5 ms·
What's an "actual news site" though? Major news outlets also regularly publish unfounded conspiracy theories (e.g. russia gate, WMD in Iraq, etc). The question
by justinmchase 7y ago
What's an "actual news site" though? Major news outlets also regularly publish unfounded conspiracy theories (e.g. russia gate, WMD in Iraq, etc). The question is do you like yours flavored with anonymity or government funding?
The point is that its not a search engines job to make that determination. People will decide for themselves and whatever the algorithm is, it should seek to remove the personal biases of the implementers and be blind. It should seek to serve the asker not change the asker.
I feel like there could be a term, similar to "uncanny valley" where instead of detecting the in-human traits of something attempting to appear human we see bias in something attempting to be unbiased.
- pvg 7y agoIf you pre-suppose that news orgs are the same thing as conspiracy-mongers, you're going to have a hard time defining news sites as distinct from not-news sites. Most people don't start from that assumption and find the distinction useful, though.
- paulddraper 7y agoI don't believe justinmchase pre-supposed anything. They fairly pointed out the evidence of mainstream news sources promulgating conspiracy theories.
- pvg 7y agoI missed the evidence, let alone evidence.
- paulddraper 7y ago> russia gate, WMD in Iraq
- pvg 7y agoThat's not evidence of anything, it's just an outline of someone's screwball opinion. Just like 'NASA is a hoax-making organization (Moon stuff)' does not contain any evidence but simply outlines, in shorthand, a screwball opinion.
- justinmchase 7y agoThey're not the same thing but sometimes they do still peddle conspiracy theories that turn out to be false. Many are susceptible to delivering fake news as if it was real due to a conflict of interest related to their funding model. It is useful to make a distinction between news organizations and non-news organizations but it is not useful to apply any sort of value judgement of either based on that fact alone.
- pvg 7y agoAgain, you're trying to conflate getting things wrong or inadequately accounting for bias or expectations with 'peddling conspiracy theories' or 'delivering fake news'. These things are not the same and that's one of the key distinctions between real news organizations and ones that aren't.