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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

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
    So first "top news spot" means that if you searched for the name of this person who got falsely accused on 4chan, you found the false accusation on 4chan (as the first result). That's all. Calling this a "top news spot" ... I have no words. Perhaps we should say that this complaint is "fake news" ? I get that newspapers and even journalists have their existence threatened by Facebook and Google, but ... this is a low and very thin argument. I don't understand what they want either. Censorship seems to be the real issue. The article is not so much taking offence at the information available, they're just angry that the information wasn't filtered through the "normal" channels. They were very unhappy various things didn't get suppressed. That Google had the gall to surface "unauthorized" information. Never mind that if I was said falsely accused person, I would definitely have wanted that information surfaced. Including to a lawyer, and later to a judge. At issue are the person starting this rumour, and the publisher (ie. 4chan). Their point is that in this case, things should have gotten suppressed, like naming a person as a culprit that had nothing to do with the incident. Now keep in mind that this is hyperbole: any searches related to the Las Vegas shooting never named anyone, but if you searched for that person's exact name it would surface a "fresh" result ... from 4chan, claiming he had something to do with the shooting. I would argue that newspapers have done much worse than this. Much worse. Often repeatedly and in cases where there was an obvious financial or political motive for them to spread misinformation. I'd rather have all information, knowing that some may be wrong. And the newspapers' "right" to filter all information I may see ? Screw that, if I want to see your filtered info, I'll go to your site. I may want to do that, for verification and because I think your filter is useful, but I do not want you or anyone filtering everything I see.
    - ubik 9y ago
      This is entirely a blown-up issue that is being used as a cover to start censoring and monitoring our communications on a far worse level.
      - bitL 9y ago
        Calm down! Nobody mentioned children yet!
- rdiddly 9y ago
  The unfiltered results ARE the truth. 4chan is the truth. In the sense that "Someone posted this thing on 4chan." And that's the only truth there is in internet-land: Someone posted something. Is it real? Is it true, what they posted? Or is it "fake news?" You will never know, and you probably shouldn't try to take it that far. Or if you do, at least be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of believing it and not-believing it at the same time. The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person. Or perhaps what you hear from trusted parties, but even there, your trust may be misplaced, or they may report something false in good faith that was the result of their having been deceived or mistaken. And you can misperceive and twist reality even all by yourself in the presence of supposedly non-subjective and "real" stimuli. Regardless, from the vantage point of "looking at a computer," all you know about anything you see there, is that someone put it there. And even the "someone" part isn't necessarily true... it could be AI-generated like some sports and financial news is now. The good news is, that which you can't witness with your own eyes, rarely has any real effect on your life. I'm experimenting with that. The sun still comes up, and it's still time to get some shit done. Sure sure, of course there are myriad ways someone or something far away can have an influence on me. What I'm saying is, what if you ignore that? What if you construct a mental model of the world where it's actually not one big joyous tapestry of unity and interconnectedness, but just a fragmented patchwork and you have your own little square and that's it. Neither view is right per se, but they're both equally valid, which is to say, bullshit, yet incontrovertible to those who believe it. I'll say one thing though, take the fragmented view and suddenly you don't especially find yourself immersed in news of shootings and Google can't "fail you" because you don't rely on it as a window to the world - you only use it for what it's actually good at: looking for shit on the internet.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person. > The good news is, that which you can't witness with your own eyes, rarely has any real effect on your life Not only anti-rationalist and anti-Enlightenment, but you're even disagreeing with object permanence!
    - croon 9y ago
- Joeri 9y ago
  Even if you manage to put the control of filtering in people's hands, it doesn't solve the problem. Social science convincingly shows people don't want to be told the truth if it runs counter to prior beliefs, and will use all the tools at their disposal to avoid or discredit it. In fact, forcing the truth on them will convince them even more of their false beliefs (see: the backfire effect). Give people more control over their filters, and they will create even tighter filter bubbles. Maybe the solution to what news to let through the filter bubble is to apply a very simple answer: none at all. Google shouldn't show anything that's more recent than a few weeks.
comatose 9y ago
Asking the rich and powerful gatekeepers of the majority news sources of the public to filter content for us in a way they have been relatively reticent to do, mostly out of pure altruism, is asinine. I have no love for Facebook or Google, but the world wouldn't be a better place if they cultivated news for us, at least not for long.
kashprime 9y ago
It would be trivial for FB and Google to allow tailoring of feeds. Even keyword exclusions or subject filters would be a huge step-up from the gamified engagement-getting monster that we have now.
- yosito 9y ago
  This is more of a political challenge than a technical one. One that I'd say is worth fighting for.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Yes - which is why they won't do it. Like out-of-order feeds, where engagement conflicts with usefulness they'll pick engagement and ad views every time.
  - teaneedz 9y ago
    I'm ready to walk away from all algorithmically sorted feeds. I'm tired of the ad tech kool aid that causes PMs + execs to consistently put UX and users in last place.
yosito 9y ago
This is a very good point! I would also add that those with the resources to control filtering (Google, Facebook, China, Russia, the US, etc) will be the ones who ultimately control it.
UnpossibleJim 9y ago
The problem comes in our choice of who should be the "gatekeepers of information"? Certainly not The Altlantic, The New Yorker (as seen sited in this discussion) or any other traditional news outlet. They have shown time and time again that the peiple running these outlets, not only, have very biased stations when presenting the news (i.e. from MSNBC to Fox News and the rainbow of bias between), they have shown, for a very long time, that these same traditional news sources are easily bought and do not handle a 24 hour news cast well, at all (look at the reports of something as simple as Tom Petty's death, yesterday, a dozen hours or so before his death). While I certainly don't trust Google or Facebook to report the news, I have trouble relying on the "gatekeepers" (blech) of the news, as well.
- acdha 9y ago
  > They have shown time and time again that the peiple running these outlets, not only, have very biased stations when presenting the news That’s a really sweeping equivalence claim to make without any proof, much less a way to account for the mountain of evidence contradicting your assertion. Dismissing real organizations with editors, fact checkers, a range of viewpoints, etc. because they aren’t fun by dispassionate robots is simply an error — you might read a story in the NYT and expect them to favor a different side than the WSJ but most people know that both employ decent journalists, check sources, and print corrections when necessary.
  - UnpossibleJim 9y ago
    I don't know if what I've read is actual proof and a lot of this seems to point to "opinion" pieces on news networks, I guess. I have not done the legwork, but here are some articles I've found going towards what I stated: http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-how-false-stories-spread-and-why-people-believe-them http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/what-weve-learned-about-the-media-industry-during-this-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/what-weve-... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/... https://www.alternet.org/story/154875/the_science_of_fox_news%3A_why_its_viewers_are_the_most_misinformed https://www.alternet.org/story/154875/the_science_of_fox_new... In retrospect, though, I probably think it's more prevalent than it is in actuality. To be completely honest, the sensationalism by media outlets exposing misinformation by media outlets "on the other side" of the news gets to me, sometimes. As for corrections, though, mea culpa's seem to be a mid page item, at best =/

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
  So first "top news spot" means that if you searched for the name of this person who got falsely accused on 4chan, you found the false accusation on 4chan (as the first result). That's all. Calling this a "top news spot" ... I have no words. Perhaps we should say that this complaint is "fake news" ? I get that newspapers and even journalists have their existence threatened by Facebook and Google, but ... this is a low and very thin argument. I don't understand what they want either. Censorship seems to be the real issue. The article is not so much taking offence at the information available, they're just angry that the information wasn't filtered through the "normal" channels. They were very unhappy various things didn't get suppressed. That Google had the gall to surface "unauthorized" information. Never mind that if I was said falsely accused person, I would definitely have wanted that information surfaced. Including to a lawyer, and later to a judge. At issue are the person starting this rumour, and the publisher (ie. 4chan). Their point is that in this case, things should have gotten suppressed, like naming a person as a culprit that had nothing to do with the incident. Now keep in mind that this is hyperbole: any searches related to the Las Vegas shooting never named anyone, but if you searched for that person's exact name it would surface a "fresh" result ... from 4chan, claiming he had something to do with the shooting. I would argue that newspapers have done much worse than this. Much worse. Often repeatedly and in cases where there was an obvious financial or political motive for them to spread misinformation. I'd rather have all information, knowing that some may be wrong. And the newspapers' "right" to filter all information I may see ? Screw that, if I want to see your filtered info, I'll go to your site. I may want to do that, for verification and because I think your filter is useful, but I do not want you or anyone filtering everything I see.
  - ubik 9y ago
    This is entirely a blown-up issue that is being used as a cover to start censoring and monitoring our communications on a far worse level.
    - bitL 9y ago
      Calm down! Nobody mentioned children yet!
rdiddly 9y ago
The unfiltered results ARE the truth. 4chan is the truth. In the sense that "Someone posted this thing on 4chan." And that's the only truth there is in internet-land: Someone posted something. Is it real? Is it true, what they posted? Or is it "fake news?" You will never know, and you probably shouldn't try to take it that far. Or if you do, at least be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of believing it and not-believing it at the same time. The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person. Or perhaps what you hear from trusted parties, but even there, your trust may be misplaced, or they may report something false in good faith that was the result of their having been deceived or mistaken. And you can misperceive and twist reality even all by yourself in the presence of supposedly non-subjective and "real" stimuli. Regardless, from the vantage point of "looking at a computer," all you know about anything you see there, is that someone put it there. And even the "someone" part isn't necessarily true... it could be AI-generated like some sports and financial news is now. The good news is, that which you can't witness with your own eyes, rarely has any real effect on your life. I'm experimenting with that. The sun still comes up, and it's still time to get some shit done. Sure sure, of course there are myriad ways someone or something far away can have an influence on me. What I'm saying is, what if you ignore that? What if you construct a mental model of the world where it's actually not one big joyous tapestry of unity and interconnectedness, but just a fragmented patchwork and you have your own little square and that's it. Neither view is right per se, but they're both equally valid, which is to say, bullshit, yet incontrovertible to those who believe it. I'll say one thing though, take the fragmented view and suddenly you don't especially find yourself immersed in news of shootings and Google can't "fail you" because you don't rely on it as a window to the world - you only use it for what it's actually good at: looking for shit on the internet.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person. > The good news is, that which you can't witness with your own eyes, rarely has any real effect on your life Not only anti-rationalist and anti-Enlightenment, but you're even disagreeing with object permanence!
  - croon 9y ago
Joeri 9y ago
Even if you manage to put the control of filtering in people's hands, it doesn't solve the problem. Social science convincingly shows people don't want to be told the truth if it runs counter to prior beliefs, and will use all the tools at their disposal to avoid or discredit it. In fact, forcing the truth on them will convince them even more of their false beliefs (see: the backfire effect). Give people more control over their filters, and they will create even tighter filter bubbles. Maybe the solution to what news to let through the filter bubble is to apply a very simple answer: none at all. Google shouldn't show anything that's more recent than a few weeks.

comatose 9y ago

Asking the rich and powerful gatekeepers of the majority news sources of the public to filter content for us in a way they have been relatively reticent to do, mostly out of pure altruism, is asinine. I have no love for Facebook or Google, but the world wouldn't be a better place if they cultivated news for us, at least not for long.

kashprime 9y ago

It would be trivial for FB and Google to allow tailoring of feeds. Even keyword exclusions or subject filters would be a huge step-up from the gamified engagement-getting monster that we have now.

yosito 9y ago
This is more of a political challenge than a technical one. One that I'd say is worth fighting for.
pjc50 9y ago
Yes - which is why they won't do it. Like out-of-order feeds, where engagement conflicts with usefulness they'll pick engagement and ad views every time.
- teaneedz 9y ago
  I'm ready to walk away from all algorithmically sorted feeds. I'm tired of the ad tech kool aid that causes PMs + execs to consistently put UX and users in last place.

yosito 9y ago

This is a very good point! I would also add that those with the resources to control filtering (Google, Facebook, China, Russia, the US, etc) will be the ones who ultimately control it.

UnpossibleJim 9y ago

The problem comes in our choice of who should be the "gatekeepers of information"? Certainly not The Altlantic, The New Yorker (as seen sited in this discussion) or any other traditional news outlet. They have shown time and time again that the peiple running these outlets, not only, have very biased stations when presenting the news (i.e. from MSNBC to Fox News and the rainbow of bias between), they have shown, for a very long time, that these same traditional news sources are easily bought and do not handle a 24 hour news cast well, at all (look at the reports of something as simple as Tom Petty's death, yesterday, a dozen hours or so before his death). While I certainly don't trust Google or Facebook to report the news, I have trouble relying on the "gatekeepers" (blech) of the news, as well.

acdha 9y ago
> They have shown time and time again that the peiple running these outlets, not only, have very biased stations when presenting the news That’s a really sweeping equivalence claim to make without any proof, much less a way to account for the mountain of evidence contradicting your assertion. Dismissing real organizations with editors, fact checkers, a range of viewpoints, etc. because they aren’t fun by dispassionate robots is simply an error — you might read a story in the NYT and expect them to favor a different side than the WSJ but most people know that both employ decent journalists, check sources, and print corrections when necessary.
- UnpossibleJim 9y ago
  I don't know if what I've read is actual proof and a lot of this seems to point to "opinion" pieces on news networks, I guess. I have not done the legwork, but here are some articles I've found going towards what I stated: http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-how-false-stories-spread-and-why-people-believe-them http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/what-weve-learned-about-the-media-industry-during-this-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/what-weve-... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/... https://www.alternet.org/story/154875/the_science_of_fox_news%3A_why_its_viewers_are_the_most_misinformed https://www.alternet.org/story/154875/the_science_of_fox_new... In retrospect, though, I probably think it's more prevalent than it is in actuality. To be completely honest, the sensationalism by media outlets exposing misinformation by media outlets "on the other side" of the news gets to me, sometimes. As for corrections, though, mea culpa's seem to be a mid page item, at best =/