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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday April 29 2017, @01:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:58AM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 29 2017, @02:58AM (#501403) Journal

    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?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:04AM (#501409)

    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)

    by Lagg (105) on Saturday April 29 2017, @03:51AM (#501427) Homepage Journal

    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.

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    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:37AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @04:37AM (#501434)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:35AM (#501477)

        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)

        by Lagg (105) on Saturday April 29 2017, @07:49AM (#501484) Homepage Journal

        Oh come on man you just said "it's only political in that some people decided reality has a political bias"

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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:02AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29 2017, @08:02AM (#501487)

          (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

            by Lagg (105) on Saturday April 29 2017, @09:13AM (#501493) Homepage Journal

            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.

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