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Using Mechanical Turk to hide a surgeon's domestic violence charge
- not_a_cop75 7y agoI, for one, welcome our new Machine Learning Overlords.
- optimuspaul 7y agoMechanical turk is the opposite of machine learning
- gojomo 7y agoHere, though, it's being used to provide fake signals to a true machine-learning algorithm – Google's clicktrail-influenced ranking. So more of a 'complement' than an 'opposite'.
- bsder 7y agoUm, the fact that his medical license has already been suspended by one state is much more problematic than his domestic violence charge, thanks. Let's be outraged about the correct problem, please ...
- kennywinker 7y agoI’m not outraged about the specifics, i’m intrigued about the astroturfing. If this worked, it could and probably is being applied to all kinds of things...
- jakestuart 7y agoDoes this really work? I would assume Google would detect this repeated pattern pretty easily.
- CommieBobDole 7y agoIf you search for the requested terms, most of the top links are spam blogs and other junk sites that describe him in glowing terms. It appears that they've successfully pushed most but not all of the critical articles down to the second or third page.
- mattigames 7y agoYou're putting a bit too much faith on Google algorithm, then again maybe the whole world is.
- evan_ 7y agoI think so, at least to some degree. Someone's certainly bet money on the theory that it works. When I first saw this tweet, a search for "Dr. Paul Drago" (in an incognito window) consistently returned a glowing blog post first and the domestic violence article second. Hours later, those results are consistently reversed. Could be random, could be that people who saw this tweet are intentionally clicking the news article he's trying to bury.
- brokensegue 7y agoor could be google took manual action
- ma2rten 7y agoMy guess is that it could work. It would be hard to detect, because the queries come from real users.
- rezistik 7y agoBased on the current results, I'd say it works very effectively. It's almost impossible to find the article about the 11 botched surgeries.
- bwoj 7y agoComing back to this from a few days later, the search "Dr. Paul Drago" doesn't turn up anything negative in the first dozen pages. Unfortunately for him the search bar is offering up "dr. paul drago domestic violence" and "dr. paul drago botched" as auto-complete options.
- sunkensheep 7y agoIt's just "blackhat" SEO. Reminds me of a scheme in China where a company sold fake medicines and astro-turfed their way into appearing as a major supplier. So long as our view of the internet is governed by opaque algorithms with no oversight, gaming them will be profitable.
- ColanR 7y ago> So long as our view of the internet is governed by opaque algorithms with no oversight, gaming them will be profitable. (as long as people can get away with it,) gaming them will be profitable.
- lilbobbytables 7y agoAnd if they weren't opaque, gaming them would be even easier.
- yellowapple 7y agoSecurity by obscurity ain't security, though. If they weren't opaque, at least we as a society would be better equipped to keep up with the algorithmic exploitation arms race.
- cbsmith 7y agoI think, unfortunately, that is naive. While security through obscurity ain't security, there is something to be said for obfuscation of a system that people are trying to game.
- yellowapple 7y agoThat's the point, though: if a system is so fragile that anyone with knowledge of its inner workings can game it or otherwise exploit it, then it is not and was never secure (nor can it ever be while it continues to be opaque). I say this enough to be a broken record, but transparency is a dependency of trust.
- subsubsub 7y agoIs this astroturfing? I thought the term referred to fake grass roots movements (Astro Turf being the brand name for that fake grass you sometimes see). As a previous commenter said, this is more like grey/blackhat SEO.
- jjeaff 7y agoNo, the term predates fake grass roots movements. It comes from using fake grass to cover up an ugly yard. So creating fake or useless media attention to distract or cover up something you don't want people to see.
- zamadatix 7y agoGoogling around I can't find anything that agrees with this but I see an overwhelming number of sites referring to the origin as related to the grass roots meaning with the popular origin from Lloyd Bentsen in 1985. Not that it couldn't have just been overrun since that time I just couldn't find anything to support your claim.
- optimuspaul 7y agoThe term does not predate AstroTurf, the fake grass.
- dang 7y agoOk, we've taken the astroturf out of the title above.
- evan_ 7y agoI chose "astroturfing" as it seemed like the best way to describe what he's trying to do succinctly enough for a brief title. FWIW, whoever he hired to do this does seem to also be doing stuff that more traditionally falls under the "astroturfing" umbrella: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-facts-about-Dr-Paul-Drago-Charlotte-NC-that-people-don-t-know-about https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-facts-about-Dr-Paul-Drag...
- dlphn___xyz 7y agowhats the point of doing this if a simple record check could reveal his court records?(assuming these charges are real)
- wnevets 7y agoIs that something you usually do when picking a new Dr.?
- geezerjay 7y agoHonest question: how should someone's domestic violence charge affect your choice of surgeon?
- chessturk 7y agoIf they beat women, they may not value them as people?
- jessaustin 7y agoIME it's not uncommon for successful surgeons to be fairly cold about the human body. Maybe that's not quite the same thing as "not valuing people", but ISTM it's on the same spectrum.
- chessturk 7y agoIt's arguable that domestic violence is less cold and more passionate than the characteristics you're describing. I understand there are cold sadists, but speaking to the archetype. Additionally, in the case of a bigot, the outcomes involving subjects of prejudice may be less meaningful to them even at a subconscious level. Coldness and bigotry can coexist, and certainly produce emergent results. Also, that the best outcome of using surgeon who has a history of domestic violence is that they're so disassociated from the world, that beating a loved one doesn't matter is a really strange argument. Perhaps the argument is there isn't a better way, but damn. I used to not be sure about robot surgeons, now I'm pretty convinced.
- devoply 7y agohttps://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26/greenville-physician-charged-domestic-violence/74809748/ https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26... Should a person be banned from working because they physically assaulted someone. Seems to be that lots of people think so, despite that fact that many more people than are convicted commit these sorts of crimes. Didn't take much more than to type the name into Google News and click on the link on the page.
- Someone1234 7y agoIf you click the second image: - "Accused doctor wasn't certified in plastic surgery"[0] - "11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs"[1] - "Plastic surgeon - Paul Drago - Plastic surgery from hell"[2] I'd say the accusations here are more than just DV. [0] https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-wasnt-certified-in-plastic-surgery/374891066 https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-wasnt... [1] https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-surgeon-botched-jobs/ https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-surgeon-... [2] https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-drago-plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/ https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-d...
- cantrevealname 7y ago> 11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs If I told you that the 3M Company had 2192 lawsuits[1] of all types filed against them in the the last 4 years, what does that tell you? Are they a terrible company getting sued at lot or a incredibly nice company that barely ever gets sued for a company that large? Plastic surgeons are among the most sued professions. To know whether 11 lawsuits are significant, you'd have to know the rate at which plastic surgeons are sued, how many surgeries this guy did, what period those 11 surgeries represent, and possibly even weight it with the difficulty of the surgeries (because if he's taking on high risk surgeries that other doctors decline, he'll have more failures). Maybe 11 lawsuits in a 4-year period is an excellent track record for someone doing thousands of high-risk surgeries in an ultra-litigious medical specialty. [1] Completely made up that number.
- londons_explore 7y agoThat will be insanely effective. Doing that just ~10 times (with independant users/profiles) will probably eliminate those results when the ML model is next trained. Assuming this Dr isn't a celebrity, he probably doesn't get more than a few searches per month, so 10 in the same day will be a massive signal. Note to person behind this: It will have even more impact if each turker is instructed to click only one of the desired links. Clicking "back" to a google search result is a strong signal that the page you clicked didn't answer your query.
- taneem 7y agoTitle is incorrect. This is not on Mechanical Turk. Tasks like this are not allowed on MTurk as per TOS. The original tweet author says so on the thread.
- maxheadroom 7y agoCorrect, the immediate reply from the author was: >heads up that this is NOT from @amazonmturk! black hat SEO/shady reputation management techniques like this are strictly against amzn's policy. this is from a competing micro task site The title makes it seem like intentional click-bait, given this.
- wnevets 7y agoor its just another kleenex situation.
- reaperducer 7y agoI didn't read it as being part of MTurk. "Mechanical turk" was a thing for hundreds of years before Amazon named it's service.
- tomnipotent 7y ago> "Mechanical turk" was a thing for hundreds of years before Amazon named it's service. In the context of crowdsourced labor, it absolutely implies Amazon.
- LocalH 7y agoThe title as presented on HN says "Mechanical Turk", not "mechanical turk".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- indolering 7y agoIn the past, Google claimed to not use clickstream data because of how easy it is to manipulate. Have they changed their tune or are they just targeting Bing?
- yipbub 7y agoIt seems to have worked. Googling the Dr. Paul Drago doesn't show any of these articles unless you use keywords mentioned in the Do-Not-Click titles. I made sure to click on them.
- RachelF 7y agoYes, I only see positive results for him. Same on Bing and Duckduckgo. His record appears clean in the first page.
- millzlane 7y agoI did it a few times. When I google Dr. Paul Drago. I do seem some of the articles. That may be because I've click a few of the links and have done the search a few times. Also The https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-drago-plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/ https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-d... link also appears on the second page now.
- aussieguy1234 7y agoIt's probably worth noting this guy has a very unique name, therefore negative news stories about him are much more likely to go to the front page of results, since few other people with the same name would get any publicity.
- LawnDart1 7y agoam I the only one who searched for dr paul drago and clicked on the greenville doctor article to redress the balance?
- ipushfatkids 7y agoHater alert.