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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

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.
- tethys 9y ago
  > discussion of the news That's the problem. If I get the article right, Google listed results from 4chan in their news boxes that appear above search results –– and that's a problem because in this place you'd expect trustworthy information and not just some speculation. Listing a discussion (even if it's on 4chan) within the regular search results is not a problem and not what the author is criticizing.
- abrahamepton 9y ago
  > If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that. Nope. Nooooope. Nuh uh. Not at all. Could not disagree more profoundly. Google has a responsibility to its users. Surfacing a 4Chan result in a top-results box is a fail for those users who see it. The Google search results in that case are worse than returning nothing at all. Let me put it differently. There are some sites that should never be treated as authoritative on any subject under any circumstances. 4Chan is one of those sites. It's one thing for a user to be looking for something _on 4Chan_ but for anyone else, 4Chan results are garbage and an algorithm fail 100% of the time (at least, that's what I would argue; obviously I do not work at Google and cannot speak for them).

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.

tethys 9y ago
> discussion of the news That's the problem. If I get the article right, Google listed results from 4chan in their news boxes that appear above search results –– and that's a problem because in this place you'd expect trustworthy information and not just some speculation. Listing a discussion (even if it's on 4chan) within the regular search results is not a problem and not what the author is criticizing.
abrahamepton 9y ago
> If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that. Nope. Nooooope. Nuh uh. Not at all. Could not disagree more profoundly. Google has a responsibility to its users. Surfacing a 4Chan result in a top-results box is a fail for those users who see it. The Google search results in that case are worse than returning nothing at all. Let me put it differently. There are some sites that should never be treated as authoritative on any subject under any circumstances. 4Chan is one of those sites. It's one thing for a user to be looking for something _on 4Chan_ but for anyone else, 4Chan results are garbage and an algorithm fail 100% of the time (at least, that's what I would argue; obviously I do not work at Google and cannot speak for them).