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Facebook has a fake news problem. Google has an evil unicorn problem.
"Evil unicorns" — a term some Google engineers once coined, according to a former executive — are unverified posts on obscure topics, full of lies. They pop up from time to time on the web and find their way into Google's search results. In an ideal world, Google's search algorithm should force these fake, pernicious creatures so low in search results that they are buried deep in the web where few can find them.
Here's the problem: These unicorns — no, they've got nothing to do with highly valued startups — are designed to surface in a void. And after a breaking news event, like a mass shooting, there's scant verified information for Google's engine to promote. As Jonathan Swift once wrote, falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
[...] After the Oct. 1 Las Vegas shooting, several accounts seemed to coordinate an effort to smear Geary Danley, a man misidentified as the shooter, with false claims about his political ties. There were no existing web pages or videos broadcasting that Danley was innocent, and in the absence of verified information, Google's algorithms rewarded the lies, placing inaccurate tweets, videos and posts at the top of search results. A month later, when Devin Patrick Kelley shot and killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas, YouTube videos and tweets mislabeled him as "antifa," a term for radical, anti-fascist protesters. This was not true, yet Google displayed these posts prominently.
[...] This is a familiar headache for the company. For years, Google fought and won a similar battle with spammers, content farms and so-called search engine optimization experts over which web pages should be shown at the top of search results. But these latest web manipulators are causing greater havoc by targeting a slightly different part of Google — its real-time news and video results.
Source: Inside Google's Struggle to Filter Lies from Breaking News
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:55AM (8 children)
It says "aristarchus writes", and yet nothing of what I wrote is in the Fine Summerary? Might as just as well taken the Bloombarge piece and credited Takyon. SoylentNews has its own evil unicorns?
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:52AM (5 children)
I'm guessing mrpg took a glance at it and used a simple yet effective algorithm to filter out the fake news.
Or dark pegasi.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:59AM (4 children)
Oh, you particle of very little mass! You think evil unicorns are something to joke about? Well, just wait until one sneaks up behind you, when you are least suspecting it, and, BOOM! An entirely incorrect first impression will be made. So sad. Too bad. SoylentNews could have been something better.
(and this just when Runaway posted profoundly correct ethical insight, and even khallow has something to say that was not wholely wrong! I was getting my hopes up, but now they are crushed, probably by a bot. )
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:57PM (2 children)
Are you or are you not a scion of Poseidon and Medusa?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @08:17AM (1 child)
scab maybe definitely not a scion
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @06:32AM
See! I told you that we need to keep the writing down to Runaway comprehension levels! No more high level vocabulary! And no references to Greek Mythology, unless it was in Clash of the Titans, the remake.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday November 20 2017, @01:29PM
Especially if that impression is made with the unicorn's horn!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @02:51PM (1 child)
Your own, personal, flavor of witch hunting is just to much for the editors. They humor you to some extent, but your personal comments are just over the top. Or, under the bridge from whence you came, Troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @01:53AM
Was there witch hunting in the summary? Or are you just presuming?