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Google has made some changes to try and tackle "fake news":
Google moved to strip from its news search results publications that mask their country of origin or intentionally mislead readers, a further step to curb the spread of fake news that has plagued internet companies this year.
To appear in Google News results, websites must meet broad criteria set out by the company, including accurately representing their owners or primary purposes. In an update to its guidelines released Friday, the search giant added language stipulating that publications not "engage in coordinated activity to mislead users." Additionally the new rules read: "This includes, but isn't limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises."
A popular tactic for misinformation campaigns is to pose as a credible U.S. news outlet. Russian Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed organization, used that technique to reach an audience of nearly 500,000 people, spread primarily through Twitter accounts, Bloomberg reported earlier.
Also at Engadget.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Monday December 18 2017, @10:08PM (4 children)
Let me first say that unlike the rest of you, I can tell that there is a difference between Russian propaganda and legitimate political dissidence. Not that I could necessarily tell the difference between any single instance of the former and (an idiot writing) the latter. But we should all be concerned about the (real) Fake News problem, especially because it is people on the right (like most people here) that the Russians are trying to manipulate.
But it's still a problem when Google decides unilaterally that everybody using their services needs their half-solution censoring information. I don't trust an algorithm to be able to tell the difference between propaganda and idiots even if it's done in good faith. And the way Google operates, there's no way to tell if it's even done in good faith to begin with. They could be censoring plenty of other things at the same time, intentionally, and we would never have the transparency to know.
But even assuming that they are acting in good faith, they are still treating us all like children. Which would be fine, if it was for schools or somewhere else that you want to supply useful information to a population with limited ability to filter out the garbage. But they're applying it to us all and giving up on the idea of educating people to be able to recognize propaganda on their own. We're losing the idea of informed independence in favor of one true reality, controlled from one center.
But then the number of real adults has never been a significant portion of the population. Plenty of people just stay dumb their whole lives, and that's never going to change. At some point we need to solve the problem of propaganda manipulating the gullible into dangerous mob action, including voting (as has recently happened) against their own self-interest.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Adamsjas on Monday December 18 2017, @10:29PM (3 children)
Oh so much more holy than the rest of us. We bow down before your brilliance m'lord.
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Monday December 18 2017, @11:17PM (2 children)
Some people stubbornly ignore evidence of Russian propaganda posing as real news stories on Facebook and others in an attempt to swing the 2016 election towards Trump. Every time the adults try to talk about it, they hijack the conversation into their hyper-partisan bullshit redirecting the term "fake news" onto the low quality of mainstream news sources.
It's not just wrong. It's dangerous, and it will be the means by which Trump and the far right eliminate not just the free press, but the very idea that facts exist and that we can use common understanding of such facts to come to mutual agreement.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @02:28AM (1 child)
Most people don't see the problem, because while the Russians may have been posting news and trying to influence the election, it was not fake news. Hilary really was a murderous, lying, corrupt, treasonous bitch who would have been far worse for the USA than any of Trump's buffoonery.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:46PM
Conduct some basic research and something like 90% of those stories completely fall apart. No, plausible as it may be for any politician, Hillary was not running a child sex trafficking operation out of a local pizza shop. And as far as treasonous, she can't be that bad if our greatest adversary was willing to wage a propaganda campaign against her.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?