Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-all-about-the-algorithms dept.

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday November 20 2017, @12:36AM (1 child)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Monday November 20 2017, @12:36AM (#599074) Journal

    I quit using Google News aggregator recently. It had basically become the WaPo RSS feed and honestly, I'd trust a used car salesman over WaPo.

    I've been using Yahoo News recently, but it isn't really better.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @12:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @12:58AM (#599084)

    I still visit Google News, but it's because I want to see what the lizard people want me to see. It's usually worth a laugh. Then I move on to more serious sources when I want to know what's going on in the world.