SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Google says it has new ways to combat its so-called fake-news problem in search results.
Over the last few months, Google, along with Facebook and other digital platforms, has struggled to keep hoaxes and fake news stories from appearing in search.
The examples were pretty unsettling, including Holocaust denials, a claim that President Barack Obama was running for a third term, and a wide range of other conspiracy theories.
On Tuesday, Google will have new feedback tools in its search results so users can flag content that appears to be false or misleading. (Facebook launched similar tools earlier this year, along with tips to help you spot fake news.) This will help teach Google's search algorithms to weed out hoaxes and, in theory, keep them buried in search results.
Google also says its algorithms have now been trained to demote "low quality" content based on signals like whether the information comes from an "authoritative" page.
I can't see how this can do anything but fail spectacularly. You?
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-launches-new-search-tools-to-combat-fake-news-2017-4
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @01:54AM (14 children)
I'm sure a few hoaxes do get suppressed, but mostly this is just suppressing all political news that isn't liberal. Twitter is doing it too, severely. Facebook seems to be heading down this path.
Google is pretty much a monopoly. I hate them, but old habits die hard. I need to switch to duckduckgo for searches, or maybe bing. Ugh. Email is trouble; my gmail address is hard to leave behind. There is nothing to replace youtube, which is now "demonetizing" anything conservative. It's been a long time since I used mapquest; do they still exist? I think there was a yahoo maps as well. I like being able to drag a route and have things update. I like streetview too.
:-(
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:25AM (2 children)
> youtube, which is now "demonetizing" anything conservative.
Wow. Conservatism has really been hollowed out in recent years.
Apparently all that's left is a shell of bigotry, conspiracy and rage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:07AM (1 child)
But it's certainly effective, isn't it?
...
:(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:12AM
Is it though?
Yeah the ginger kardashian is busy golfing while the executive branch goes fallow.
But the majority conservative congress can't get one damn thing done.
Their biggest legislative accomplishment this term? Passing a 1-week funding extension.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:26AM (4 children)
Everybody with half a brain knows that Jewgle and other mainstream tech is blatantly biased.
The quality of their search will drop steadily as well, until others feel they have no choice but to switch. Yet another example of the left eating each other alive.
Even the most hardcore Jews are gonna kick each other for pandering to the whiny insolent cultural beast they created.
Or, as the only feminist-with-a-brain* Camille Paglia says, "The Democrats overplayed their hand and guaranteed Trump 8 years in the White house."
* The only Catholic feminist among a sea of hoary Jew feminists
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:51AM (3 children)
Troll? Fuck you, you chickenshit limpdick bastard. Show yourself, coward!
I call our your god, until before me he stands, but don't send me Jesus -- he's only a man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:00AM (1 child)
Friday night, Eth is in his cups. Could get interesting, before he passes out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:06AM
It never gets interesting.
The guy is as dull as a license plate caked with bug splatter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:09AM
Ishtar, I choose you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:47AM (1 child)
duck duck go is a pretty awesome default search engine. If you aren't happy with the results you can use a !g to invoke the search into google, !gm for google maps, etc etc.
https://duckduckgo.com/bang [duckduckgo.com] for a big list. I've found that ddg is pretty decent for 90% of things 90% of the time.
I'm still pretty addicted to google maps / youtube ( but vimeo, dailymotion, solarmovies.sc provide alternatives)
Google Advertising, like all advertising companies, is very image conscious. It has spent millions on convincing everyone it's not an advertising company, rather it's a "tech" company. I guess that's why this "tech" company makes most of it's revenue from advertising http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp [investopedia.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:53AM
Do you speak those words from your internship at Mossad, or are you just another faithful nationalist?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:48AM (1 child)
Conservatives sure whine a lot. I guess it is not enough to have most of the power and money you just want to make sure you can have it all. Oh poor you. And this claim that they are all liberal, it is simply because they don't say what you want them to. Its all free-for-all if they do your bidding but something is "liberal" if they don't swallow the lies. Man that is sad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:11PM
Your blatant propaganda is hereby called out. While I'm now a diehard abolitionist, I grew up in a "conservative" household in a "conservative" area. We had very little money and no power beyond what our muscles and electrical sockets could produce.
This situation is largely true regardless of one's political leanings. Or are you somehow suggesting that "conservatives" are 1% of the USA's population?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:21PM (1 child)
I disagree that DuckDuckGo ever beats Google on pure search-quality grounds. On privacy and ideological grounds, sure, but I'm not convinced Google has a crippling liberal slant.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:48PM
"but I'm not convinced Google has a crippling liberal slant."
no, they have an obvious nwo/establishment/enemies of humanity slant. partisans are missing the point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:03AM (11 children)
We clearly need mechanisms for collecting input on the quality, accuracy etc. of content (including but not limited to news). However any system that does not let the end user decide for themselves what subset of this input they will to use, and in what ways is centralized censorship.
What is needed here is a web of trust that people and organizations (and algorithms) can contribute to, and end users can use to annotate, filter and rank content. However it is key that the users get to pick their own preferred roots of trust, and the system is open and decentralized in a way no single party can manipulate.
This is not an unsolvable problem: its not even that difficult to solve. There are various projects attempting this already. What we really need to a robust, open decentralized system: that means we need to agree on a set of protocols. If we get the protocols in place, we should be able to get the various existing data sets into the same ecosystem, and start giving people the power to leverage this information, what ever subset of it they wish. However we must not force roots of trust or centralized systems on people as google is doing here. They are doing what is in their own business interests (and that is fine), but we need to put a better system in place, and demand that they inter-op via market forces.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:11AM (3 children)
Ah, the pie-in-the sky "not difficult" fix!
What would geek sites be without them?
Wastelands of empty pages?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:40AM (2 children)
When I say not difficult I mean the the technical issues with making such a system are easily solved (Given 6 months full time I could spec the protocol, and that's not even my area of specialization), and the social part of it (getting it implemented, deployed, funded, getting data etc) is a small problem compared to many other issues we face today (ex, several ongoing wars partially caused by this misinformation).
I don't mean to imply we will actually solve the issue (I do not believe our society is currently capable of taking any coherent action), but that if we actually tried as a society, it wouldn't take long or cost much. We are looking at implementation difficulty and design not all that different than something like BGP, email or DNS. Of course those are three example decentralized protocol based systems that have massive issues (and for stupid reasons we haven't got around to fixing them), but they do work and wen't that hard to make. In practice deployment of such a system at scale takes resources, but we can afford the costs (It wouldn't cost much more than what google is doing internally) and I worry we can't afford the costs of not fixing this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:54AM (1 child)
the social part of it ... is a small problem
And again with the "not difficult" pie in the sky analysis.
Its like a freakin broken record in here.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:11AM
video tutorial on how to fix a broken record (no programming required):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOliYadnvW0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:28AM (6 children)
I think Facefook already has something like that. The "like" and "share" buttons have the functions you describe. Unfortunately, that "Web of Trust" rapidly sinks to the lowest common denominator, just as television sank to the LCD. When I was a small child, people still believed that television would become a great educational tool. By the time I was a teen, that hope had pretty much dried up and blown away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:47AM (5 children)
cefook already has something like that. The "like" and "share" buttons have the functions you describe. Unfortunately, that "Web of Trust" rapidly sinks to the lowest common denominator, just as television sank to the LCD.
Yeah, but Plasma was much higher quality! And what does "trust" have to do with flat screens? Sometimes, Runaway, I just don't understand what you are trying to say. Is it a racist thing?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:54AM (3 children)
Racist? No, it's just you that I don't like. Your parents are alright, your siblings are tolerable, most of your extended family is pretty decent. It's only you. Where did you go so very wrong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:58AM (2 children)
Where did you go so very wrong?
Evidently, where I bought an LCD television. Little did I know then, that this would make Runaway a racist against me. If only I could go back, undo the past, keep the old cathode Tube!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:59AM (1 child)
Fuck cathode ray tubes. I had to lift a 36" CRT for the neighbor lady this week. They're fucking heavy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:15PM
CRT's still win hands down over LCDs of all types in the areas of actual refresh rate (black-to-black) and ghosting. (I will grant you that LCDs win verses CRTs when it comes to portability.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:30AM
This is a bad attempt at trolling runaway, don't sink to the level of EF, JM, TB, KH or other such types.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:08AM (14 children)
> I can't see how this can do anything but fail spectacularly.
I'm not surprised you can't, nobody ever accused you of being very thoughtful, or even reading your own submissions.
All this does is apply to the auto-complete and the snippets where google extracts content from sites like wikipedia and puts a summary in the search results.
It has nothing to do with the search results itself. Its mostly about google not featuring low-quality information in parts of the site that suggest google has given the info their imprimatur.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:16AM (13 children)
See that, right there? That's what we are talking about! TMB submits something, ergo, fake news! See, it is not that hard, you do not need either a very complicated algorithm or a handle on absolute truth, you just have to tag the "unreliable" deplorables. It is called: reputation-based filtering. Hint: Brietbard is not actually a news organization, it just wants to pretend and get a reputation, a false reputation. So I think this can do much besides fail spectacularly. It could fail miserably. Or pathetically. Or it could expose the Russian agents in the Fourth Estate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:13AM (1 child)
Deplorables in this case being anyone who doesn't hold to your world views or conform to your bias.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:58AM
Your persecution complex is showing.
And making two replies to the same post really gives you away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:40AM (10 children)
Hint: Brietbard is not actually a news organization, it just wants to pretend and get a reputation, a false reputation.
And there you have it folk, the crux here is that our anti-liberal friend here wants to dictate what is "fake news" for us, because god forbid we are exposed to the ideas and opinions of his ideological opponents, next thing you know we'd be fucking our sisters, demanding the reinstatement of slavery and arguing about the topology of the Earth.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:11AM (9 children)
Your basic mistake, one you are not capable of perceiving, is that there are no ideas and opinions in fake news. There is only malice and ill-intent. The point of fake-news is to bamboozle, to discombuberate, to, as we now say, "pull a Milo". There is not serious positions, no good faith debate. There is only the dark side. Ann Milo does not want to debate, they want to be protested. Why? They really have nothing else. Kind of like Congress that can't get rid of Obamacare, because if they did, what would they do? Kind of like The Micturated Buzzsawyer, who has nothing to say but that it "promotes discussion". Ha! If there was an actual position behind that, it would almost be acceptable. But there is not. So, I am going to tell you, if you read Breitbart, you are a fool, you are being used, you are part of the zombie masses that the Dark Enlightenment is counting on to destroy the world as we know it, including you. You really think you do not need to be protected from your own ignorance, so you do not become part of the destruction of the world, of your community, your family, and your own poor sorry ass? Well, if you do not see it, those of us who are (make no mistake, we actually are) you betters need to have pity on your ignorant misguided souls. Gonna save you, bro. It's gonna hurt. Tough love, my brother!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:33AM
Your basic mistake, one you are not capable of perceiving, is that there are no ideas and opinions in fake news. There is only malice and ill-intent.
And your basic mistake is presuming malice where stupidity and ignorance are adequate explanations.
Ann Milo does not want to debate, they want to be protested.
Oh, he wants to be debated alright, in fact people have to protest to stop him from debating. Now, I'm not saying it is unreasonable to protest against listening to Milo's debating style, that is certainly a cruel and unusual punishment to inflict upon people, however it is unreasonable to protest because you don't want him to express his ideas especially to those who want to listen to them.
There is not serious positions, no good faith debate.
Yeah, right. I've seen that before with GamerGate and MRAs, the extremists will be used as a justification to shut down the reasonable majority as always.
The Micturated Buzzsawyer, who has nothing to say but that it "promotes discussion".
If you think Buz doesn't genuinely holds his opinions, you are delusional. He gets a lot of shit from this community, so I wouldn't hold his attitude against him, one can only be so polite when people like you keep antagonizing them at every step.
So, I am going to tell you, if you read Breitbart, you are a fool, you are being used, you are part of the zombie masses that the Dark Enlightenment is counting on to destroy the world as we know it, including you.
Oh don't be such a drama queen, one can read bad ideas without believing them. I've read Mein Kampf and in the end the only person I wanted to send to the gas chambers is the author.
You really think you do not need to be protected from your own ignorance, so you do not become part of the destruction of the world, of your community, your family, and your own poor sorry ass?
No, what I need to protect the world from your attempt to enforce your ignorance upon our collective intellectual space.
Well, if you do not see it, those of us who are (make no mistake, we actually are) you betters need to have pity on your ignorant misguided souls. Gonna save you, bro. It's gonna hurt. Tough love, my brother!
Yeah, yeah, I've been told that before. I used to live in a totalitarian hellhole in my youth after all, you aren't the first of my "betters" to try to "protect" me from my choices. They also had the tough love thing too incidentally, I've seen what happens to the people who get "loved" so forgive me if I'm not thrilled about the idea. Your means may not be the same but your mindset certainly is.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:04AM (5 children)
Sorry that you've never seen Milo debate. You must not have because if you had you'd know he loves it roughly as much as a pig enjoys mud wrestling. And like said muddy pig, he almost always wins.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:50PM (4 children)
And like said muddy pig, he almost always wins.
I suppose that depends on your definition of "debate" and "win." I've watched a couple Milo debates online. He only appears to "win" for those who already agree with him. He fights dirty (often just ignoring any opposing arguments or summarily declaring them "untrue" without evidence) and isn't generally interested in reasoned discourse. Of course that's also a way to "win" a debate -- by twisted and contorted rhetoric instead of argument. Sure. What's hilarious is that that sort of strategy is EXACTLY what brought him down. Nobody cared about the nuances of what he was trying to say -- he was just painted as defending pedophilia (one of the few places even a troll can't go without risking supporters turning against him).
So, if you think Milo "wins" debates, then you must also adjudicate the take-down of him in the media as "fair" too. Same rules. No nuance**, ignore the substantive objections (in this case the nuances he was trying to explain) and just see the fluff and takedowns.
---
[**Nuance: Milo is actually right that there's a difference between pedophiles (i.e., people sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children) and ephebophilia (i.e., attraction to POST-pubescent teenagers, who are sexually mature but may be below the legal age of consent). Generally the latter term is only used by psychologists to identify people who are SOLELY or primarily attracted to young people, even if it's "inappropriate" for an older adult to be attracted to a young person. But generally speaking, lots of adults find post-pubescent sexually-mature teens attractive in a more "adult" way than actual pre-pubescent children. We would not have a term "jailbait" if this were not a widespread issue. I'm not actually defending Milo's comments about abolishing age of consent or whatever, but he was trying to include some nuance in a complex debate. And frankly, one that NEEDS to be given more attention, because most of the people arrested for sexually assaulting young people are NOT pedophiles: they're having relationships with post-pubescent teenagers. And if we were more realistic about those distinctions in stats, we might be a little less crazy about worrying that 7-year-old Johnnie might be endangered because an adult man just happens to say "Hi" to him in an innocuous context, and more concerned about where 15-year-old Johnnie (or Jennie) are, and what Uncle Jim or neighbor Tim or coach Sam might be doing when he's spending so much time with them. So, I'm NOT agreeing with Milo that we should lower ages of consent to 13 or puberty or whatever, but I do agree with him that there's nuance there. Of course Milo peppered his original comments with a bunch of more outrageous statements, as usual, and they didn't help his case. And see: I'm actually interested in nuance and will even listen when Milo says something right.]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:37PM (3 children)
See, you're barking up the wrong tree there. I only ever agree with Milo in his opinions of the left. He's a conservative and I'm most assuredly not. When I say he wins debates I mean he wins debates on strength of argument more often than not. The other side only ever seems to put screeching harpies who can do nothing but regurgitate sound bytes. Being louder and more shrill than your opponent does not mean you win the argument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:57PM
Again, matter of perspective. Where you see "screeching harpies," I have seen people reminding Milo again and again of valid points he simply sidesteps or ignores. Do all sides do this in political debates all the time? Of course. But Milo is a master of deflection and is amazing at defusing questions by making it seem like he's not saying something, but then goes on to basically say it.
The only way you see Milo "win" is if you think his other rhetoric (which often has some interesting points) allows him to ignore giant elephants in the room just because he deems them not to be there. If you agree with Milo that the "screeching harpies" don't actually have any valid points (which is how most conservatives seem to see him), then yeah, he seems to win. I'll give you that Milo has a talent for riling people up, but it's frequently because they're exasperated when he just talks about what he wants and ignores his opponents' points.
Just as "being louder and more shrill" doesn't win a debate, neither does "appearing to be calmer and intelligent" while actually ignoring main points of contention. A lot of what he says is his opinion (or "facts" that are deliberately stated in a misleading fashion), but he states it with intelligence and eloquence that make it seem rational. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily substantive or factual, and he deploys just about every rhetorical sleight of hand in the book. But, at least to me, his strategy is pretty transparent unless you already tend to agree with what he's saying.
Also, I'm not sure exactly which "debates" you are referencing, but it doesn't help the case when a lot of so-called "debates" you see on Youtube or wherever involve Milo trashing a somewhat inarticulate college student. Milo is very intelligent and (compared to even well-educated people today) is a master of rhetoric; it's no wonder some average 20-year-old feminist or gay person or black person can't stand a chance against him. Most of my remarks above are referencing his actual debates against adults who have a reasonable chance against him, not these "take downs" that seem to be posted frequently as proof of the superiority of Milo's arguments (when they're mostly about the weakness of college students' debate skills).
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:20PM (1 child)
BTW - I agree with some of Milo's criticism of the extreme Left too. On the other hand, he frequently tends to go too far and claim that problems don't exist where they do or to argue against strawmen or extremists rather than addressing the "meat" of the issues in a balanced fashion.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 30 2017, @12:28AM
That he does. It's all part of the show. He's most definitely an entertainer first and a pundit second.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
@ aristocat-
*sigh*
your argumentation is flawed on numerous levels, but let's take the most basic:
IF you actually believe in freedom in general, and free speech in particular, that INCLUDES the FREEDOM to fuck up, to say stupid/hateful/incoherent shit, to make 'bad' (YMMV) choices, to CHOOSE to do stupid/bad stuff...
IF you do NOT allow that as part and parcel of FREEDOM and free speech, then you are actually for neither...
please don't pretend otherwise...
thanks in advance...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:52PM
FREEDOM to fuck up, to say stupid/hateful/incoherent shit, to make 'bad' (YMMV) choices, to CHOOSE to do stupid/bad stuff...
Freedom, of course. No one is saying not. But that does not mean you have a right to be taken seriously, to have your opinion considered, to not be mocked and ridiculed for being such an ignorant and careless excuse for humanity. Have you no shame, Sir? At long last, have you no shame?
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/welch-mccarthy.html [americanrhetoric.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:25AM (19 children)
Google is truly benign, nonpartisan, unbiased, and they create a truly wonderful tool which performs as advertised. Then, I get online, figure out just how the tool works, and game the system. I can bury news that I don't like, and I can put my own brand of bullshit on the first pages of results, even if the bullshit I'm promoting isn't relevant to the search terms.
Of course, that all presumes that Google is benign, nonpartisan, etc . . .
Google has always seemed to be a bit naive, and this is one more example of naivete. If they can build something, someone else can unbuild it, and put it to their own use!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:28AM (12 children)
Google has always seemed to be a bit naive, and this is one more example of naivete.
Says the guy firmly ensconced in a bubble of AM-radio quality narratives. So firmly that he didn't even RTFA.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:30AM (11 children)
RTFA - yeah. Google believes that they can present better quality news, if they can just implement their own system of censorship. Got it. Sometimes, it isn't enough to RTFA. Try reading between the lines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:51AM (9 children)
Sometimes, it isn't enough to RTFA. Try reading between the lines.
Would those be the lines on your face in the mirror?
Because all you are doing is projecting your own conspiracy theories on to google.
I mean, it doesn't get any more conspiratorial than to claim the article says what you believe if you ignore what the article says.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:58AM (7 children)
Once again - you're pretending that Google can't be gamed. When, exactly, was the last time that Google made the news for taking action against someone who TOOK ADVANTAGE OF GOOGLE'S OWN SYSTEM?!?!?!?!?!
I have to presume that either you are illiterate, or your attention span won't allow you to recall anything that happened before sunrise this morning. Or, maybe, just possibly, you are simply retarded. I really don't now what your problem is, maybe you're a Zika victim?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:04AM
When, exactly, was the last time that Google made the news for taking action against someone who TOOK ADVANTAGE OF GOOGLE'S OWN SYSTEM?!?!?!?!?!
https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/25/google-rap-genius/ [techcrunch.com]
And more generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_penalty [wikipedia.org]
But to the actual point, if you had RTFA you would have seen this is only about autocomplete and snippets.
NOT SEARCH RESULTS
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:51AM (5 children)
This AC is moving on to my thread chaining post monopoly. I don't like it.
Also for whatever it's worth Google already openly admits to screwing around with the search completion. They block porn, torrents, other dmca'd material and any number of other things they have listed in the KB somewhere. But I believe this is the first time they've made a political issue out of it.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:37AM (4 children)
Its only 'political' in that some people have decided that reality has a liberal bias and thus any attempt to improve accuracy must be inherently biased against them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:35AM
Um, reality decided to have a well-known liberal bias, it is just that people who know things well recognize this fact. Nice try, alt-reality person!
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:49AM (2 children)
Oh come on man you just said "it's only political in that some people decided reality has a political bias"
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:02AM (1 child)
(a) That isn't what I said, are you so congenitally adverse to facts that you can't you even cut-n-paste factually?
(b) So what? Perhaps in your orobourous logic you believe that was an insightful point. To the rest of us its an inane tautology at best.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:13AM
No, I'm just saying that you can't imply something isn't political and prove that point by addressing a political party about a very much political subject. Fake News in its current utterly fucked up definition is an entirely political artifact resulting from the identity politics you generally refer to as "liberal" cannibalizing the attention whoring, soundbyte-dependent, outrage farming, talking head infested politics that the more well known cults use.
In other words, I'm trying to say that you probably meant to type out a more generalized criticism of politics than narrowing it down to one party or the other. Because surely we can admit now it's a system problem? Articles like this certainly reinforce it as such to my mind when they happen.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:39PM
Remember the story about US federal agents running guns to Mexican crime gangs which resulted in many murders including that of Brian Terry of the US Border Patrol? It goes by the names Project Gunwalker [archive.org] and Fast and Furious [wikipedia.org], and the story was researched and broken by two independent journalists: Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea.
The surviving journalist reports [blogspot.com] regular [blogspot.com] and continued problems with his breaking stories being blocked from inclusion in Google News feeds [blogspot.com], thus greatly limiting exposure (even if the same stories aren't censored from a general Internet search).
Doesn't appear to be appropriate to list under "conspiracy theories" if the events are actually occurring.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:43AM
There's a new brown guy in charge of Google, and ever since then it's gone to shit. Go figure...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:36AM (4 children)
and I can put my own brand of bullshit on the first pages of results, even if the bullshit I'm promoting isn't relevant to the search terms.
Hell, ya! If it works on SN, otter work on Google too! Git 'er done, Runaway, git 'er done! The South will fake news again! Yeeeee-ha!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:52AM (3 children)
And, you're pretending that Google hasn't been gamed in the past with marketing scams and advertising fraud. Two all beef patties, anyone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:08AM (2 children)
Runaway, you are wrong. Be a man, and just admit it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:15AM (1 child)
He can't.
He was buggered in the navy (its not gay if you're underway).
And now his repressed homosexuality means he hasn't had an erection for 35 years.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:38AM
Poor, poor, Runaway1956. Now I truly understand why he runs away, and why he runs off, at the mouth, when he constantly posts inane idiotic and ignorant stuff here on SoylentNews! We are all on your side, Runaway!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:05AM
It also supposes the people doing the rating are benign, non-partisan, and do not enjoy trolling.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:03AM (5 children)
I don't care if it's Google, crap like this needs to be weeded out at the source. This is exactly how people like Hitler start-- society is flooded with fake news about Jewish conspiracies over centuries, and it only takes a single man to Capitalize on that and build a totalitarian government on that one single notion of hate. Sound familiar? (I'm referring to Trump and undocumented immigrants!)
Now that we have the power to sift the wheat from the chaff, we have the power to do what no other generation has done before: to keep ourselves safe from tyranny, bigotry, hate, and promote peace. Hate speech has NEVER been Free Speech, and IT WILL NEVER BE. This is why I'm rooting for Google and other Big Data companies to fight the Good Fight-- to weed this crap out to ensure a safer tomorrow, one free of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Nationalists, and other scum that are highly toxic to our society.
I know I might get flamed on here for it, but sacrifice is always necessary to push society forward-- whether it's paying taxes, giving up guns and other disgusting personal belongings, or being silenced for saying horribly disgusting things-- all these make us safer, happier, and better. In the same way that I have to exercise and push myself to gain muscle, so must we all give up the ability to hurt one another, verbally or physically, to ensure a better society for everyone.
So again, I applaud this giant step forward for society.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:43AM (2 children)
Now that we have the power to sift the wheat from the chaff, we have the power to do what no other generation has done before: to keep ourselves safe from tyranny, bigotry, hate, and promote peace.
By which you mean keep other people "safe" from ideas that contradict your own. Remember folks, Cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory, criticism of Islamic doctrine is hate speech, rejecting out subjective and self-contradictionary concept of gender is bigotry, upholding your principles is tyranny and freedom is slavery.
In the same way that I have to exercise and push myself to gain muscle, so must we all give up the ability to hurt one another, verbally or physically, to ensure a better society for everyone.
And there you thought I was making allusions to 1984 lightly. The man who seeks to destroy your ability to conceptualize thoughts seeks to bind you in chain of ignorance. The man who seeks to destroy your ability to fight seeks to bind you in chains of metal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:08AM (1 child)
> By which you mean keep other people "safe" from ideas that contradict your own.
Not safe from ideas, safe from repression and genocide.
Same reason we fought World War II.
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" - Adolf Hitler
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday April 29 2017, @12:44PM
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" - Adolf Hitler
Are you saying the Allies just came to see the violence inherent in the system?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 29 2017, @10:14AM
And you don't think there's any danger at all that some enterprising troll will write a browser extension that marks things "fake news" for fun and distribute it to everyone on 4chan? Or that a state will coopt a botnet and mark all unfavorable search terms as fake news?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:54PM
sounds like a troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:32AM (1 child)
This is nothing new. Google Sorry [google.com] has been protecting me from search results for quite awhile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:48AM
You should upgrade to Google Apsalar.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday May 01 2017, @10:48AM
Inverted sort :)
2. A problem.
It would be a good idea to restrict every IP address (or any similar pseudo-identifier if that is in use with TOR, otherwise TOR becomes read-only (and if you can make TOR safe to use for posting now then you're also able to post safely without TOR)) to between one and five AC comment per month. If anyone has more than that which needs valid protection they can try Wikileaks (sarcasm) or go somewhere else.
Branched look-up tables could suffice, should be fast enough for comfort.
The content-less AC "bickering"/sniping is adding 'negative volume' making the site worse. From my point of view the alternative is to remove AC completely.
1. Not a problem.
It's not a debate but feel free to argue with the powers that be (not me so do it somewhere else): anyone who trusts Google, Facebook, Twitter, politicians of any kind including any and all federal agencies and employees, judges, and military, Microsoft, RedHat, Debian, media companies/conglomerates, NGOs and thousands of other companies and powerful individuals to redact and spin news on their behalf for their own imagined wellbeing deserve to lose everything that has been and will be taken away from them.
The rest of us don't.
Most of the AC's so far (and at least one signed in account) are arguing and pleading for their own obliteration by anyone with power including "their own" (what a joke). If those "comments" aren't the spew of Five Eyes' SQL queries then they might as well be. They can not be regarded as either humans nor bots. Zombies are not human, five lines of code even less so, and five lines of code is not a bot either (yeah, yeah, mangled Perl-like monstrosities aside).
Yup. not a problem, completely self-correcting, nothing of value will be lost :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))