14 ms·

Google promoted Texas gunman fake tweets

117 points by dberhane 9y ago

runesoerensen 9y ago
Not sure what to think here... Google's 'public liaison for search' says "Google briefly carried tweets with dubious info "[0] without defining further what that means - except their Twitter results are changing "second by second"[1], and later assuring that it "only happened for a few thousands who searched for his name"[2]. This was not my experience. I took a screenshot of my search results at 9:06PM ET [3], e.g. 1-2+ hours after the egregious tweets (which were already prominently featured within 30-40 minutes, if not earlier, as several other sources suggest[4]). I might be missing something, but it seems disingenuous to suggest that this only happened for a short period of time, while downplaying the matter by vaguely and generally hinting at second-by-second dynamic tweet update algorithms. Also I even think the claim that only a few thousand people saw this may be disproven by Google's own statistics. According to Google Trends, searches for Devis Patrick Kelly peaked between 7-9PM ET [5] - so before I took the screenshot that night. I find it very hard to believe that only a few thousand people saw this over the 2+ hours when this peaked on that night. Based on the Google Trends graph[6] it seems the vast majority of searches happened during the peak, and I suspect it's reasonable to assume that millions have searched for his name since his name was publicly revealed? [0] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137 [1] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440 [2] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120 [3] https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK [4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake_news/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake... [5] https://imgur.com/a/lAh12 https://imgur.com/a/lAh12 [6] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%202017-11-08T06&q=Devin%20Patrick%20Kelly https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%...
- csydas 9y ago
  More than likely it is Google trying to downplay it, but it's their search being gamed - the BBC article is actually inaccurate as far as I'm aware, as at least in the case of Sam Hyde, I was under the impression he was in on the joke, though I may be wrong. Regardless, the length of time probably isn't as important as the frequency with which this occurs, as the search frequently returning verifiably wrong or fake information is probably a bigger issue. The length of time it lasts is just a symptom of the tool providing news without the news being curated.
colemannugent 9y ago
My summary of the article: An algorithm designed by Google engineers to promote upcoming stories does exactly what it was supposed to do, and people who don't understand why Google employees did not manually review just one out of one hundred thousand things that the search engine indexed that day are suprised. Google Search is a content aggregator that show you what it thinks you are most likely to click on. It does not know about politics, it cannot fact check, it does not think care about effort journalism, the only thing that matters is what stories generate more ad revenue. Of course, Google will try to police its results better after this incident, but they can't effectively do this without mass censorship. If you don't believe me, see the recent YouTube drama over monetization.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  Maybe algorithms just aren't up to the task of exercising editorial judgement over news stories? Would the world be that much poorer if Google didn't include a "popular on Twitter" feature? What if Google News were a smaller, human-curated roster of important stories that were basically the same for everyone? (maybe targeted by country) It could be a good thing to have a non-filter bubbled set of news.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
    It's worth pointing out that Facebook tried the human curation thing and were accused of bias.
    - ForHackernews 9y ago
      That's fine: They should own that, then. "We're Facebook and these are our values -- we trust the BBC and do not trust InfoWars.com" These big tech companies are trying to be all things to all people, and they want to pretend that using algorithms means they're free from bias. It's just a different, more opaque bias encoded in the algorithms. But users are inclined to trust it because it comes "from the computer". It's a Garbage In, Gospel Out situation.
    - awj 9y ago
beaner 9y ago
I feel like there's a big push to blame "fake news" and related phenomena on tech companies right now. Fake news is created and shared by people. Tech is just one of the vehicles through which we share it. The problem isn't tech, it's people. Fix the root cause with education and the tech will reflect it.
- runesoerensen 9y ago
  "The problem isn't tech, it's people" This sounds remarkably like an argument I've heard before, but there will always be destructive people and people seeking to profit from events like this. In this case certain features created by tech companies perpetuate and amplify the destructiveness of those people, and that's a problem tech needs to solve quickly. Education could definitely help people filter information better, and in turn tech companies can leverage that curation to deliver better products. The short term fix? Perhaps Google should just disable their tweet carousel (at least during certain events) until it works reliably and doesn't contribute to misinformation on this scale.
  - beaner 9y ago
    I would say that certain technologies perpetuate and amplify the voice of people, but not necessarily their destructiveness. Correct information is equally perpetuated and amplified. The ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected. For this reason I am not convinced there's an actual problem.
    - runesoerensen 9y ago
      I think the problem here is that Google's tweet results actually have been shown to display a fairly high ratio of incorrect information at some particularly critical times. I don't know why you'd say "the ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected" - clearly the number of people exposed to incorrect information would be lower if Google did not show those tweets? That's not surprising since they're essentially scraping Twitter. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have a voice, but perhaps leave it to Twitter to rank tweets until Google's SNR ratio is better. Twitter just have a lot more signals to rank their users' tweets by (and for instance better assess whether tweets are being promoted by a botnet/voting ring).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
convery 9y ago
It feels like everyday we get a new article either about how some company advertised on social media or how some algorithm worked exactly as intended. Only that there's some manufactured outrage attached to it. Starting to feel like the whole 'gamers'-issue a few years ago where suddenly it wasn't good enough to make a nice product that people wanted to play; you had to include moral messages or you were the reason why the world's going downhill. Just that now it's social media that needs a moral filter to prevent people from sharing bad news. Needless to say, I don't think we need some moral-police in science and tech; so it's a little scary to see the push for it.
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  > Starting to feel like the whole 'gamers'-issue a few years ago where suddenly it wasn't good enough to make a nice product that people wanted to play; you had to include moral messages or you were the reason why the world's going downhill. What in the world are you referring to?
  - hyperdunc 9y ago
    Gamergate - where the new religion of Social Justice encountered its first bout of massive resistance in the form of video gamers, who didn't want someone else's morality shoehorned into their entertainment. At least that's my high-level take on it. There's plenty of other summaries around.
    - tehwebguy 9y ago
      That’s your impression? A more accurate description would be that some gamers incorrectly believed that a woman paid a man for a game review with sex and they responded with harassment and threats. Also, you OP, what does this have to do with the article? Google promoted tweets that were incorrect and want to correct that, they aren’t pushing a moral stance.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
mythrwy 9y ago
Yes, there is bad information on the Internet. Yes, when you aggregate tons of user content some inaccurate things will be there. Go somewhere else BBC, NYT, WaPo. We know, you'd like to see a content regulated Internet. I wouldn't and I'm weary of seeing these articles day in and day out. Beside why are articles from newspaper on HN front page so much lately? From HN guidelines: Off-Topic: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon....... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." This self serving media policy seeking doesn't belong here IMOP. It's not interesting, it's not informative. Shouldn't be constantly on front page day after day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tclancy 9y ago
>Google's Danny Sullivan - "We want to get this right" I feel like in a better world that would be, "We are legally obligated to get this right or stop trying."
imdhmd 9y ago
A little off-topic, but on similar lines: searching for "demagogue" on google, gets you a Trump's picture: https://i.imgur.com/qFJk9io.png https://i.imgur.com/qFJk9io.png I wonder how that ends up happening, is google able to sum up popular opinion or is this someone's mischief?
amelius 9y ago
I wonder when we finally get mandatory electronic locks on guns. Having an electronic license for a single gun could have prevented this man from using a whole battery of guns. It makes little sense that we can have more sophisticated locks on an iPhoneX than on guns.

117 points by dberhane 9y ago

Not sure what to think here... Google's 'public liaison for search' says "Google briefly carried tweets with dubious info "[0] without defining further what that means - except their Twitter results are changing "second by second"[1], and later assuring that it "only happened for a few thousands who searched for his name"[2]. This was not my experience. I took a screenshot of my search results at 9:06PM ET [3], e.g. 1-2+ hours after the egregious tweets (which were already prominently featured within 30-40 minutes, if not earlier, as several other sources suggest[4]). I might be missing something, but it seems disingenuous to suggest that this only happened for a short period of time, while downplaying the matter by vaguely and generally hinting at second-by-second dynamic tweet update algorithms. Also I even think the claim that only a few thousand people saw this may be disproven by Google's own statistics. According to Google Trends, searches for Devis Patrick Kelly peaked between 7-9PM ET [5] - so before I took the screenshot that night. I find it very hard to believe that only a few thousand people saw this over the 2+ hours when this peaked on that night. Based on the Google Trends graph[6] it seems the vast majority of searches happened during the peak, and I suspect it's reasonable to assume that millions have searched for his name since his name was publicly revealed? [0] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713318172635137 [1] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713426440253440 [2] https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120 https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/927713578827653120 [3] https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK https://imgur.com/a/ao4kK [4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake_news/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/06/google_twitter_fake... [5] https://imgur.com/a/lAh12 https://imgur.com/a/lAh12 [6] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%202017-11-08T06&q=Devin%20Patrick%20Kelly https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2017-11-05T05%...

csydas 9y ago
More than likely it is Google trying to downplay it, but it's their search being gamed - the BBC article is actually inaccurate as far as I'm aware, as at least in the case of Sam Hyde, I was under the impression he was in on the joke, though I may be wrong. Regardless, the length of time probably isn't as important as the frequency with which this occurs, as the search frequently returning verifiably wrong or fake information is probably a bigger issue. The length of time it lasts is just a symptom of the tool providing news without the news being curated.

colemannugent 9y ago

My summary of the article: An algorithm designed by Google engineers to promote upcoming stories does exactly what it was supposed to do, and people who don't understand why Google employees did not manually review just one out of one hundred thousand things that the search engine indexed that day are suprised. Google Search is a content aggregator that show you what it thinks you are most likely to click on. It does not know about politics, it cannot fact check, it does not think care about effort journalism, the only thing that matters is what stories generate more ad revenue. Of course, Google will try to police its results better after this incident, but they can't effectively do this without mass censorship. If you don't believe me, see the recent YouTube drama over monetization.

ForHackernews 9y ago
Maybe algorithms just aren't up to the task of exercising editorial judgement over news stories? Would the world be that much poorer if Google didn't include a "popular on Twitter" feature? What if Google News were a smaller, human-curated roster of important stories that were basically the same for everyone? (maybe targeted by country) It could be a good thing to have a non-filter bubbled set of news.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  It's worth pointing out that Facebook tried the human curation thing and were accused of bias.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    That's fine: They should own that, then. "We're Facebook and these are our values -- we trust the BBC and do not trust InfoWars.com" These big tech companies are trying to be all things to all people, and they want to pretend that using algorithms means they're free from bias. It's just a different, more opaque bias encoded in the algorithms. But users are inclined to trust it because it comes "from the computer". It's a Garbage In, Gospel Out situation.
  - awj 9y ago

beaner 9y ago

I feel like there's a big push to blame "fake news" and related phenomena on tech companies right now. Fake news is created and shared by people. Tech is just one of the vehicles through which we share it. The problem isn't tech, it's people. Fix the root cause with education and the tech will reflect it.

runesoerensen 9y ago
"The problem isn't tech, it's people" This sounds remarkably like an argument I've heard before, but there will always be destructive people and people seeking to profit from events like this. In this case certain features created by tech companies perpetuate and amplify the destructiveness of those people, and that's a problem tech needs to solve quickly. Education could definitely help people filter information better, and in turn tech companies can leverage that curation to deliver better products. The short term fix? Perhaps Google should just disable their tweet carousel (at least during certain events) until it works reliably and doesn't contribute to misinformation on this scale.
- beaner 9y ago
  I would say that certain technologies perpetuate and amplify the voice of people, but not necessarily their destructiveness. Correct information is equally perpetuated and amplified. The ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected. For this reason I am not convinced there's an actual problem.
  - runesoerensen 9y ago
    I think the problem here is that Google's tweet results actually have been shown to display a fairly high ratio of incorrect information at some particularly critical times. I don't know why you'd say "the ratio of correct to incorrect information seems unaffected" - clearly the number of people exposed to incorrect information would be lower if Google did not show those tweets? That's not surprising since they're essentially scraping Twitter. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have a voice, but perhaps leave it to Twitter to rank tweets until Google's SNR ratio is better. Twitter just have a lot more signals to rank their users' tweets by (and for instance better assess whether tweets are being promoted by a botnet/voting ring).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

convery 9y ago

It feels like everyday we get a new article either about how some company advertised on social media or how some algorithm worked exactly as intended. Only that there's some manufactured outrage attached to it. Starting to feel like the whole 'gamers'-issue a few years ago where suddenly it wasn't good enough to make a nice product that people wanted to play; you had to include moral messages or you were the reason why the world's going downhill. Just that now it's social media that needs a moral filter to prevent people from sharing bad news. Needless to say, I don't think we need some moral-police in science and tech; so it's a little scary to see the push for it.

tehwebguy 9y ago
> Starting to feel like the whole 'gamers'-issue a few years ago where suddenly it wasn't good enough to make a nice product that people wanted to play; you had to include moral messages or you were the reason why the world's going downhill. What in the world are you referring to?
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Gamergate - where the new religion of Social Justice encountered its first bout of massive resistance in the form of video gamers, who didn't want someone else's morality shoehorned into their entertainment. At least that's my high-level take on it. There's plenty of other summaries around.
  - tehwebguy 9y ago
    That’s your impression? A more accurate description would be that some gamers incorrectly believed that a woman paid a man for a game review with sex and they responded with harassment and threats. Also, you OP, what does this have to do with the article? Google promoted tweets that were incorrect and want to correct that, they aren’t pushing a moral stance.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

mythrwy 9y ago

Yes, there is bad information on the Internet. Yes, when you aggregate tons of user content some inaccurate things will be there. Go somewhere else BBC, NYT, WaPo. We know, you'd like to see a content regulated Internet. I wouldn't and I'm weary of seeing these articles day in and day out. Beside why are articles from newspaper on HN front page so much lately? From HN guidelines: Off-Topic: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon....... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." This self serving media policy seeking doesn't belong here IMOP. It's not interesting, it's not informative. Shouldn't be constantly on front page day after day.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tclancy 9y ago

>Google's Danny Sullivan - "We want to get this right" I feel like in a better world that would be, "We are legally obligated to get this right or stop trying."

imdhmd 9y ago

A little off-topic, but on similar lines: searching for "demagogue" on google, gets you a Trump's picture: https://i.imgur.com/qFJk9io.png https://i.imgur.com/qFJk9io.png I wonder how that ends up happening, is google able to sum up popular opinion or is this someone's mischief?

amelius 9y ago

I wonder when we finally get mandatory electronic locks on guns. Having an electronic license for a single gun could have prevented this man from using a whole battery of guns. It makes little sense that we can have more sophisticated locks on an iPhoneX than on guns.