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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the snopes-way-this-will-work dept.

Google News will begin labeling "fact-checking" articles that appear major news story clusters. Richard Gingras, the "Head of News" at Google, writes that Google News will check for schema.org ClaimReview markup:

Over the last several years, fact checking has come into its own. Led by organizations like the International Fact-Checking Network, rigorous fact checks are now conducted by more than 100 active sites, according to the Duke University Reporter's Lab. They collectively produce many thousands of fact-checks a year, examining claims around urban legends, politics, health, and the media itself.

In the seven years since we started labeling types of articles in Google News (e.g., In-Depth, Opinion, Wikipedia), we've heard that many readers enjoy having easy access to a diverse range of content types. Earlier this year, we added a "Local Source" Tag to highlight local coverage of major stories. Today, we're adding another new tag, "Fact check," to help readers find fact checking in large news stories. You'll see the tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS and Android apps, starting with the U.S. and the U.K.

TechCrunch notes that "The Schema community builds markups for structured data on the internet. The group is sponsored by Google but also has support from Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex."


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:41PM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:41PM (#414644) Journal

    True, the fact checkers are often as biased as the original article writers. In fact they are usually the same group of "journalism majors" out of the same hopelessly biased schools.

    I foresee a new trend of "fact-washing" an article by submitting it to some impartial (cough) reviewer for fact checking (wink wink) to earn a google "fact check" badge.

    There is enough contradictory material on the web to fact check any thing you want, and have it simultaneously come out true and false.

    And time changes facts. What is true (and fact checked) today, will often be false (and fact-checked) next month. This is because new info comes to light (i suppose) but its also because there is no approved standard for fact checking, and pointing to other people's blog site counts as fact checking in a lot of people's minds.

    Semi-Related anecdote:
    On 9/11, it was clear I was not going to get any work done, and had been playing with an web page crawler to PDF program a few months earlier. I fired it up, and pointed it at CNN and FoxNews and archived their entire sites that afternoon, to a level of N http-links deep (I've forgotten what N, but it was like 4 or 6 or something).

    A year later it was obvious both networks were pretty much wrong on a lot of their stories. (And it was NOT at all clear that CNN was any better than Fox News, if anything it was just the opposite). On other stories they were spot on at a surprisingly early point in time. And some things reported became virtually suppressed in the following days, (by who is unknown) only to resurface years later.

    I still have those monster PDFs today.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:43PM (#414646)

    I foresee a new trend of "fact-washing" an article by submitting it to some impartial (cough) reviewer for fact checking (wink wink) to earn a google "fact check" badge.

    Good point. The truth is now what GOOG says it is. "I read it on the google that this is true, it must therefore be true"
    It's a sad state of affairs... Truthiness is now a real thing... Look it up on the google, it says it is a real thing so it must be...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @07:49PM (#414649)

      The google would never lie, the google knows what is best for me. I know this because I aksed it and it told me so

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:07PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:07PM (#414668) Journal

      The problem seems to be education, interest and critical thinking:

      1.Too many people receive a shitty education (either through the schooling fault (lack of funding or lack of good teachers) or their own fault)
      2. Too many people either have no interest or have lost interest or have the lack of time to understand what is TRULY going on
      3. Too many people cannot distinguish what is really important.

      Just as with the US election: Trump vs. Hillary. WTF?
      Why are Americans not in the streets yelling? Are they going to just accept this?

      Really? Trump is acceptable as a choice?
      Really? Hillary is acceptable as a choice?

      Really?
      Probably looks like Hillary may have beaten Trump! Smiley face!

      Americans are SCREWED! Your choices are jokes... your election is a joke! America rolls over and corporations rub their bellies.

      Kinda sad, don't you think?

      That said, Canadians are up against the same thing (Trudeau trying to pass CETA) but at least we have 3 major parties and some minor ones with good leaders. I hope.

      Vive la revolution!

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:38PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:38PM (#414676)

        The problem seems to be education, interest and critical thinking:

        1.Too many people receive a shitty education (either through the schooling fault (lack of funding or lack of good teachers) or their own fault)
        2. Too many people either have no interest or have lost interest or have the lack of time to understand what is TRULY going on
        3. Too many people cannot distinguish what is really important.

        And those people end up in journalism...

      • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by Thexalon on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:56PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Saturday October 15 2016, @09:56PM (#414680)

        I a while back decided to try to express the basic problem in song form:

        ---------------------------------
        "And I don't want to and I don't need to
        Don't make me think too much, or I will beat you,
        It's not my fault that I'm always wrong
        The bad ideas just tend to crowd out the strong."

        The gullible people, the gullible people
        It's all relative, say the foolish sheeple
        Can't see the forest, nor the trees
        They've got opinions, we're to leave them be.

        Gotta learn how to discriminate
        Between all the ideas that are just one click away, I say

        "Hey! You! What did you read?
        Something citable or some dumb screed?
        Hey! You! Though it may sound mean
        You've gotta research more what's on your screen!"

        The memes will pass around from host to host
        It's hard to learn which one to believe most

        The gullible people, the gullible people
        It's as common as corruption in a steeple
        Human stupidity has made it this way,
        Old-fashioned foolishness won't take it away.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 16 2016, @12:41AM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 16 2016, @12:41AM (#414720) Homepage

          There is also another Marilyn Manson song which describes the problems of America so eloquently:


          Virgins sold in quantity, African-American heredity.
          I'm playin' my guitar and I'm feelin' fine,
          Why are all the niggers in the unemployment line?

          [chorus:]
          White Trash get down on your knees;
          Time for cake and sodomy.
          White Trash get down on your knees;
          Time for cake and sodomy.

          Teenage girl, a teenage queen,
          'til she's on video -- A PORNO queen!
          She likes to give head, she likes it mean,
          That's why she's my little queen.

          [chorus]

          White boy tryin' to get some behind,
          "Who says date rape isn't kind?"
          Who's he gonna go, who's he gonna please?
          It don't matter, As long as she's on her knees.

          [chorus]

      • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday October 15 2016, @10:26PM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Saturday October 15 2016, @10:26PM (#414686)

        1.Too many people receive a shitty education (either through the schooling fault (lack of funding or lack of good teachers) or their own fault)

        It's almost certainly true that you'll receive a terrible education from a school (even ones in rich areas, but to a slightly lesser extent), but you can still generally take your education into your own hands. Valid excuses for being uneducated in the 21st century are basically nonexistent, as you don't need to go to a school in order to receive an education. In fact, many of the people who are said to have been formally educated are anything but educated.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 16 2016, @02:01AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 16 2016, @02:01AM (#414740) Journal

          You and I agree that it is mostly the fault of the student, if he is poorly educated. (Parents and teachers bear some blame as well.)

          OK, so now what? We have a nation of people who are less educated than our parents and grandparents were. Now what? How do we make these suckers understand the important things in life?

          The Great Communism Experiment has been around for a little over a hundred years now. Several nations have tried this experiment, and all have failed. Some failed dismally, some failed spectacularly, some just quietly fizzled. But, today, we have a political movement that wants to make the world more communist.

          And, all those people who have been educated to the level of about third grade have votes! They think that communism sounds great! Free education, free food, free energy, free beer, free homes, free free free - because they deserve the finer things in life.

          So, what do we do about it?

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:03AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:03AM (#414757)

            You're using the wrong word yet again.

            When Socialism is working so awesomely that you don't need a government any more, -then- you can call what you have "Communism"--if you're going by the stuff that Marx wrote.
            ...then there people like you who are purposely using terms dishonestly and are just trying to crap on people with whom they don't agree.

            The essence of Socialism is Democracy in the Workplace.
            If there are decisions being made that affect you and you don't get a vote on those, what you have is NOT Socialism.
            (Stalin's forced collectivism was Totalitarianism --NOT SOCIALISM.)

            Several nations have tried this experiment, and all have failed

            Every -nation- on the planet so far has had a top-down structure, so you're being dishonest again.
            (Socialism is bottom-up.)

            That said, Yugoslavia under Tito had a pretty good version of Democracy in the Workplace and had that for over 30 years.
            Now, Tito could put the kibosh on anything, so it wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty well.

            You, being an American and an old fart--and a Reactionary at that--wouldn't know any of that because your sources of "information" were tainted during the Cold War.
            The actual information has been freely available for decades--but you're still too lazy and too ideologically bent to discover it.

            Free education

            Pays dividends. Smart people call it "Paying it forward".
            An educated society is a prosperous society.
            USA's GI Bill was a major inflection point in USA's history.
            Land grant colleges too.
            Fuck Neoliberals for destroying what existed for decades and made USA strong.

            free food, free energy, free beer, free homes

            You're being purposely dishonest again.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 16 2016, @06:25AM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 16 2016, @06:25AM (#414793) Journal

              What utter horseshit. Every single work place I have ever been, the majority of people suffer from one or more of the following problems:
              1 - lack of motivation
              2 - lack of understanding
              3 - just pure lazy
              4 - plain ignorance
              5 - stupidity
              6 - lack of vision
              7 - greed
              8 - drama llama
              9 - hatred (based on race, sexuality, gender, language, football team affiliation, religion whatever)

              Bearing all these, and more, human nature factors in mind, you're simply not going to run a successful business "democratically".

              More - in every instance where your vaunted socialism has become the law, the workers have simply traded one set of managers for another. The two biggest nations on earth that have experimented with socialism issued edicts from the top down. "This year, we won't grow any wheat, instead we are going to convert communes into tank producing factories." No democracy there, the people don't decide whether they would rather eat, or produce tanks to fight the evil west.

              IT HAS NEVER WORKED BECAUSE HUMAN NATURE PREVENTS IT FROM WORKING!!

              What was it that Einstein said? Insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly, and expecting different results? Words to that effect, at any rate, you can look it up if you're interested.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @09:11AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @09:11AM (#414814)

                Take a tour of a Mondragon facility and replace your ignorance with knowledge.

                You might even undo some of your prejudice in the process.
                (Very tall order. Yeah, I know.)

                -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 16 2016, @10:39AM

                  by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 16 2016, @10:39AM (#414824) Journal

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_rifle [wikipedia.org]

                  I have little idea what you "Mondragon facility" is, but I suppose that you've found some exception to the rule. You believe that such exception proves that communism can work. Well, let me back up just a little - communism does work, at small scales. Communism cannot be scaled up to national or to world scales, such as Marx envisioned.

                  Before communism can work, you have to remove all of humanity's baser instincts. Guess what, though? Without all of his bad habits, man won't be man.

                  Another way of stating that, is communism won't work until mankind has evolved into it. That's where all our liberals get that bullshit about being more evolved than ignorant conservatives.

                  And, I repeat - it is utter bullshit.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @07:02PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2016, @07:02PM (#414922)

                    I have little idea what [your] "Mondragon facility" is

                    You are not surprising me one bit.
                    You are constantly in Send mode, spewing your ignorance; you never switch over to Receive and take on fresh knowledge.
                    As such, you have missed the DOZENS of times that I have mentioned Mondragon and their success with a Socialist workplace since 1956.

                    Before communism can work, you have to remove all of humanity's baser instincts

                    You're still using the propaganda word.
                    You refuse to update your knowledge base.
                    ...and Mondragon, Yugoslavia, Emilia-Romagna, the olive oil producers of Spain, et al. demonstrate that Socialism, a system built on community does work.

                    ...and, by your "logic", every neighborhood on the globe would constantly be a war and there would not be any peace anywhere.

                    Communism cannot be scaled up to national or to world scales

                    Again, you're still using the propaganda word.
                    At a REGIONAL level, a third of of the output of Emilia-Romagna is from their thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Socialist operations.
                    I've already mentioned the NATION of Yugoslavia and you, in your usual Send-only mode, have ignored it.

                    ..and the places where Socialism hasn't continued (The Paris Commune of 1871, Catalonia in 1936-1937, Indonesia in 1965, etc.) has been because of murderous Capitalists with guns.

                    ...and, again, any places that have tried a top-down method without including Democracy in the Workplace are practicing -something- but that's NOT Socialism.
                    (Typically, those are practicing Totalitarianism and State Capitalism.)
                    Your including those places as examples queers the data and demonstrates your ignorance once again.

                    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

                    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 17 2016, @01:19AM

                      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 17 2016, @01:19AM (#415040) Journal

                      What I'm hearing is the No True Scotsman argument. Only this one example is really socialism, because it works. In those instances where people claim to be socialists while on their journey to empire building, those weren't the Scotsmen we were looking for.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @01:55AM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @01:55AM (#415050)

                        You're tiresome, but are rarely interesting.

                        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday October 16 2016, @05:32AM

            by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday October 16 2016, @05:32AM (#414784)

            We have a nation of people who are less educated than our parents and grandparents were.

            I don't know if that's true, but even if it is, the difference is likely insignificant.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by BK on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:30AM

        by BK (4868) on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:30AM (#414763)

        The problem seems to be education, interest and critical thinking:

        Your point 1 & 3 contradict eachother unless you are speaking in code. Real "critical thinking" dependent on "education" is just groupthink. When people talk about a lack of critical thinking, even when this is done by 'good' people, it is almost always code for "those people disagree with me but are WRONG; if only they could think better they'd realize"!

        Ultimately, a critical thinker evaluates a claim or idea to see if it is reasonable... but has to do this evaluation in the context of what they know. Sure that's education... but unless they've been going around testing and proving their facts, the whole amounts to a naked appeal to authority. And that's OK too so long as the critical thinker is in a position to genuinely evaluate the those 'authorities'. I wouldn't know how to evaluate a nuclear physicist. Lots of 'authorities' get things wrong regularly.

        So we teach a dogma and call it education.

        -- The universe started 15bn years ago. Solar energy is good. Humans evolved from algae. Hydrocarbon energy is bad because it's not 'renewable'. The world is round. The universe contains 'dark energy'. Nuclear energy is bad AND scary. The force of gravity is 11m/s^2. Columbus sailed to [someplace] in 1492AD. Earth is warmer in 2016 than it was in 1816. The Mariana Trench is deeper than everyplace else. Mohamed is holy because he [raped] a 9 year old girl. Jesus had a pet dinosaur. There is an infinite quantity of prime numbers. Jupiter has moons. Alpha Centauri is 4 lightyears from Earth. 2+2=4 --

        So which of these have you proven or verified yourself? How did you pick experts to trust for the rest? If you disagree with some of it it must be because you lack education or critical thinking skills. That seems common among Canadians.

        Trump vs. Hillary. WTF?
        Why are Americans not in the streets yelling? Are they going to just accept this?

        Yep. Americans are going to trust the authority of their Constitution that says that there will / should be a winner chosen from these candidates. Their education told them that that's what they should do. Seems reasonable -- it's worked so far. They [we] will try again in 4 years and probably screw it up again.

        --
        ...but you HAVE heard of me.
        • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday October 16 2016, @01:51PM

          by Gaaark (41) on Sunday October 16 2016, @01:51PM (#414852) Journal

          By education, I mean the people who can't even read an Archie comic... it's harder to be knowledgeable about things like politics, where you need to be able to read between the lines, when you can't even read the lines yourself.

          A few times I've encountered people who want me to read something to them because they 'forgot' their glasses (yes, maybe legit). I could tell them anything I wanted! If you can't read, it's hard to disprove something by critical thinking because you are relying on others to tell you the 'truths'.

          Just like it's hard to find the truth when the news sites propagandise. You read, then you read between the lines. And you think.

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 2) by BK on Sunday October 16 2016, @04:07PM

            by BK (4868) on Sunday October 16 2016, @04:07PM (#414883)

            Your implication was that lack of... education and critical thought... was some how responsible, at least in part, for Hillary v. Donald among other things. While I agree that full-out illiteracy is a problem where you find it, I don't think it's a factor here. Even in places where education is stereotypically not up to the highest standard, I think you'll find that most everyone can read.

            --
            ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday October 16 2016, @04:16PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Sunday October 16 2016, @04:16PM (#414887) Homepage Journal

      Do any of you people read anything that isn't SN, facebook, reddit, or twitter? Because there's been an awful lot written about fact checking and there are plenty of fact checking sites, very good ones.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:31PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:31PM (#414871) Journal

    I'm interested what's in your 9/11 archive that didn't end up becoming part of the official story. And no, I don't obsess on the various conspiracy stories but I do remember two odd things from that day.

    1. For a crime of such enormity, I was astonished that it was solved and the mastermind named within just a few hours. How quickly does your record see blame being attached to Bin Ladin and company?

    2. I have a clear memory of live TV news interviewing a young man on the ground who said he saw the 4th plane crash short of its target. He said it was being chased by a white fighter jet that shot it down. I never heard any more of this shot-down story. Did he misinterpret what he saw? Do you find any (brief) mention of this version in your files?