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Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

292 points by DLay 9y ago

mythrwy 9y ago
Google and Facebook have failed the Atlantic which is seizing on tragedy to imply only sanctioned media (them of course) should be available through Internet searches. However most of the rest of us are not failed as we already know results from 4-Chan probably aren't accurate. Please stop failing all of us with this desperate bid to get back in control of information dispersal there The Atlantic. I'd much rather see a smattering of nonsense and be able to make that determination for myself rather than you deciding what should be available for viewing.
- pdonis 9y ago
  Why is this getting downvotes? It's spot on. The "mainstream media" have been failing us for years, yet now suddenly it's all Google's and Facebook's fault that people are getting inaccurate information fed to them?
  - dtnomad 9y ago
    +1
    - olivermarks 9y ago
      +1 There are plenty of brave journalists/bloggers but very few editors or corporate media vehicles prepared to publish their investigative reporting. I wouldn't dream of using FB as a go to 'news' source, while Google is essentially an aggregator/curator of information sources I may or may not take seriously. The idea that these lightweight websites should somehow be the gatekeepers of 'the truth' is pretty offensive. I prefer to triangulate across multiple sources and make up my own mind base don the information I uncover. Example: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/02/gunman-who-killed-50-at-las-vegas-concert-was-reti/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/02/gunman-who-killed-5... A lead story in the local Vegas newspaper states the alleged gunman was a multi millionaire property owner. Is this true? I have no way of proving it but it is certainly food for thought...
- ben_w 9y ago
  Has the average person heard of 4-chan? If they had, would they understand it as anything different to Facebook, which they seem to trust, or the comments section under a news story, ditto? People don’t know what accurate and trustworthy looks like. Even when things are labeled as fiction, they can have an effect - Scotish Independence became more popular when the film “Braveheart” was released, while Islamophobia went up after “American Sniper” was released. Or am I just repeating plausible but fictional urban legends that I’ve mistaken for reality?
  - sdca 9y ago
    Speculation on motive begins immediately when we learn what the target was and the weapons that were used. You can't censor that without censoring the entire incident.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      That is as irrelevant as it is correct. Yes, humans speculate, but we shouldn’t be amplifying our known cognitive biases by presenting wild speculation (let alone 4-chan) as if were authoritative truth.
pdonis 9y ago
tl/dr: We don't think people are capable of exercising judgment, so we want the computers at Google and Facebook to do it for them. Good luck with that.
- intopieces 9y ago
  It's not that they are incapable of exercising judgement. It's that when they do exercise judgement, it is consistently towards bad content. False content.
  - nilved 9y ago
    This problem needs to be fixed with education. The article demonstrates an extremely profound misunderstanding of technology.
    - dullgiulio 9y ago
      It's not that easy. To trust a piece of news requires time (for example for cross checking over multiple news outlets) and that's a luxury I (and many others) don't have. We do pay (indirectly) pay Facebook and Google and we do not get this filtering service at all.
    - intended 9y ago
      Any problem which ends with "education is needed to fix it" will fail. Education is a non-solved problem, and you may as well say "society will fix it", to get a better approximation of what Education entails. Education on a subject is influenced and affected by 1) Student health, motivation, previous education, available time, availble security, water, electricity, nutrition, parental nutrition, parental education, stability, age, and so on. 2) Education and subject matter is affected by development of the country, politics of the country, cultural importance of the subject, job demands, payment/funds available for education, structure of educational systems and more. So in other words, its not "fixable". Do note, that if you developed a way to transpose both information and meaning and expertise, a la matrix, into someones brain directly - you would not only "solve" education, but you would also be able to program legions of soldiers/attackers/drones with the same technology.
folksinger 9y ago
The reason why those of us on this forum can tell the difference between good and bad information is because we received a good education and learned critical analysis skills. Facebook, Google and the internet in general are an objectively bad source of knowledge. They are subjectively good sources of knowledge. The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge. The contents of the average library contain better knowledge than the internet. The contents of a library at a world-class University and even more-so. The internet is the most overrated institution of contemporary society when it comes to obtaining knowledge. It is somewhat good for entertainment but probably not better than your average game of Dungeons and Dragons.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  "The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge." And this is known how? The aristocracy considers the people ignorant and prefers it that way, but history shows this is not always objectively so. The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known. As opposed to aristocracies which are feudalism and stagnation. “Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. ― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
  - int_19h 9y ago
    > The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known. I'm not entirely sure this is true. Before Internet, what we had was mostly freedom of the press - which is to say, the freedom to spread information (or disinformation) by those with financial means to do so. This is far more free than the preceding eras of widespread censorship, where the only one spreading information (or disinformation) was the government and its agents. But it's not quite a free for all. In effect, the ability to spread information on a large scale was still restricted to the "elite", defined in financial terms. Internet, and especially social networks with their graphs, changed that. A little money, and a carefully crafted story, go a long way in terms of dispersal and effect. Big money still gives you more opportunities, but even small players can make a difference. And we've yet to see the full effect that this is going to have on our societies.
partisan 9y ago
The article is placing the blame on Google and Facebook when it should be placed on us, the "consumers" of media. We need to take a look in the mirror and understand who we are and what we want. Ask yourself. Really ask yourself: - What kind of information am I looking for and why? Am I just a digital rubbernecker? Do I want to break this story at the watercolor? Or do I need to know if a loved one was hurt? - Do I need to know shortly after an event occurs or am I able to tolerate a little bit of delay in my gratification? Shortly after an event, there are many stories and they haven't yet been synthesized into one narrative. There are people who want to capitalize on tragedy and their voices are part of the mix. Over time, the noise is stripped away and what we get is the official narrative and that is one we can "count" on. If you are willing and able to wait until the official narrative comes out then a) congratulations, you have will power unheard of in this day and age, and b) you get the benefit of skipping all of the intermediary chaos states. If you understand why you need to know and when you need to know it, then you can control the quality of the news you expose yourself to.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  These kinds of statements seem deep and meaingful, but ultimately they are vaccuous. The only reason any market entity exists is because people buy things from them, its the buyers fault. The only reason corrupt governments exist is because the people elect them, or at the very least don't overthrow them, its the governed's fault. Its a stupid oversimplication that places all the blame on the giant, vauge, and futile "everyone", while ignoring incentive structures and pretty much every ounce of nuance and sublty. Not to mention that it totally ignores how entities like the aformentioned, and amagoosoftbook shape our preferences, both actively, and unitentionally. Its a hopeless putdown of basicly any ability for anything to change, ever.
  - partisan 9y ago
    I am speaking specifically about this particular article and the topic it is covering. Whatever assumptions you used to arrive at your conclusions were introduced by the story you wanted to tell. I'd rather you didn't extrapolate from what I wrote. Ask me nicely and I will tell you why fixing Facebook and Google are not the answer.
HillaryBriss 9y ago
> Gabe Rivera, who runs a tech-news service called Techmeme that uses humans and algorithms to identify important stories ... wait a second, you mean a 3rd party site can do a better job at filtering out fake news than Google/Facebook? and people can instead just go to a 3rd party site for high quality news? but The Atlantic thinks Google/Facebook should have all the power and ace out the little 3rd party companies who offer a better product? waaaaah?!
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Some conservatives are concerned about liberal viewpoints on Facebook and consider it a conspiracy. Some liberals are concerned about conservative viewpoints on Facebook and consider it a conspiracy. Almost everyone is concerned about "trash" when it takes a viewpoint they oppose, less concerned about trash when it promotes a viewpoint they agree with. Everyone thinks they know what "Fake News" is and most people who are vested think Google's algorithms should rank them higher and less deserving sites lower. As with most human opinion it's a matter of self interest and so is the parent article. Stripped of the holier than thou mantel it's whining about page ranking. Common whine. Lots of us have it. But most of us aren't nasty enough to seize on tragedy in order to make the point. Which is just another piece of evidence about the nature of old media and why it shouldn't have a monopoly on information. Personally I'm ok with semi-dumb pipes. I think in the aggregate it's better for all of us regardless of persuasion.
trgv 9y ago
I think there's already too much filtering. People need to make up their own minds regarding what is true and what isn't, what's worth their time and what's bullshit, which links to click on and which to avoid. If people can't handle this then we need to spend more money on education, or just accept that some people disagree with us. I don't think aggressively filtering "untrustworthy" content will lead to a net benefit.
- altcognito 9y ago
  I don't know about spending more on education, but Americans were astoundingly unprepared to even make basic differentiation between the parties, let alone sort through "bullshit".
- petepete 9y ago
  > People need to make up their own minds regarding what is true and what isn't We kind of tried that with religion and people still persist in believing all kinds of stuff
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    So?
- mc32 9y ago
  As I posted elsewhere on this thread, journalism isn't exactly about the straight facts. It's always more about story and slant related to facts, sometimes more loosely than others. For example, it will take a lot of time for investigators to get close to the truth of what happened but no one is going to wait for official reports before publishing their takes on the incident --and I'm not nor would expect that. But we also can't very well expect only objective truth to be present in news stories/articles. Should Google FB do a better job a filtering obviously bogus information? Sure. Should they only source from a "pool" of sources in the era of citizen journalism? I don't think I want to cede that to news orgs who want to perpetuate their aura as the only legitimate purveyors of news.
  - 9y ago
holmak 9y ago
It's rather bold for the Atlantic to complain about low quality news when they have clickbait garbage at the bottom of every article.
- askvictor 9y ago
  It's not either/or; many high quality news sources have clickbait rubbish stories to help pay the bills for the more expensive, higher quality reporting. It's either that, or paywalls (or both)
llamataboot 9y ago
Zeynep Tufekci had a couple great columns about this recently regarding FB and the US elections this year. While I recognize that there's always a concern about who the gatekeepers get to be in the marketplace of ideas, I think this is a considerably more complex issues than "let all the information go wherever it wants and let the people sort it out" Putting 4Chan in a top news slot is not "allowing unedited and unfiltered access to information", it is algorithmicly promoting a cesspool of disinformation into a spot that many users believe is fairly authoritative. There is no way to "not make a choice" here and let information be free. There is only figuring out ways to filter and sort the firehose of information that is now at all of our fingertips. (A situation, I should add, that human brains are not necessarily prepared for) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-f... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/facebook-ad-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/facebook-a...
- Spivak 9y ago
  > into a spot that many users believe is fairly authoritative I mean that's the real issue. You can't be unbiased while trying to be a source of truth. You can be impartial and return results based on relevancy or you can intervene in an attempt to return the truth. Google has ventured into dangerous territory by mixing the two -- especially with their automatic snippets that answer questions. > There is only figuring out ways to filter and sort the firehose But it's an unsolved problem for how you put the control of this filtering into the users hands. The best we have right now is to just return everything and let the users choose what to pay attention to.
  - magicalist 9y ago
    > You can be impartial and return results based on relevancy I don't think that's possible. Take a search for "Las Vegas shooting". What is the impartial process for deciding the most relevant result for that? Relevance is inherently editorial.
    - candiodari 9y ago
mc32 9y ago
Google is more a conduit of news rather than a gatekeeper. FB is both a gatekeeper and a conduit to news as well as a news producer (since it pays or underwrites some orgs to produce news for it). That said, I think The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves engage in questionable journalism (clickbait as well as often biased news-source). There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journalism has always been about putting a slant on things --quoting unauthoritative sources ("man named Joe claims," etc.) loose factchecking, and more. All to sell more news (packaged with ads or for subscriptions, where you don't want to alienate your subscriber "base". This is an attempted landgrab by establishment news orgs to corner what is news. They want to be the only sanctioned sources of news and punish alternative sources --using an obvious outlier to promote their pov.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journalism has always been about putting a slant on things --quoting unauthoritative sources ("man named Joe claims," etc.) loose factchecking, and more. All to sell more news (packaged with ads or for subscriptions, where you don't want to alienate your subscriber "base". I look at it much differently: Nothing is perfect, no news source, no politician, no text editor, no scientific theory. They all fail our ideals but some are a lot better than others, some are a little better, and as others have pointed out in this discussion, an essential skill is to differentiate between them and also to assume the uncertainties of imperfection and to read critically. To throw together all journalism as 'imperfect' is like throwing together all science, from the theory of evolution to latest upload to arXiv, as all a failure because it's imperfect. Yes, read Darwin critically, but don't conflate his work with everyone else's. The more I accept inevitable human imperfection, the more I'm amazed by people like Darwin and by organizations like the NY Times, which cranks out a very good, very difficult product on an amazing schedule. That they and others accomplish all of that under the constraints of humanity is truly amazing to me. > The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves ... We're kind of stuck with ideas from hypocrites, at least until the great AI awakening - and if it's strong AI, hypocrisy might be the first sign that it's working.
reissbaker 9y ago
Not 100% surprising that journalists would view the machines that have wrested control of the news from them with hostility. Facebook definitely could use improvements, and it sounds like Google's search ranking in these rare kinds of situations could too, but the vitriol here — and the suggestion to replace machine ranking with ... surprise, journalists! — makes it seem like the "Us" who've been failed by ranking algorithms might specifically refer to The Atlantic.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  You are right, but on the other hand, we pay Facebook dearly with our personal data and in return we get to do the work journalists should do, of navigating in a sea of information, most of it fact-free. There must be a more fair distribution of time and income.
partycoder 9y ago
The reason fake news, clickbait and SEO techniques on poor content are able to prevail is the same reason spam mail is still a thing in 2017. Because it's an evolutionary race where each innovation is countered by a trick to avoid it.
convolvatron 9y ago
Google and Facebook were in it for the general good? ..i never knew
jessaustin 9y ago
It isn't important for the general public to know accurate trivia about tragic events within hours of their occurrence. One would think a monthly magazine writer would know that...
hsod 9y ago
Google is all about filtering. It doesn't just show you a random selection of every page on the internet containing your search term. Instead it applies subjective criteria to present you with what Google thinks would be the "best" results for you. This is why people use Google. So I don't understand when people make the generic argument against filtering, that filtering is categorically bad and Google shouldn't be in the business of deciding what we see and don't see. That's the whole point of Google!
- musage 9y ago
  > This is why people use Google. Wait, what? I use it despite that. Since 2000. Everybody seeing the same search results was never a problem, and sometimes even useful. There is a wide area between "just show random pages" (which probably not even the first prototype of any search engine ever did) and a "personal" filter you can't configure at all.
  - musage 9y ago
    For the downvoters, this may come as a shock to you, but you don't get to tell me the reality of my life, either. And there is more than "random matches" and "personal filter", that's so banal it shouldn't even need saying, but apparently it does. So far you've only shown the desire to shut up what you can not argue with.
  - hsod 9y ago
    I don't mean the filter is personalized to you, I just mean that there is a filter! That is, Google doesn't believe every website is equally "good", they Rank Pages based on subjective criteria. I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is a place to take a principled stand. Where are the tears for the spammers and scammers who have been so unfairly censored by Google for so many years?
    - musage 9y ago
jerkstate 9y ago
Google admits to scraping 4chan for news stories. This isn't just about "the algorithms" - a human decided that 4chan could potentially show up in that carousel. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/googl... Google News' statement claims that these false reports landed on the service's "Top Stories" feed due to a burst of activity for a name that had never received many search attempts. "When the fresh 4chan story broke, it triggered Top Stories, which unfortunately led to this inaccurate result," the statement reads. "We use a number of signals to determine the ranking of results—this includes both the authoritativeness of a site as well as how fresh it is," the statement continues. "We're constantly working to improve the balance and, in this case, did not get it right."
- soundwave106 9y ago
  Last I heard, 4Chan founder Chris Poole now is employed by Google as of about a year ago. Shortly after that, people on various boards noticed /pol/ results etc. showing up in Google News. I'm not sure if there's a coincidence in that timing or not :) At any rate, yeah, someone had to approve including message boards as a potential source to scrape for news. Not a good decision in my mind -- 4Chan's reputation makes this decision even more questionable, sure, but I can't think of any general social media / message boards / comment sections / etc. that would qualify as "news" in my mind. Certainly this lowers the value of Google News to me.
bupku5 9y ago
Zuck has allowed himself to be painted in to a corner...at some point he will end up muttering something along the lines of "Facebook posts don't kill people, people kill people. we have the right to free expression regardless of tragedies" now who does he sound like?
RestlessMind 9y ago
> Worse, when I asked Google about this, and indicated why I thought it was a severe problem, they sent back boilerplate. > Unfortunately, early this morning we were briefly surfacing an inaccurate 4chan website in our Search results for a small number of queries. Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future. I believe Google can be lax about quality of results because it has no real competitor. These are the moments when I wish there was a healthy competition among search engines, so that all of them would be on their toes to deliver best results. Having said that, did anyone try DDG or Bing during the initial period after the event? How was the quality of the news results on those sites?
amarant 9y ago
Not to deny there's a problem but this quote: "the problems in the system because there are computers in the decision loop"... Does the author expect hand made search results?
restlessmedia 9y ago
If the results can't be trusted, don't use Google or (especially) Facebook as your news sources. As understand it, Google will aggregate its news - it hasn't got someone picking the articles. Stick with an established news source - i'll pick the BBC because I live in the UK.
aaron695 9y ago
Reddit and 4chan had more informative information quicker than all the news outlets. They did not mislead me on anything about the incident. (They did have misleading comments that were easy to ignore) Sorry, but just because there are dumb people in the world why should my results on Goolge be censored. It's also bullshit, 4chan is very well know as a poor source and looks nothing like a newspaper so the concept it would be mistaken for a fact based news outlet shows more how dumb the writer and people with this belief are more than anything else. This writer is so superior they have to save us dummies from facebook groups and 4chan? I find it insulting.
- intended 9y ago
  Well, you could have been on a certain subreddit, and you would be worried about false flag operations after a point. I will agree, that several networks can get information out faster than older systems.
saimiam 9y ago
If we all such smart people/techies, can we spitball a better breaking news feed algorithm into existence? I'll kick it off - 1. Focus all news on Who? What? When? Where? Omit the "Why?". 2. When in doubt cite the primary news sources (police feeds/courtrooms/local authorities/opposition leaders/pictures/geo tagged and timestamped audio&video feeds with geo tags) 3. Secondary news sources like news orgs and journalist videos are second in importance 4. Quote tertiary news outlets like Reddit/HN/4chan only when they can be cross verified with a primary source More suggestions?
- have_faith 9y ago
  I've been toying with the idea of building a meta-news site of sorts for a while. Only one page per story (as opposed to the scatter-shot approach of normal news sites), stick just to facts, don't report death tolls while the bodies are still warm, anti-sensationalist and so on. Just curate a list of primary and secondary sources for a given story and present an overview of the story with opposing viewpoints. Very dry from a presentation perspective.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    How do you make it sufficiently authoritative and trustworthy so that the general population including us doesn't go out and seek hearsay and speculation to get their jollies. I mean, what interest could the identity of the killer have for people while the shootout was in progress. Why not just stop once the basic unbiased facts have been surfaced? Everything else can wait for the cold light of reason and time.
  - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
    The difficulty is that curating involves editorial decision making and some threshold for what you consider to be a fact. There's very little someone won't find fault with. But maybe if the sites editorial standards are also published, people could adjust for that themselves?
- bo1024 9y ago
  Just a comment: Reputation is key. Having studied game theory for systems of agents producing results and content, I feel fairly confident in this conclusion: the only reliable long-term design to incentivize beneficient, truthful behavior involves assigning good reputation in return for good behavior, and assigning future rewards/attention based on past reputation. Based on this, I postulate that any good news feed algorithm must use reputation scores based on past history to choose what to believe and what to show when a new story comes out. Humans of course do this instinctively, which many modern news organizations will have discovered too late as they sell out their integrity, accuracy, and priorities. Remember what von Neumann said about arithmetic attempts to generate random numbers? Similarly, anyone who attempts to algorithmically determine "truth" based on instantaneous metrics is living in a state of sin.
oelmekki 9y ago
Actually, I would tend to think net neutrality should apply to content host as well. Provided content is not illegal, obviously. The best to do to fight false info is to shame those who share it, just like we shame news outlets which do not verify their sources. It's probably the best way to make sure everybody double check what they post (plus, if citizen start to check their sources, that's a huge win).
deleted 9y ago
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timmytwotime 9y ago
The real crime is that there is an assumption of companies with their own self-interests at the forefront are somehow benevolent arbiters of information on the Internet. This shows more the naive crassness of the media.
- ubik 9y ago
  Nailed it. Exactly on what timeline do these people think these megacorp clickfarms were constitutionally/divinely designated as arbiters of truth? They have always been run by trash-purveying ad companies and have always been corrosive [1]. [1] https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety
  - Dirlewanger 9y ago
    It's companies fighting other companies for the mindshare of the public and profits. Your modern day "journalist" has no convictions anymore, they weave whatever tale their editors want to tell, whether it's true or not. This is our dire future, and I don't see a way out of it.
deleted 9y ago
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crag 9y ago
I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process. I mean, com'on, promoting 4chan to the top spot in a news channel? Too many people in this country don't bother to check, they figure if it's the top article it must be true.
- ForRealsies 9y ago
  Still needs the ron paul gif
- arkh 9y ago
  > I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process. Not really useful when most journalists already demonstrate how even professionals can't check their sources.
sharemywin 9y ago
If you get your news from your neighbor, friend, relative or a site that claims to be satire, your probably confusing gossip with news.
eurticket 9y ago
I think more of an issue besides google and facebook would be the way reporters used the information and also presented twitter as a unequivocal source of information.
losteverything 9y ago
I dont know if i could disagree with the author more. They didn't fail me. I don't want or need to know about shootings, crashes, floods, etc. Not instantly, anyway. I did not seek news in las vegas: I avoid it. If anything the previous news gatekeepers got us used to believing that if we dont stop everything we are somehow uncaring. So plane crashes, shootings etc hold a "insta-pass" to news. All hands on deck approach. To me, the authors premise of FB and G as bad gatekeepers is wrong. Information is hardly ever right right away. Nobody i know expects that. Even with that, i believe people know the difference between a photo sharing site, a email and search/map site and a news organization.
- azangru 9y ago
  Came here to say pretty much this :-)
- dasil003 9y ago
  Well Google has a top-level subdomain news.google.com that serves a similar function to a collection of newspaper section front pages. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they have some responsibility for what they post. As engineers we are too quick to give them a pass because it's algorithmic, and human intervention wouldn't scale. However it's worth remembering that Google is not a startup, it's one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world, we shouldn't treat them like an engineering org on a shoestring budget. You might not care personally or have any expectations, but that doesn't mean we are out of line demanding solutions to difficult problems from companies that make such profit off of our information.
- chourobin 9y ago
  You overestimate the intelligence of the general American public.
  - tgragnato 9y ago
    general American public -> general public
- dkarl 9y ago
j2kun 9y ago
It's at least a little bit ironic that on the same day major news outlets were announcing the death of a celebrity before he had actually died, and the story stayed up for hours.
jtbayly 9y ago
"The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. But to Facebook’s algorithms, it’s just a fast-growing group with an engaged community." "Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks." Those two paragraphs appear back to back in the article and are completely contradictory. 5000 people joined because it isn't "obvious to literally every human." [edited to add quotation marks to make my comment clearer]
deleted 9y ago
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sandov 9y ago
People being too stupid to discern between 4chan and real news is not Facebook's nor Google's nor my problem. How about promoting critical thinking instead?.
eighthnate 9y ago
"In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet." It's the nature of the internet and social media. People rant, rave and gossip. It's not google or facebook's job to curate what people say, think or do. I wish google and facebook and the social media companies would unite to fight back against traditional media. They've been attacked for the past couple of years relentlessly. > their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public. With all due respect. If google/fb/social media wanted to filter out quality of information, they would ban theatlantic and the rest of the traditional media. At the end of the day, this guy is just complaining that people are being people. Eventually things get sorted out. Looking at the guy's stories list, it seems like all he does is whine about facebook and social media. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexis-madrigal/ https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexis-madrigal/ Who is alexis madrigal that we should even pay attention to him?
morsmodr 9y ago
The value of the systems built by Google and Facebook and the quality/legitimacy of news from these systems is pretty much dependent on the users. The feeds are built by what users share. A platform is only as good as the people contributing to it. When it is known that insanity in individuals is rare but in groups, nations, epochs (and also internet) it is the rule - do not look at google/facebook news feeds to be sources of valid information. If we all are smart and intelligent enough to use these systems wisely, the benefits are enormous. But it also allows trolls and people who want to create confusion to operate with freedom. For no or 0 money you will obviously get poor quality news. You need editors to verify sources and then put them in print or online. Go and pay an online newspaper so their editors will have jobs to do what you expect and they do not need to publish click-bait articles just for ad money so that their firm can make money.
throw2016 9y ago
Since Google and co were never given the responsibility of telling anyone the truth this seems to be another naked powergrab to spread FUD and scare stories so someone can have a 'monopoly on truth'. Diversity of opinion and widespread rumour mongering is a natural state of affairs in human society. Those who are unsettled by this and seek some sort of uniformity and control betray a troubling megalomania. Elevating yourself over others to decide somehow only 'you' are able to discern the facts confirms it. That leads to not to Google or Facebook curating news but 'one source of truth' controlled by the government and authoritarian entities, using the exact same logic. Some people may be experts at C and Go but betray an astonishing illiteracy when it comes to history, freedom and evolution of human society. Notions of truth have been debated for eons so there is already a large body of knowledge. You need an educated literate population and accept people will have wildly differing views and trying to protect the 'ignorant' not only turns your society into a tightly controlled cage but reflects a streak of authoritarianism and megalomania in the 'protectors,' now prevalent among many technical folks.

292 points by DLay 9y ago

Google and Facebook have failed the Atlantic which is seizing on tragedy to imply only sanctioned media (them of course) should be available through Internet searches. However most of the rest of us are not failed as we already know results from 4-Chan probably aren't accurate. Please stop failing all of us with this desperate bid to get back in control of information dispersal there The Atlantic. I'd much rather see a smattering of nonsense and be able to make that determination for myself rather than you deciding what should be available for viewing.

pdonis 9y ago
Why is this getting downvotes? It's spot on. The "mainstream media" have been failing us for years, yet now suddenly it's all Google's and Facebook's fault that people are getting inaccurate information fed to them?
- dtnomad 9y ago
  +1
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    +1 There are plenty of brave journalists/bloggers but very few editors or corporate media vehicles prepared to publish their investigative reporting. I wouldn't dream of using FB as a go to 'news' source, while Google is essentially an aggregator/curator of information sources I may or may not take seriously. The idea that these lightweight websites should somehow be the gatekeepers of 'the truth' is pretty offensive. I prefer to triangulate across multiple sources and make up my own mind base don the information I uncover. Example: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/02/gunman-who-killed-50-at-las-vegas-concert-was-reti/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/oct/02/gunman-who-killed-5... A lead story in the local Vegas newspaper states the alleged gunman was a multi millionaire property owner. Is this true? I have no way of proving it but it is certainly food for thought...
ben_w 9y ago
Has the average person heard of 4-chan? If they had, would they understand it as anything different to Facebook, which they seem to trust, or the comments section under a news story, ditto? People don’t know what accurate and trustworthy looks like. Even when things are labeled as fiction, they can have an effect - Scotish Independence became more popular when the film “Braveheart” was released, while Islamophobia went up after “American Sniper” was released. Or am I just repeating plausible but fictional urban legends that I’ve mistaken for reality?
- sdca 9y ago
  Speculation on motive begins immediately when we learn what the target was and the weapons that were used. You can't censor that without censoring the entire incident.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    That is as irrelevant as it is correct. Yes, humans speculate, but we shouldn’t be amplifying our known cognitive biases by presenting wild speculation (let alone 4-chan) as if were authoritative truth.

pdonis 9y ago

tl/dr: We don't think people are capable of exercising judgment, so we want the computers at Google and Facebook to do it for them. Good luck with that.

intopieces 9y ago
It's not that they are incapable of exercising judgement. It's that when they do exercise judgement, it is consistently towards bad content. False content.
- nilved 9y ago
  This problem needs to be fixed with education. The article demonstrates an extremely profound misunderstanding of technology.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    It's not that easy. To trust a piece of news requires time (for example for cross checking over multiple news outlets) and that's a luxury I (and many others) don't have. We do pay (indirectly) pay Facebook and Google and we do not get this filtering service at all.
  - intended 9y ago
    Any problem which ends with "education is needed to fix it" will fail. Education is a non-solved problem, and you may as well say "society will fix it", to get a better approximation of what Education entails. Education on a subject is influenced and affected by 1) Student health, motivation, previous education, available time, availble security, water, electricity, nutrition, parental nutrition, parental education, stability, age, and so on. 2) Education and subject matter is affected by development of the country, politics of the country, cultural importance of the subject, job demands, payment/funds available for education, structure of educational systems and more. So in other words, its not "fixable". Do note, that if you developed a way to transpose both information and meaning and expertise, a la matrix, into someones brain directly - you would not only "solve" education, but you would also be able to program legions of soldiers/attackers/drones with the same technology.

folksinger 9y ago

The reason why those of us on this forum can tell the difference between good and bad information is because we received a good education and learned critical analysis skills. Facebook, Google and the internet in general are an objectively bad source of knowledge. They are subjectively good sources of knowledge. The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge. The contents of the average library contain better knowledge than the internet. The contents of a library at a world-class University and even more-so. The internet is the most overrated institution of contemporary society when it comes to obtaining knowledge. It is somewhat good for entertainment but probably not better than your average game of Dungeons and Dragons.

mythrwy 9y ago
"The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge." And this is known how? The aristocracy considers the people ignorant and prefers it that way, but history shows this is not always objectively so. The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known. As opposed to aristocracies which are feudalism and stagnation. “Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. ― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
- int_19h 9y ago
  > The ideas of freedom of information, of freedom of expression are repugnant to the aristocrat (who always consider they know best), but these are founding principals of so far the most innovative and productive societies history has known. I'm not entirely sure this is true. Before Internet, what we had was mostly freedom of the press - which is to say, the freedom to spread information (or disinformation) by those with financial means to do so. This is far more free than the preceding eras of widespread censorship, where the only one spreading information (or disinformation) was the government and its agents. But it's not quite a free for all. In effect, the ability to spread information on a large scale was still restricted to the "elite", defined in financial terms. Internet, and especially social networks with their graphs, changed that. A little money, and a carefully crafted story, go a long way in terms of dispersal and effect. Big money still gives you more opportunities, but even small players can make a difference. And we've yet to see the full effect that this is going to have on our societies.

partisan 9y ago

The article is placing the blame on Google and Facebook when it should be placed on us, the "consumers" of media. We need to take a look in the mirror and understand who we are and what we want. Ask yourself. Really ask yourself: - What kind of information am I looking for and why? Am I just a digital rubbernecker? Do I want to break this story at the watercolor? Or do I need to know if a loved one was hurt? - Do I need to know shortly after an event occurs or am I able to tolerate a little bit of delay in my gratification? Shortly after an event, there are many stories and they haven't yet been synthesized into one narrative. There are people who want to capitalize on tragedy and their voices are part of the mix. Over time, the noise is stripped away and what we get is the official narrative and that is one we can "count" on. If you are willing and able to wait until the official narrative comes out then a) congratulations, you have will power unheard of in this day and age, and b) you get the benefit of skipping all of the intermediary chaos states. If you understand why you need to know and when you need to know it, then you can control the quality of the news you expose yourself to.

throwaway2048 9y ago
These kinds of statements seem deep and meaingful, but ultimately they are vaccuous. The only reason any market entity exists is because people buy things from them, its the buyers fault. The only reason corrupt governments exist is because the people elect them, or at the very least don't overthrow them, its the governed's fault. Its a stupid oversimplication that places all the blame on the giant, vauge, and futile "everyone", while ignoring incentive structures and pretty much every ounce of nuance and sublty. Not to mention that it totally ignores how entities like the aformentioned, and amagoosoftbook shape our preferences, both actively, and unitentionally. Its a hopeless putdown of basicly any ability for anything to change, ever.
- partisan 9y ago
  I am speaking specifically about this particular article and the topic it is covering. Whatever assumptions you used to arrive at your conclusions were introduced by the story you wanted to tell. I'd rather you didn't extrapolate from what I wrote. Ask me nicely and I will tell you why fixing Facebook and Google are not the answer.

HillaryBriss 9y ago

> Gabe Rivera, who runs a tech-news service called Techmeme that uses humans and algorithms to identify important stories ... wait a second, you mean a 3rd party site can do a better job at filtering out fake news than Google/Facebook? and people can instead just go to a 3rd party site for high quality news? but The Atlantic thinks Google/Facebook should have all the power and ace out the little 3rd party companies who offer a better product? waaaaah?!

mythrwy 9y ago
Some conservatives are concerned about liberal viewpoints on Facebook and consider it a conspiracy. Some liberals are concerned about conservative viewpoints on Facebook and consider it a conspiracy. Almost everyone is concerned about "trash" when it takes a viewpoint they oppose, less concerned about trash when it promotes a viewpoint they agree with. Everyone thinks they know what "Fake News" is and most people who are vested think Google's algorithms should rank them higher and less deserving sites lower. As with most human opinion it's a matter of self interest and so is the parent article. Stripped of the holier than thou mantel it's whining about page ranking. Common whine. Lots of us have it. But most of us aren't nasty enough to seize on tragedy in order to make the point. Which is just another piece of evidence about the nature of old media and why it shouldn't have a monopoly on information. Personally I'm ok with semi-dumb pipes. I think in the aggregate it's better for all of us regardless of persuasion.

trgv 9y ago

I think there's already too much filtering. People need to make up their own minds regarding what is true and what isn't, what's worth their time and what's bullshit, which links to click on and which to avoid. If people can't handle this then we need to spend more money on education, or just accept that some people disagree with us. I don't think aggressively filtering "untrustworthy" content will lead to a net benefit.

altcognito 9y ago
I don't know about spending more on education, but Americans were astoundingly unprepared to even make basic differentiation between the parties, let alone sort through "bullshit".
petepete 9y ago
> People need to make up their own minds regarding what is true and what isn't We kind of tried that with religion and people still persist in believing all kinds of stuff
- paulddraper 9y ago
  So?
mc32 9y ago
As I posted elsewhere on this thread, journalism isn't exactly about the straight facts. It's always more about story and slant related to facts, sometimes more loosely than others. For example, it will take a lot of time for investigators to get close to the truth of what happened but no one is going to wait for official reports before publishing their takes on the incident --and I'm not nor would expect that. But we also can't very well expect only objective truth to be present in news stories/articles. Should Google FB do a better job a filtering obviously bogus information? Sure. Should they only source from a "pool" of sources in the era of citizen journalism? I don't think I want to cede that to news orgs who want to perpetuate their aura as the only legitimate purveyors of news.
- 9y ago

holmak 9y ago

It's rather bold for the Atlantic to complain about low quality news when they have clickbait garbage at the bottom of every article.

askvictor 9y ago
It's not either/or; many high quality news sources have clickbait rubbish stories to help pay the bills for the more expensive, higher quality reporting. It's either that, or paywalls (or both)

llamataboot 9y ago

Zeynep Tufekci had a couple great columns about this recently regarding FB and the US elections this year. While I recognize that there's always a concern about who the gatekeepers get to be in the marketplace of ideas, I think this is a considerably more complex issues than "let all the information go wherever it wants and let the people sort it out" Putting 4Chan in a top news slot is not "allowing unedited and unfiltered access to information", it is algorithmicly promoting a cesspool of disinformation into a spot that many users believe is fairly authoritative. There is no way to "not make a choice" here and let information be free. There is only figuring out ways to filter and sort the firehose of information that is now at all of our fingertips. (A situation, I should add, that human brains are not necessarily prepared for) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-f... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/facebook-ad-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/facebook-a...

Spivak 9y ago
> into a spot that many users believe is fairly authoritative I mean that's the real issue. You can't be unbiased while trying to be a source of truth. You can be impartial and return results based on relevancy or you can intervene in an attempt to return the truth. Google has ventured into dangerous territory by mixing the two -- especially with their automatic snippets that answer questions. > There is only figuring out ways to filter and sort the firehose But it's an unsolved problem for how you put the control of this filtering into the users hands. The best we have right now is to just return everything and let the users choose what to pay attention to.
- magicalist 9y ago
  > You can be impartial and return results based on relevancy I don't think that's possible. Take a search for "Las Vegas shooting". What is the impartial process for deciding the most relevant result for that? Relevance is inherently editorial.
  - candiodari 9y ago

mc32 9y ago

Google is more a conduit of news rather than a gatekeeper. FB is both a gatekeeper and a conduit to news as well as a news producer (since it pays or underwrites some orgs to produce news for it). That said, I think The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves engage in questionable journalism (clickbait as well as often biased news-source). There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journalism has always been about putting a slant on things --quoting unauthoritative sources ("man named Joe claims," etc.) loose factchecking, and more. All to sell more news (packaged with ads or for subscriptions, where you don't want to alienate your subscriber "base". This is an attempted landgrab by establishment news orgs to corner what is news. They want to be the only sanctioned sources of news and punish alternative sources --using an obvious outlier to promote their pov.

forapurpose 9y ago
> There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journalism has always been about putting a slant on things --quoting unauthoritative sources ("man named Joe claims," etc.) loose factchecking, and more. All to sell more news (packaged with ads or for subscriptions, where you don't want to alienate your subscriber "base". I look at it much differently: Nothing is perfect, no news source, no politician, no text editor, no scientific theory. They all fail our ideals but some are a lot better than others, some are a little better, and as others have pointed out in this discussion, an essential skill is to differentiate between them and also to assume the uncertainties of imperfection and to read critically. To throw together all journalism as 'imperfect' is like throwing together all science, from the theory of evolution to latest upload to arXiv, as all a failure because it's imperfect. Yes, read Darwin critically, but don't conflate his work with everyone else's. The more I accept inevitable human imperfection, the more I'm amazed by people like Darwin and by organizations like the NY Times, which cranks out a very good, very difficult product on an amazing schedule. That they and others accomplish all of that under the constraints of humanity is truly amazing to me. > The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves ... We're kind of stuck with ideas from hypocrites, at least until the great AI awakening - and if it's strong AI, hypocrisy might be the first sign that it's working.

reissbaker 9y ago

Not 100% surprising that journalists would view the machines that have wrested control of the news from them with hostility. Facebook definitely could use improvements, and it sounds like Google's search ranking in these rare kinds of situations could too, but the vitriol here — and the suggestion to replace machine ranking with ... surprise, journalists! — makes it seem like the "Us" who've been failed by ranking algorithms might specifically refer to The Atlantic.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dullgiulio 9y ago
You are right, but on the other hand, we pay Facebook dearly with our personal data and in return we get to do the work journalists should do, of navigating in a sea of information, most of it fact-free. There must be a more fair distribution of time and income.

partycoder 9y ago

The reason fake news, clickbait and SEO techniques on poor content are able to prevail is the same reason spam mail is still a thing in 2017. Because it's an evolutionary race where each innovation is countered by a trick to avoid it.

convolvatron 9y ago

Google and Facebook were in it for the general good? ..i never knew

jessaustin 9y ago

It isn't important for the general public to know accurate trivia about tragic events within hours of their occurrence. One would think a monthly magazine writer would know that...

hsod 9y ago

Google is all about filtering. It doesn't just show you a random selection of every page on the internet containing your search term. Instead it applies subjective criteria to present you with what Google thinks would be the "best" results for you. This is why people use Google. So I don't understand when people make the generic argument against filtering, that filtering is categorically bad and Google shouldn't be in the business of deciding what we see and don't see. That's the whole point of Google!

musage 9y ago
> This is why people use Google. Wait, what? I use it despite that. Since 2000. Everybody seeing the same search results was never a problem, and sometimes even useful. There is a wide area between "just show random pages" (which probably not even the first prototype of any search engine ever did) and a "personal" filter you can't configure at all.
- musage 9y ago
  For the downvoters, this may come as a shock to you, but you don't get to tell me the reality of my life, either. And there is more than "random matches" and "personal filter", that's so banal it shouldn't even need saying, but apparently it does. So far you've only shown the desire to shut up what you can not argue with.
- hsod 9y ago
  I don't mean the filter is personalized to you, I just mean that there is a filter! That is, Google doesn't believe every website is equally "good", they Rank Pages based on subjective criteria. I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is a place to take a principled stand. Where are the tears for the spammers and scammers who have been so unfairly censored by Google for so many years?
  - musage 9y ago

jerkstate 9y ago

Google admits to scraping 4chan for news stories. This isn't just about "the algorithms" - a human decided that 4chan could potentially show up in that carousel. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/googl... Google News' statement claims that these false reports landed on the service's "Top Stories" feed due to a burst of activity for a name that had never received many search attempts. "When the fresh 4chan story broke, it triggered Top Stories, which unfortunately led to this inaccurate result," the statement reads. "We use a number of signals to determine the ranking of results—this includes both the authoritativeness of a site as well as how fresh it is," the statement continues. "We're constantly working to improve the balance and, in this case, did not get it right."

soundwave106 9y ago
Last I heard, 4Chan founder Chris Poole now is employed by Google as of about a year ago. Shortly after that, people on various boards noticed /pol/ results etc. showing up in Google News. I'm not sure if there's a coincidence in that timing or not :) At any rate, yeah, someone had to approve including message boards as a potential source to scrape for news. Not a good decision in my mind -- 4Chan's reputation makes this decision even more questionable, sure, but I can't think of any general social media / message boards / comment sections / etc. that would qualify as "news" in my mind. Certainly this lowers the value of Google News to me.

bupku5 9y ago

Zuck has allowed himself to be painted in to a corner...at some point he will end up muttering something along the lines of "Facebook posts don't kill people, people kill people. we have the right to free expression regardless of tragedies" now who does he sound like?

RestlessMind 9y ago

> Worse, when I asked Google about this, and indicated why I thought it was a severe problem, they sent back boilerplate. > Unfortunately, early this morning we were briefly surfacing an inaccurate 4chan website in our Search results for a small number of queries. Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future. I believe Google can be lax about quality of results because it has no real competitor. These are the moments when I wish there was a healthy competition among search engines, so that all of them would be on their toes to deliver best results. Having said that, did anyone try DDG or Bing during the initial period after the event? How was the quality of the news results on those sites?

amarant 9y ago

Not to deny there's a problem but this quote: "the problems in the system because there are computers in the decision loop"... Does the author expect hand made search results?

restlessmedia 9y ago

If the results can't be trusted, don't use Google or (especially) Facebook as your news sources. As understand it, Google will aggregate its news - it hasn't got someone picking the articles. Stick with an established news source - i'll pick the BBC because I live in the UK.

aaron695 9y ago

Reddit and 4chan had more informative information quicker than all the news outlets. They did not mislead me on anything about the incident. (They did have misleading comments that were easy to ignore) Sorry, but just because there are dumb people in the world why should my results on Goolge be censored. It's also bullshit, 4chan is very well know as a poor source and looks nothing like a newspaper so the concept it would be mistaken for a fact based news outlet shows more how dumb the writer and people with this belief are more than anything else. This writer is so superior they have to save us dummies from facebook groups and 4chan? I find it insulting.

intended 9y ago
Well, you could have been on a certain subreddit, and you would be worried about false flag operations after a point. I will agree, that several networks can get information out faster than older systems.

saimiam 9y ago

If we all such smart people/techies, can we spitball a better breaking news feed algorithm into existence? I'll kick it off - 1. Focus all news on Who? What? When? Where? Omit the "Why?". 2. When in doubt cite the primary news sources (police feeds/courtrooms/local authorities/opposition leaders/pictures/geo tagged and timestamped audio&video feeds with geo tags) 3. Secondary news sources like news orgs and journalist videos are second in importance 4. Quote tertiary news outlets like Reddit/HN/4chan only when they can be cross verified with a primary source More suggestions?

have_faith 9y ago
I've been toying with the idea of building a meta-news site of sorts for a while. Only one page per story (as opposed to the scatter-shot approach of normal news sites), stick just to facts, don't report death tolls while the bodies are still warm, anti-sensationalist and so on. Just curate a list of primary and secondary sources for a given story and present an overview of the story with opposing viewpoints. Very dry from a presentation perspective.
- saimiam 9y ago
  How do you make it sufficiently authoritative and trustworthy so that the general population including us doesn't go out and seek hearsay and speculation to get their jollies. I mean, what interest could the identity of the killer have for people while the shootout was in progress. Why not just stop once the basic unbiased facts have been surfaced? Everything else can wait for the cold light of reason and time.
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago
  The difficulty is that curating involves editorial decision making and some threshold for what you consider to be a fact. There's very little someone won't find fault with. But maybe if the sites editorial standards are also published, people could adjust for that themselves?
bo1024 9y ago
Just a comment: Reputation is key. Having studied game theory for systems of agents producing results and content, I feel fairly confident in this conclusion: the only reliable long-term design to incentivize beneficient, truthful behavior involves assigning good reputation in return for good behavior, and assigning future rewards/attention based on past reputation. Based on this, I postulate that any good news feed algorithm must use reputation scores based on past history to choose what to believe and what to show when a new story comes out. Humans of course do this instinctively, which many modern news organizations will have discovered too late as they sell out their integrity, accuracy, and priorities. Remember what von Neumann said about arithmetic attempts to generate random numbers? Similarly, anyone who attempts to algorithmically determine "truth" based on instantaneous metrics is living in a state of sin.

oelmekki 9y ago

Actually, I would tend to think net neutrality should apply to content host as well. Provided content is not illegal, obviously. The best to do to fight false info is to shame those who share it, just like we shame news outlets which do not verify their sources. It's probably the best way to make sure everybody double check what they post (plus, if citizen start to check their sources, that's a huge win).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

timmytwotime 9y ago

The real crime is that there is an assumption of companies with their own self-interests at the forefront are somehow benevolent arbiters of information on the Internet. This shows more the naive crassness of the media.

ubik 9y ago
Nailed it. Exactly on what timeline do these people think these megacorp clickfarms were constitutionally/divinely designated as arbiters of truth? They have always been run by trash-purveying ad companies and have always been corrosive [1]. [1] https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety
- Dirlewanger 9y ago
  It's companies fighting other companies for the mindshare of the public and profits. Your modern day "journalist" has no convictions anymore, they weave whatever tale their editors want to tell, whether it's true or not. This is our dire future, and I don't see a way out of it.

deleted 9y ago

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crag 9y ago

I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process. I mean, com'on, promoting 4chan to the top spot in a news channel? Too many people in this country don't bother to check, they figure if it's the top article it must be true.

ForRealsies 9y ago
Still needs the ron paul gif
arkh 9y ago
> I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process. Not really useful when most journalists already demonstrate how even professionals can't check their sources.

sharemywin 9y ago

If you get your news from your neighbor, friend, relative or a site that claims to be satire, your probably confusing gossip with news.

eurticket 9y ago

I think more of an issue besides google and facebook would be the way reporters used the information and also presented twitter as a unequivocal source of information.

losteverything 9y ago

I dont know if i could disagree with the author more. They didn't fail me. I don't want or need to know about shootings, crashes, floods, etc. Not instantly, anyway. I did not seek news in las vegas: I avoid it. If anything the previous news gatekeepers got us used to believing that if we dont stop everything we are somehow uncaring. So plane crashes, shootings etc hold a "insta-pass" to news. All hands on deck approach. To me, the authors premise of FB and G as bad gatekeepers is wrong. Information is hardly ever right right away. Nobody i know expects that. Even with that, i believe people know the difference between a photo sharing site, a email and search/map site and a news organization.

azangru 9y ago
Came here to say pretty much this :-)
dasil003 9y ago
Well Google has a top-level subdomain news.google.com that serves a similar function to a collection of newspaper section front pages. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they have some responsibility for what they post. As engineers we are too quick to give them a pass because it's algorithmic, and human intervention wouldn't scale. However it's worth remembering that Google is not a startup, it's one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world, we shouldn't treat them like an engineering org on a shoestring budget. You might not care personally or have any expectations, but that doesn't mean we are out of line demanding solutions to difficult problems from companies that make such profit off of our information.
chourobin 9y ago
You overestimate the intelligence of the general American public.
- tgragnato 9y ago
  general American public -> general public
dkarl 9y ago

j2kun 9y ago

It's at least a little bit ironic that on the same day major news outlets were announcing the death of a celebrity before he had actually died, and the story stayed up for hours.

jtbayly 9y ago

"The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. But to Facebook’s algorithms, it’s just a fast-growing group with an engaged community." "Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks." Those two paragraphs appear back to back in the article and are completely contradictory. 5000 people joined because it isn't "obvious to literally every human." [edited to add quotation marks to make my comment clearer]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sandov 9y ago

People being too stupid to discern between 4chan and real news is not Facebook's nor Google's nor my problem. How about promoting critical thinking instead?.

eighthnate 9y ago

"In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet." It's the nature of the internet and social media. People rant, rave and gossip. It's not google or facebook's job to curate what people say, think or do. I wish google and facebook and the social media companies would unite to fight back against traditional media. They've been attacked for the past couple of years relentlessly. > their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public. With all due respect. If google/fb/social media wanted to filter out quality of information, they would ban theatlantic and the rest of the traditional media. At the end of the day, this guy is just complaining that people are being people. Eventually things get sorted out. Looking at the guy's stories list, it seems like all he does is whine about facebook and social media. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexis-madrigal/ https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexis-madrigal/ Who is alexis madrigal that we should even pay attention to him?

morsmodr 9y ago

The value of the systems built by Google and Facebook and the quality/legitimacy of news from these systems is pretty much dependent on the users. The feeds are built by what users share. A platform is only as good as the people contributing to it. When it is known that insanity in individuals is rare but in groups, nations, epochs (and also internet) it is the rule - do not look at google/facebook news feeds to be sources of valid information. If we all are smart and intelligent enough to use these systems wisely, the benefits are enormous. But it also allows trolls and people who want to create confusion to operate with freedom. For no or 0 money you will obviously get poor quality news. You need editors to verify sources and then put them in print or online. Go and pay an online newspaper so their editors will have jobs to do what you expect and they do not need to publish click-bait articles just for ad money so that their firm can make money.

throw2016 9y ago

Since Google and co were never given the responsibility of telling anyone the truth this seems to be another naked powergrab to spread FUD and scare stories so someone can have a 'monopoly on truth'. Diversity of opinion and widespread rumour mongering is a natural state of affairs in human society. Those who are unsettled by this and seek some sort of uniformity and control betray a troubling megalomania. Elevating yourself over others to decide somehow only 'you' are able to discern the facts confirms it. That leads to not to Google or Facebook curating news but 'one source of truth' controlled by the government and authoritarian entities, using the exact same logic. Some people may be experts at C and Go but betray an astonishing illiteracy when it comes to history, freedom and evolution of human society. Notions of truth have been debated for eons so there is already a large body of knowledge. You need an educated literate population and accept people will have wildly differing views and trying to protect the 'ignorant' not only turns your society into a tightly controlled cage but reflects a streak of authoritarianism and megalomania in the 'protectors,' now prevalent among many technical folks.