twitter would be a little bit too obvious, so they're doing the next best thing: making sure, under the guise of "keeping you safe from fake news", that Trump or Trump 2.0 can't leverage their offerings to help his cause.
- colordrops 9y agoThis is most likely answer I've heard on the motivations behind news filtering. It really exposes the ethical dilemma of taking a supposedly neutral carrier type service and using it to promote a political agenda, regardless of how righteous that agenda is.
- darpa_escapee 9y agoI find it more likely that their advertising partners don't want the brands and companies they represent to be associated with fake, possibly libellous and politically inflammatory content.
- xienze 9y ago
- _up 9y agoAren't Ads the ultimate Fake News? Is Google the "Ad Company" also now only allowing modest and critical endorsements instead of Ads?
- mnglkhn2 9y agoSometimes, to build immunity, you need to be exposed to the raw, unfinished stuff. If you manicure everything you will lose the ability to build critical thinking and discern among various opinions. From this angle, the "curation of fake news" looks very paternalistic, if not even a sign of patriarchy. :)
- dmix 9y agoI'm curious what liberal bias looks like in algorithm form? > Google is also setting new rules encouraging its “raters” -- the 10,000-plus staff that assess search results -- to flag web pages that host hoaxes, conspiracy theories and what the company calls “low-quality” content. Oh that's how, it's going to be trained by people... Considering how often I've seen Snopes get stories wrong, or are subtlety misleading (such as marking something as false because an insignificant part of a statement is incorrect, by that I mean if it was deleted from the statement the overall meaning wouldn't change, but the general statement as a whole was still actually true). This is really concerning. I get marking hoaxes and to a lesser extent conspiracy theories. But "low-quality content" and "fake news" in general is not just difficult to identify but open to abuse. And there will likely be no appeal process. It will happen transparently and silently.