9 ms·

As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm

83 points by mcone 9y ago

trendia 9y ago
By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly: 1) Much of their content is original (i.e. not copy-pasted from other sites) 2) A majority of the page is composed of text, rather than images or ads 3) Where there are ads, they are minimal and largely hidden from view. 4) Their website is well organized, with clear and descriptive links. 5) Their website is updated frequently and new content is posted regularly. So, assuming that WSWS is linked by other sites on the same topic, it seems that it should rank highly in Google search queries. Maybe there is something else that would reduce their ranking, but it doesn't seem obvious to me at first glance.
- skj 9y ago
  None of those things you mentioned are the core of page rank; they're just extra heuristics. None of that matters if they don't get linked by other sites with high page rank.
  - SerLava 9y ago
    Page Rank is essentially deprecated and those other heuristics are more impactful than they were when people still talked about Page Rank a lot.
    - skj 9y ago
      Certainly, things have changed. But I don't believe that the core page rank concept has been removed or even lost primacy. (I work for Google, but not on anything related to search and I don't have any special knowledge of the algorithms used)
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Spot-checking, and I agree, this doesn't at all seem to be "fake news". Much like the actual communists that I've known, I find myself disagreeing with the opinions, priorities, and judgements, but it doesn't seem to be misleading or mischaracterizing the truth.
  - avn2109 9y ago
    The thing about "fake news" is that nobody can agree on an objective definition of what it is. So people just train their models on controversial pages and hope for the best.
    - 1001101 9y ago
      There's a taxonomy. As far as I can see there is: * Propaganda/Information Warfare (motive: advance foreign policy goals) * Clickbait (motive: $) * Stories that portray our executive leadership in unflattering terms (motive: journalism, reportage) I'm sure there are others, including perhaps whatever classification is targeting 'voices on the margin.' Hearkening back to "When Wikileaks met Google," this seems like a feature, and not a bug to me.
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      "Fake news" is such a non descript term, it's essentially double speak (i.e. it means whatever I disagree with). I mean, was WMD in Iraq Fake news? The point is, press lost all credibility a long time ago, so now we can apply this label far and wide.
      - colechristensen 9y ago
        No, the producers of fake news are defending themselves by using doublespeak to dilute the accusation.
    - colechristensen 9y ago
      I keep having this argument about the dictionary. Just because enough people use a term incorrectly doesn't make the term adopt new meaning. Language does shift and that should be respected, but if you take it too far (which many do) nothing means anything any more. To the point, the people calling truth they don't like "fake news" aren't adding a definition to the term. They're just lying. Fake news is news which is objectively faked. Definitions of "news" shouldn't be controversial, and neither should definitions of "fake". Fake news are objects which try to pass themselves as news but substantially misrepresent the truth through malice or gross ignorance. Or more softly, Fake News is anything like an Onion article except not (almost) everyone is in on the joke. (and maybe the joke isn't so much a joke as a lie)
- Torai 9y ago
  > By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) I also could have my nuances with some things said there. But I don't think there is so big of an ideological breach among people if the debate is proposed from a pragmatic and resolutive standpoint. Wouldn't many of us agree that a government should control or manage some resources and give free land for innovation in others? Couldn't we debate about what would be the most efficient way to organize a public governing body, area by area, and how?
- jankotek 9y ago
  > from a purely algorithmic standpoint You could use the same argument on any extremist site. Algorithm can parse content. It probably has list of bullshit related keywords. Just the title: > Marxist analysis, international working class struggles & the fight for socialism
  - uoaei 9y ago
    How are these 'bullshit'?
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Extremist is the tag that Putin bolts on every opinion he doesn't like, so now I may assume you are a putinist.
    - jankotek 9y ago
      Website that constantly talks about 'struggle' and 'revolution' is not extremist at all.
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        "Extremist" is a weasel word for when a person didn't really do anything yet, but you are already trying to censor them.
        jankotek 9y ago
        Marxists and socialists did not do anything yet. Now you are just trolling.
        thriftwy 9y ago
        These particular ones didn't, and you certainly can't prevent a person (or a group of people) from thinking improper thoughts as long as they want to. But you would like to, won't you? You would like to get into people's heads? You consider people your peons and you want to pull switches in their heads because you know better what they should think? In short, you are a putinist.
- magicalist 9y ago
  > However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly But why? None of those things are reasons to link to it for any particular terms, just reasons not to not link to it.
- nl 9y ago
  from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly I think there is a causality error here. Traditionally things which meet those criteria have been ranked highly, but not because of those things. Rather, those things have been easy to detect and have correlated well with quality search rankings. But that doesn't mean that they are (or should) be the only signals a ranking algorithm can use. I'd argue that a hypothetical AI search engine would do a lot more verification of content as part of the ranking process. It is absolutely true that this remains challenging at the moment (verifiable implies truth after all), but the point remains.
Animats 9y ago
Google isn't doing very well on "socialist". One of the "Top Stories" is WorldNet Daily: "Chilling! Left on brink of socialist victory in U.S. 'We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity' Published: 6 days ago" That's not even fake news. That's like news from an alternate universe in which Bernie Sanders won.
- vkou 9y ago
  Sanders? Surely, with a headline like that, you must mean Karl Marx, with his recently exhumed running mate, Joseph Stalin.
- pjc50 9y ago
  I get www.worldsocialism.org at position 4 underneath wikipedia and the dictionary sites. The ""news"" boxes have Bloomberg and the Daily Express, both of which are a bit detached from reality, talking about Corbyn. I think this tells us (a) results differ from person to person - we knew that, but it means we can't see what's being shown to others and how bad it might be; and (b) "socialist" is mostly used as a swear word these days.
  - Animats 9y ago
    I'm running Firefox in private mode with Ghostery enabled, so all Google is getting is my IP address. Try it that way.
Jerry2 9y ago
I think we're close to 1984 world and thought control... but coming from tech giants like Facebook and Google.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  If our thought is controlled, it is only because we allow it.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Ever once in a while I link someone or mentioned what is in articles such as these, below, and I rarely find people believe it until they read it in name-brand media. Maybe I am wrong but from 9/11 to the Snowden leaks to now it feels like we are on some accelerated path towards 1984 where conspiracy theories are becoming reality. For example: the US gov actively influences movies and TV scripts for propaganda purposes: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-800-movies-and-tv-shows-36433107c307 https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-... Another: US Gov created an incredibly false narrative about Iraq to set the stage for the War on Terror. https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-upset-about-iraq-wmd-lies-why-is-he-hiring-john-bolton/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up... DoD spent millions researching how to manipulate Twitter users: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks-research-twitter-influence-studies https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-n... We need more decentralized power in media, not less.
  - vkou 9y ago
    None of these adventures are anything new. The US government had been responsible for blatant propaganda in film and print, lied about causes of wars, and spied on, sabotaged, suppressed, and manipulated domestic political movements for decades. This has been happening since the Red Scare gave the ruling classes something to lose sleep over.
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      I have never seen a poll on something like "do you think the US government is actively manipulating media?" Or, "what do you think the odds are this TV show was scripted by the US government to shape your opinion on an issue?" The thing is I think many see this as the realm of conspiracy theory; and maybe public opinion of establishment media would change if they thought differently
perlpimp 9y ago
Imo these filter blocks are problematic. Maybe google can flag the content with a visual cue instead of participating in censorship. I remember in high school we had a class 'critical thinking', wonder if it is still is taught and whether it is so in other places of education. People should filter content or at least be helped to instead of hering people away from 'harmful' topic. Behind fake news idea there is an elephant in the room - feeble minds, perhaps this is the real problem. this goes without saying google should promote higher quality content regardless and spammy content should be rated as such.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Feeble minds is a defeatist characterisation, and unhelpful. People have the cognitive attributes that they do. We think in narratives. Our political thinking mode is entirely dominated by identity, whether ideological, ethnic or whatever. We prefer confirmation. etc. etc. We just aren’t scientific thinking machines. That’s why scientific methods are designed as they are. They strictly avoid the way people normally come to conclusions, even (especially) intellectual heavyweights that have dedicated their lives to rationality. Take away the scientific checks (e.g., the double blindness of experiments), and even the most robust minds are feeble in this sense. The actual mechanisms of culture are too complex to understand, but components of culture and group behaviour can be understood well enough to steer things into certain directions. The underlying problem (IMO) is that FB, Google and others are the only ones in position to play a role they do not want to play. In the past we had “trusted” publications, who had editors and such. We had softer institutions like “journalism,” the culture and methods associated with the profession. These had power, cultural force. None of these were anywhere near perfect (or even decent), but they did have some ability to distinguish between “popular” and “good”. They don’t as much anymore. Google & FB do. They don’t want the job. We don’t really want them to have the job. Something new needs to emerge, and I don’t think that something is a more robust human brain.
ThomPete 9y ago
Fake news isnt done to convince you about a poltical opinion its mostly done to get you to click the link or share it and through that make money on advertising. Judging it on some truth parameter is absurd instead it should be judged on its advertising strategy IMO.
- bad_user 9y ago
  Also, people should appreciate that fighting fake news hurts Google's bottom line in the short run. I guess in the long run they are better off with legitimate traffic, since scamy websites and shitty ads are the reason for why many people now install ad blockers. But it's actually rare to see a company thinking ahead of the next quarter.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
islon 9y ago
Google has often said that it cannot reveal too much or people would use that information to try to game the rankings Isn't this the same "security by obscurity" argument?
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  No. Security by obscurity is relying on opaqueness instead of using an alternative and better defense. For Google to protect it's ranking algorithms, non-disclosure and the legal right to proprietary knowledge is the best defense. It's not obscure, it's private.
factsaresacred 9y ago
> "Google said it had added more detailed examples of problematic pages into the guidelines" 'Problematic'. There's that word, again. The news need not even be 'fake' anymore. Simply 'problematic' will do. Here's Mark Zuckerberg not long ago: > While the amount of problematic content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue. Problematic to whom, one wonders? The loser? Those who feel most aggrieved? This is little more than an attempt to sanitize information so that all that remains is the pre-approved 'least problematic' truth (fact-checked, of course). Hillary Clinton, with much irony and little self-awareness, summed up the intent behind this move in her latest book: > “Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism....This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. “The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves”. So the message is clear: Trust us, you dolts. We know best.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  If you don't know what "problematic" means you could just look it up in a dictionary. adjective: constituting or presenting a problem Or are the "word-checkers" in on the big conspiracy too?
  - sumfag 9y ago
    Maybe you're missing the big picture here. Ever read 1984 or look into George Orwell's history? These books were written as a warning of this type of censorship and Orwell himself was targeted by the CIA and FBI for some of these thoughts. Thought-police comes to mind. Ever heard of the Polish Pink Files? How about the Stasi? In every instance where this type of policing happens, it leads to major disaster. The snide comment was cute but totally unwarranted, as conspiracies do occur.
    - 9y ago
the6threplicant 9y ago
Remember when the right wing groups were up in arms about the censoring of non-liberal news by the news moderators and FB had to reorganise the whole team. Now we know the so-called liberal bias was that they were censoring all the (mostly) right wing fake news stories coming from the Russian backed troll teams.
- sumfag 9y ago
  >Russian backed troll teams Is there any hard evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and may you point me to it? I'm fully aware that Russians never "hacked the election" as many news outlets will have us believe (low confidence from the intelligence community, the previous president, and others) but I would believe that claim with hard evidence.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    Your comment is going way off the general subject of the conversation, but I thought I'd oblige. If it's your confidence in the IC, and the previous admin, judging by your comments you might not be opposed to written testaments from the current administration's DHS Cyber Division: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyber-division-acting-director-dr-samuel-liles-and-nppd-acting https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyb... --- Further context: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-hacking-russian-government-cyber-actors/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-ha... ( And in case you resent the "liberal" media: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were-targeted-by-attempted-russian-hacking-1506119620 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were... )
gldalmaso 9y ago
IMO, I think that there's a more troubling problem brewing behind the scenes. I believe Google increasingly doesn't understand their own outputs. This is also true of products other than search like youtube related content and ads. They have put so many eggs in the AI basket they're not really sure if the eggs are being made into omelet or boiled or pidan. It's a kind of Algorithmic Dissociative Disorder.
Digit-Al 9y ago
I seems to me that Google are 'damned if they do, and damned if they don't'. They get loads of stick for linking to fake news, but if they try to do something about it they get loads of stick for 'trying to control what we see'. The biggest culprit in the spreading of fake news is ourselves. The number of times I see friends spreading stories on Facebook that smell false on first viewing, and can be shown to be false with a 20 second Google search is amazing. Nobody can be arsed to spend a tiny bit of time fact checking and when you call them out on it they just shrug and give the feeble 'just in case' excuse.
pgnas 9y ago
I recall Eric Schmidts remark in a meeting with Charlie Rose back in 2005: "When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do, well, that is a bug. We should be able to give you the right answer. We should know what you meant." What is "right" or "wrong" (or problematic) today will more than likely later be proved the opposite. This is censorship. It doesn't matter what the meaning of problematic is. We are headed into a digital dark age.

83 points by mcone 9y ago

By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly: 1) Much of their content is original (i.e. not copy-pasted from other sites) 2) A majority of the page is composed of text, rather than images or ads 3) Where there are ads, they are minimal and largely hidden from view. 4) Their website is well organized, with clear and descriptive links. 5) Their website is updated frequently and new content is posted regularly. So, assuming that WSWS is linked by other sites on the same topic, it seems that it should rank highly in Google search queries. Maybe there is something else that would reduce their ranking, but it doesn't seem obvious to me at first glance.

skj 9y ago
None of those things you mentioned are the core of page rank; they're just extra heuristics. None of that matters if they don't get linked by other sites with high page rank.
- SerLava 9y ago
  Page Rank is essentially deprecated and those other heuristics are more impactful than they were when people still talked about Page Rank a lot.
  - skj 9y ago
    Certainly, things have changed. But I don't believe that the core page rank concept has been removed or even lost primacy. (I work for Google, but not on anything related to search and I don't have any special knowledge of the algorithms used)
colechristensen 9y ago
Spot-checking, and I agree, this doesn't at all seem to be "fake news". Much like the actual communists that I've known, I find myself disagreeing with the opinions, priorities, and judgements, but it doesn't seem to be misleading or mischaracterizing the truth.
- avn2109 9y ago
  The thing about "fake news" is that nobody can agree on an objective definition of what it is. So people just train their models on controversial pages and hope for the best.
  - 1001101 9y ago
    There's a taxonomy. As far as I can see there is: * Propaganda/Information Warfare (motive: advance foreign policy goals) * Clickbait (motive: $) * Stories that portray our executive leadership in unflattering terms (motive: journalism, reportage) I'm sure there are others, including perhaps whatever classification is targeting 'voices on the margin.' Hearkening back to "When Wikileaks met Google," this seems like a feature, and not a bug to me.
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    "Fake news" is such a non descript term, it's essentially double speak (i.e. it means whatever I disagree with). I mean, was WMD in Iraq Fake news? The point is, press lost all credibility a long time ago, so now we can apply this label far and wide.
    - colechristensen 9y ago
      No, the producers of fake news are defending themselves by using doublespeak to dilute the accusation.
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    I keep having this argument about the dictionary. Just because enough people use a term incorrectly doesn't make the term adopt new meaning. Language does shift and that should be respected, but if you take it too far (which many do) nothing means anything any more. To the point, the people calling truth they don't like "fake news" aren't adding a definition to the term. They're just lying. Fake news is news which is objectively faked. Definitions of "news" shouldn't be controversial, and neither should definitions of "fake". Fake news are objects which try to pass themselves as news but substantially misrepresent the truth through malice or gross ignorance. Or more softly, Fake News is anything like an Onion article except not (almost) everyone is in on the joke. (and maybe the joke isn't so much a joke as a lie)
Torai 9y ago
> By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) I also could have my nuances with some things said there. But I don't think there is so big of an ideological breach among people if the debate is proposed from a pragmatic and resolutive standpoint. Wouldn't many of us agree that a government should control or manage some resources and give free land for innovation in others? Couldn't we debate about what would be the most efficient way to organize a public governing body, area by area, and how?
jankotek 9y ago
> from a purely algorithmic standpoint You could use the same argument on any extremist site. Algorithm can parse content. It probably has list of bullshit related keywords. Just the title: > Marxist analysis, international working class struggles & the fight for socialism
- uoaei 9y ago
  How are these 'bullshit'?
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Extremist is the tag that Putin bolts on every opinion he doesn't like, so now I may assume you are a putinist.
  - jankotek 9y ago
    Website that constantly talks about 'struggle' and 'revolution' is not extremist at all.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      "Extremist" is a weasel word for when a person didn't really do anything yet, but you are already trying to censor them.
      - jankotek 9y ago
        Marxists and socialists did not do anything yet. Now you are just trolling.
        thriftwy 9y ago
        These particular ones didn't, and you certainly can't prevent a person (or a group of people) from thinking improper thoughts as long as they want to. But you would like to, won't you? You would like to get into people's heads? You consider people your peons and you want to pull switches in their heads because you know better what they should think? In short, you are a putinist.
magicalist 9y ago
> However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly But why? None of those things are reasons to link to it for any particular terms, just reasons not to not link to it.
nl 9y ago
from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly I think there is a causality error here. Traditionally things which meet those criteria have been ranked highly, but not because of those things. Rather, those things have been easy to detect and have correlated well with quality search rankings. But that doesn't mean that they are (or should) be the only signals a ranking algorithm can use. I'd argue that a hypothetical AI search engine would do a lot more verification of content as part of the ranking process. It is absolutely true that this remains challenging at the moment (verifiable implies truth after all), but the point remains.

Animats 9y ago

Google isn't doing very well on "socialist". One of the "Top Stories" is WorldNet Daily: "Chilling! Left on brink of socialist victory in U.S. 'We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity' Published: 6 days ago" That's not even fake news. That's like news from an alternate universe in which Bernie Sanders won.

vkou 9y ago
Sanders? Surely, with a headline like that, you must mean Karl Marx, with his recently exhumed running mate, Joseph Stalin.
pjc50 9y ago
I get www.worldsocialism.org at position 4 underneath wikipedia and the dictionary sites. The ""news"" boxes have Bloomberg and the Daily Express, both of which are a bit detached from reality, talking about Corbyn. I think this tells us (a) results differ from person to person - we knew that, but it means we can't see what's being shown to others and how bad it might be; and (b) "socialist" is mostly used as a swear word these days.
- Animats 9y ago
  I'm running Firefox in private mode with Ghostery enabled, so all Google is getting is my IP address. Try it that way.

Jerry2 9y ago

I think we're close to 1984 world and thought control... but coming from tech giants like Facebook and Google.

oh_sigh 9y ago
If our thought is controlled, it is only because we allow it.
wallace_f 9y ago
Ever once in a while I link someone or mentioned what is in articles such as these, below, and I rarely find people believe it until they read it in name-brand media. Maybe I am wrong but from 9/11 to the Snowden leaks to now it feels like we are on some accelerated path towards 1984 where conspiracy theories are becoming reality. For example: the US gov actively influences movies and TV scripts for propaganda purposes: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-800-movies-and-tv-shows-36433107c307 https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-... Another: US Gov created an incredibly false narrative about Iraq to set the stage for the War on Terror. https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-upset-about-iraq-wmd-lies-why-is-he-hiring-john-bolton/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up... DoD spent millions researching how to manipulate Twitter users: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks-research-twitter-influence-studies https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-n... We need more decentralized power in media, not less.
- vkou 9y ago
  None of these adventures are anything new. The US government had been responsible for blatant propaganda in film and print, lied about causes of wars, and spied on, sabotaged, suppressed, and manipulated domestic political movements for decades. This has been happening since the Red Scare gave the ruling classes something to lose sleep over.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    I have never seen a poll on something like "do you think the US government is actively manipulating media?" Or, "what do you think the odds are this TV show was scripted by the US government to shape your opinion on an issue?" The thing is I think many see this as the realm of conspiracy theory; and maybe public opinion of establishment media would change if they thought differently

perlpimp 9y ago

Imo these filter blocks are problematic. Maybe google can flag the content with a visual cue instead of participating in censorship. I remember in high school we had a class 'critical thinking', wonder if it is still is taught and whether it is so in other places of education. People should filter content or at least be helped to instead of hering people away from 'harmful' topic. Behind fake news idea there is an elephant in the room - feeble minds, perhaps this is the real problem. this goes without saying google should promote higher quality content regardless and spammy content should be rated as such.

dalbasal 9y ago
Feeble minds is a defeatist characterisation, and unhelpful. People have the cognitive attributes that they do. We think in narratives. Our political thinking mode is entirely dominated by identity, whether ideological, ethnic or whatever. We prefer confirmation. etc. etc. We just aren’t scientific thinking machines. That’s why scientific methods are designed as they are. They strictly avoid the way people normally come to conclusions, even (especially) intellectual heavyweights that have dedicated their lives to rationality. Take away the scientific checks (e.g., the double blindness of experiments), and even the most robust minds are feeble in this sense. The actual mechanisms of culture are too complex to understand, but components of culture and group behaviour can be understood well enough to steer things into certain directions. The underlying problem (IMO) is that FB, Google and others are the only ones in position to play a role they do not want to play. In the past we had “trusted” publications, who had editors and such. We had softer institutions like “journalism,” the culture and methods associated with the profession. These had power, cultural force. None of these were anywhere near perfect (or even decent), but they did have some ability to distinguish between “popular” and “good”. They don’t as much anymore. Google & FB do. They don’t want the job. We don’t really want them to have the job. Something new needs to emerge, and I don’t think that something is a more robust human brain.

ThomPete 9y ago

Fake news isnt done to convince you about a poltical opinion its mostly done to get you to click the link or share it and through that make money on advertising. Judging it on some truth parameter is absurd instead it should be judged on its advertising strategy IMO.

bad_user 9y ago
Also, people should appreciate that fighting fake news hurts Google's bottom line in the short run. I guess in the long run they are better off with legitimate traffic, since scamy websites and shitty ads are the reason for why many people now install ad blockers. But it's actually rare to see a company thinking ahead of the next quarter.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

islon 9y ago

Google has often said that it cannot reveal too much or people would use that information to try to game the rankings Isn't this the same "security by obscurity" argument?

factsaresacred 9y ago
No. Security by obscurity is relying on opaqueness instead of using an alternative and better defense. For Google to protect it's ranking algorithms, non-disclosure and the legal right to proprietary knowledge is the best defense. It's not obscure, it's private.

factsaresacred 9y ago

> "Google said it had added more detailed examples of problematic pages into the guidelines" 'Problematic'. There's that word, again. The news need not even be 'fake' anymore. Simply 'problematic' will do. Here's Mark Zuckerberg not long ago: > While the amount of problematic content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue. Problematic to whom, one wonders? The loser? Those who feel most aggrieved? This is little more than an attempt to sanitize information so that all that remains is the pre-approved 'least problematic' truth (fact-checked, of course). Hillary Clinton, with much irony and little self-awareness, summed up the intent behind this move in her latest book: > “Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism....This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. “The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves”. So the message is clear: Trust us, you dolts. We know best.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
If you don't know what "problematic" means you could just look it up in a dictionary. adjective: constituting or presenting a problem Or are the "word-checkers" in on the big conspiracy too?
- sumfag 9y ago
  Maybe you're missing the big picture here. Ever read 1984 or look into George Orwell's history? These books were written as a warning of this type of censorship and Orwell himself was targeted by the CIA and FBI for some of these thoughts. Thought-police comes to mind. Ever heard of the Polish Pink Files? How about the Stasi? In every instance where this type of policing happens, it leads to major disaster. The snide comment was cute but totally unwarranted, as conspiracies do occur.
  - 9y ago

the6threplicant 9y ago

Remember when the right wing groups were up in arms about the censoring of non-liberal news by the news moderators and FB had to reorganise the whole team. Now we know the so-called liberal bias was that they were censoring all the (mostly) right wing fake news stories coming from the Russian backed troll teams.

sumfag 9y ago
>Russian backed troll teams Is there any hard evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and may you point me to it? I'm fully aware that Russians never "hacked the election" as many news outlets will have us believe (low confidence from the intelligence community, the previous president, and others) but I would believe that claim with hard evidence.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Your comment is going way off the general subject of the conversation, but I thought I'd oblige. If it's your confidence in the IC, and the previous admin, judging by your comments you might not be opposed to written testaments from the current administration's DHS Cyber Division: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyber-division-acting-director-dr-samuel-liles-and-nppd-acting https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyb... --- Further context: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-hacking-russian-government-cyber-actors/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-ha... ( And in case you resent the "liberal" media: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were-targeted-by-attempted-russian-hacking-1506119620 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were... )

gldalmaso 9y ago

IMO, I think that there's a more troubling problem brewing behind the scenes. I believe Google increasingly doesn't understand their own outputs. This is also true of products other than search like youtube related content and ads. They have put so many eggs in the AI basket they're not really sure if the eggs are being made into omelet or boiled or pidan. It's a kind of Algorithmic Dissociative Disorder.

Digit-Al 9y ago

I seems to me that Google are 'damned if they do, and damned if they don't'. They get loads of stick for linking to fake news, but if they try to do something about it they get loads of stick for 'trying to control what we see'. The biggest culprit in the spreading of fake news is ourselves. The number of times I see friends spreading stories on Facebook that smell false on first viewing, and can be shown to be false with a 20 second Google search is amazing. Nobody can be arsed to spend a tiny bit of time fact checking and when you call them out on it they just shrug and give the feeble 'just in case' excuse.

pgnas 9y ago

I recall Eric Schmidts remark in a meeting with Charlie Rose back in 2005: "When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do, well, that is a bug. We should be able to give you the right answer. We should know what you meant." What is "right" or "wrong" (or problematic) today will more than likely later be proved the opposite. This is censorship. It doesn't matter what the meaning of problematic is. We are headed into a digital dark age.