6 ms·

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,

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
> 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. I think Facebook does a decent job of presenting a news feed driven by your "friends." Not that it's a good thing (it's certainly not in most cases) but by and large people are seeing the good and bad information that their friends are promoting, which is what they want, because they want to maintain their social awareness and connectedness more than they want to be informed. Facebook also does a pretty good job of indicating the social source of the news, so you can evaluate it in the light of your "friend"'s credibility. Facebook just lets people be people, with all the horrible implications of that. Google straight-up presents articles as "news" and then disclaims any responsibility for it, on the implicit argument that a company with tens of thousands of employees, billions in market cap, and one of the most visible platforms in the world shouldn't be held to the same standard as a small city newspaper because they're using algorithms. They direct blame to their algorithms and then argue that algorithms are inherently blameless, a trick that we keep letting them get away with. Their excuse of "it's just algorithms" is as cheap and meaningless as "it's just for the lulz." They don't say "here's the news chosen by an algorithm which of course often makes horrific mistakes a human never would." They present "Google News" with layout and sections just like a professionally produced news site, until they screw up, and then they say, "Well, of course it's not journalism, don't make that mistake. It's just algorithms. Didn't you notice the Google colors and subdued graphic design? We're not trying to fool anybody." Their take this time: Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. Ah, so everything worked as designed. No need for humans to take responsibility. Just stand back and let the system work. Again, a small city newspaper that left something like that up for hours would be condemned for callousness and suspected of intentionally promoting disinformation. Google seems to be on its way to arguing that its systems either cannot or should not be overridden by humans, even to correct horrific mistakes, if it's not there already.
- losteverything 9y ago
  <mistakes a human never would A great line! Have to keep that top of mind reading anything online But G has no Murrow-esque anything and i think its unrealistic and unfair to expext it can. G is simply a live canvas where everybody splatters paint and people walk by the gallery at different times seeing different things
jasode 9y ago
I agree and the author, Alex Madrigal, seems to be ignorant to the history of the dissemination of misinformation. He commits the same error as other journalists complaining about Google/Facebook algorithms by not mentioning their "human judgement" within news orgs causes similar problems. Let's look at how the news publications handled the "truthiness" of Iraq WMD: - No skepticism that WMD exists: September 2002 article (WMD fever 6 months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq)[1]. - WMD not found: January 2004 article (10 months after the invasion when soldiers found nothing.)[2] Before March 2003, all the influential news orgs in USA such as NYTimes, Washington Post, and all 4 major tv networks pandered to the Bush administration's "slam dunk" narrative for Iraq having WMD. You can't make excuses for those USA news orgs and say they were tricked. That's because the news outlets in Europe (especially the journalists in France and Sweden) were more skeptical about WMD and wrote that attacking Iraq would be a big mistake. It's fascinating how the journalists write as if they're on a perch of higher judgement over the mass of helpless readers when they themselves fall victims to the same scams of misinformation and spread that misinformation to audiences just like bad Google algorithms. (See documentaries "War Made Easy"[3] and "Buying the War"[4] that show how journalists lack independent critical judgement and fall in lockstep to spread misinformation.) >There’s no hiding behind algorithms anymore. The problems cannot be minimized. The machines have shown they are not up to the task of dealing with rare, breaking news events, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. More humans must be added to the decision-making process, and the sooner the better. But humans and their judgement are not even up to the task of slow-moving news like the buildup to war. For the Iraq fiasco, maybe the better solution in 2003 is "more algorithms" in such that USA readers would end up in a 50/50 split with half believing Iraq had WMD and the other half remaining skeptical. Instead, the polls showed that majority of Americans believed Iraq had WMD.[5] How did they get that wrong belief?!? The mainstream news, that's how. (Facebook "fake news" didn't exist in 2003.) Yes, Google needs better algorithms; but I'm not convinced that people like Alex or government officials should be the ones regulating the algorithms. They have a proven track history of being as flawed as the readers they're trying to inform with the "truth". (Thought experiment: if Google search results in Feb 2003 had returned more results saying "no proof Iraq has WMD", American journalists and the government would have criticized Google's algorithm for spreading "fake news"!) [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-ir... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-l... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KzYL6e3sV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KzYL6e3sV0 [5] http://news.gallup.com/poll/8623/americans-still-think-iraq-had-weapons-mass-destruction-before-war.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/8623/americans-still-think-iraq-...
abrahamepton 9y ago
I worked at Google News for 5 years, and completely agree w/Alexis. Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas; that's a fail, period. It is a fail. It should not have happened; it should not happen again; it should never happen. Great, maybe you personally weren't fooled. That's entirely and totally irrelevant since there are 7 billion people on the planet and Google (and FB and everyone else) wants to serve all of them. Not all of whom are exactly like you. Google fucked up, admitted it (kinda) and needs to do better. Period. Not hard to understand.
- amcca029 9y ago
  > Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas Great Job! But in all seriousness 4chan and other sites tend to react very fast, was there any manipulation going on or was it just that they where getting picked up due to high initial activity?
  - abrahamepton 9y ago
    I'm sure there's a lot of truth in the given explanation: the terms that were returning this 4Chan result had basically no search history beforehand, and all of a sudden this post was probably getting a lot of links, traffic, whatever. That's not exculpatory in the least, but it does make sense to me.
- eighthnate 9y ago
  > that's a fail, period. I disagree. If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that. If 4chan was the only source google was pushing then fine. But as long as google is posting a wide variety of "news", then anything, including 4chan should be allowed. Edit: People forget that the TMZ and even the inquirer used to be attacked also but they have produced fine journalism from time to time. And establishment organizations like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, NYTimes, etc have produced terrible journalism from time to time. No entity has a complete monopoly on facts and news. We should have diverse set of news/opinions/etc.

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

> 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. I think Facebook does a decent job of presenting a news feed driven by your "friends." Not that it's a good thing (it's certainly not in most cases) but by and large people are seeing the good and bad information that their friends are promoting, which is what they want, because they want to maintain their social awareness and connectedness more than they want to be informed. Facebook also does a pretty good job of indicating the social source of the news, so you can evaluate it in the light of your "friend"'s credibility. Facebook just lets people be people, with all the horrible implications of that. Google straight-up presents articles as "news" and then disclaims any responsibility for it, on the implicit argument that a company with tens of thousands of employees, billions in market cap, and one of the most visible platforms in the world shouldn't be held to the same standard as a small city newspaper because they're using algorithms. They direct blame to their algorithms and then argue that algorithms are inherently blameless, a trick that we keep letting them get away with. Their excuse of "it's just algorithms" is as cheap and meaningless as "it's just for the lulz." They don't say "here's the news chosen by an algorithm which of course often makes horrific mistakes a human never would." They present "Google News" with layout and sections just like a professionally produced news site, until they screw up, and then they say, "Well, of course it's not journalism, don't make that mistake. It's just algorithms. Didn't you notice the Google colors and subdued graphic design? We're not trying to fool anybody." Their take this time: Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. Ah, so everything worked as designed. No need for humans to take responsibility. Just stand back and let the system work. Again, a small city newspaper that left something like that up for hours would be condemned for callousness and suspected of intentionally promoting disinformation. Google seems to be on its way to arguing that its systems either cannot or should not be overridden by humans, even to correct horrific mistakes, if it's not there already.

losteverything 9y ago
<mistakes a human never would A great line! Have to keep that top of mind reading anything online But G has no Murrow-esque anything and i think its unrealistic and unfair to expext it can. G is simply a live canvas where everybody splatters paint and people walk by the gallery at different times seeing different things

jasode 9y ago

I agree and the author, Alex Madrigal, seems to be ignorant to the history of the dissemination of misinformation. He commits the same error as other journalists complaining about Google/Facebook algorithms by not mentioning their "human judgement" within news orgs causes similar problems. Let's look at how the news publications handled the "truthiness" of Iraq WMD: - No skepticism that WMD exists: September 2002 article (WMD fever 6 months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq)[1]. - WMD not found: January 2004 article (10 months after the invasion when soldiers found nothing.)[2] Before March 2003, all the influential news orgs in USA such as NYTimes, Washington Post, and all 4 major tv networks pandered to the Bush administration's "slam dunk" narrative for Iraq having WMD. You can't make excuses for those USA news orgs and say they were tricked. That's because the news outlets in Europe (especially the journalists in France and Sweden) were more skeptical about WMD and wrote that attacking Iraq would be a big mistake. It's fascinating how the journalists write as if they're on a perch of higher judgement over the mass of helpless readers when they themselves fall victims to the same scams of misinformation and spread that misinformation to audiences just like bad Google algorithms. (See documentaries "War Made Easy"[3] and "Buying the War"[4] that show how journalists lack independent critical judgement and fall in lockstep to spread misinformation.) >There’s no hiding behind algorithms anymore. The problems cannot be minimized. The machines have shown they are not up to the task of dealing with rare, breaking news events, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. More humans must be added to the decision-making process, and the sooner the better. But humans and their judgement are not even up to the task of slow-moving news like the buildup to war. For the Iraq fiasco, maybe the better solution in 2003 is "more algorithms" in such that USA readers would end up in a 50/50 split with half believing Iraq had WMD and the other half remaining skeptical. Instead, the polls showed that majority of Americans believed Iraq had WMD.[5] How did they get that wrong belief?!? The mainstream news, that's how. (Facebook "fake news" didn't exist in 2003.) Yes, Google needs better algorithms; but I'm not convinced that people like Alex or government officials should be the ones regulating the algorithms. They have a proven track history of being as flawed as the readers they're trying to inform with the "truth". (Thought experiment: if Google search results in Feb 2003 had returned more results saying "no proof Iraq has WMD", American journalists and the government would have criticized Google's algorithm for spreading "fake news"!) [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-ir... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-l... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KzYL6e3sV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KzYL6e3sV0 [5] http://news.gallup.com/poll/8623/americans-still-think-iraq-had-weapons-mass-destruction-before-war.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/8623/americans-still-think-iraq-...

abrahamepton 9y ago

I worked at Google News for 5 years, and completely agree w/Alexis. Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas; that's a fail, period. It is a fail. It should not have happened; it should not happen again; it should never happen. Great, maybe you personally weren't fooled. That's entirely and totally irrelevant since there are 7 billion people on the planet and Google (and FB and everyone else) wants to serve all of them. Not all of whom are exactly like you. Google fucked up, admitted it (kinda) and needs to do better. Period. Not hard to understand.

amcca029 9y ago
> Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas Great Job! But in all seriousness 4chan and other sites tend to react very fast, was there any manipulation going on or was it just that they where getting picked up due to high initial activity?
- abrahamepton 9y ago
  I'm sure there's a lot of truth in the given explanation: the terms that were returning this 4Chan result had basically no search history beforehand, and all of a sudden this post was probably getting a lot of links, traffic, whatever. That's not exculpatory in the least, but it does make sense to me.
eighthnate 9y ago
> that's a fail, period. I disagree. If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that. If 4chan was the only source google was pushing then fine. But as long as google is posting a wide variety of "news", then anything, including 4chan should be allowed. Edit: People forget that the TMZ and even the inquirer used to be attacked also but they have produced fine journalism from time to time. And establishment organizations like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, NYTimes, etc have produced terrible journalism from time to time. No entity has a complete monopoly on facts and news. We should have diverse set of news/opinions/etc.