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“ Google will show you that the overwhelming majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American.” It could just be that there is a lo

“ Google will show you that the overwhelming majority of American inventors throughout history have been African-American.” It could just be that there is a lot of activity on the web around African-American inventors which Google is reflecting. Google isn’t an encyclopedia. Their campaign against misinformation is purportedly intended to reduce the spread of lies and propaganda. There might be some collateral damage where sources of lies and propaganda get generally downgraded (even when telling the truth), but is that really a problem? Most of us do that in our interpersonal relationships. If you are a liar, I’ll tend not to believe you, even if when you tell me something true. (I’ll assume there is some agenda or some part which may be false.) I don’t feel like you have presented sufficient evidence to support your (apparently politically motivated) case.

shkkmo 5y ago
Such as Google's censoring of the never debunked lab leak theory? Oops. Or how about the now verified Hunter Biden laptop stories? Double oops. It turns out the line between "politically inconvienent" and "misinformation" can be very fuzzy, even for high profile / important topics. There is plenty of evidence if you look for it (and I am pretty sure I fall on the opposite side of the political divide from the commentor you are responding to.) Edit: Google's biases don't just hurt the political right. Google's quick bar for the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was happy list Hillary with all her pledged votes in addition to those she'd actually won, in violation of journalistic standards and Google's previous practices.
SiVal 5y ago
There might be some collateral damage where sources of lies and propaganda get generally downgraded (even when telling the truth), but is that really a problem? Of course it is if Google is one of the sources of propaganda rather than an objective source of truth. In that case "misinformation" is not a neutral question of factual correctness. When the judge and prosecutor are the same person, the judge considers most of the prosecutor's arguments to be true and the defense to be an unreliable "source of lies" that needs to be kept in line.

shkkmo 5y ago

Such as Google's censoring of the never debunked lab leak theory? Oops. Or how about the now verified Hunter Biden laptop stories? Double oops. It turns out the line between "politically inconvienent" and "misinformation" can be very fuzzy, even for high profile / important topics. There is plenty of evidence if you look for it (and I am pretty sure I fall on the opposite side of the political divide from the commentor you are responding to.) Edit: Google's biases don't just hurt the political right. Google's quick bar for the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was happy list Hillary with all her pledged votes in addition to those she'd actually won, in violation of journalistic standards and Google's previous practices.

SiVal 5y ago

There might be some collateral damage where sources of lies and propaganda get generally downgraded (even when telling the truth), but is that really a problem? Of course it is if Google is one of the sources of propaganda rather than an objective source of truth. In that case "misinformation" is not a neutral question of factual correctness. When the judge and prosecutor are the same person, the judge considers most of the prosecutor's arguments to be true and the defense to be an unreliable "source of lies" that needs to be kept in line.