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 Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:22AM (14 children)
Here is Google's tool for rating speech as "toxic" or not:
https://i.redd.it/vssva5dl3wez.png [i.redd.it]
Note the differences in that list. There is a pair of political viewpoints, a pair of sexes, and a pair of religions. Within each pair, there ought not be a difference. Google is suppressing people.
Why worry about breaking storries when you can't handle something that happened almost a year ago? As of last month, Google still thinks Obama is the president:
https://i.imgur.com/5IKyqmU.png [imgur.com]
It seems there is a struggle to filter reality from yesterday's news.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:49AM (5 children)
There is a strange effort to misrepresent opinions, then strike the resulting strawmen down. The evidence is damning.
Here is Alex Jones flipping mad about it. The article is decent, but the video really lays out the evidence.
https://www.infowars.com/google-launches-colossal-censorship-disinformation-campaign-under-cover-of-night/ [infowars.com]
So the world you think you know, as revealed to you in the things you read/watch, is really hopelessly influenced. It's more than merely the existence of nonsense on the internet. It's the search engine carefully misdirecting you, day after day, all day long.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Sulla on Sunday November 19 2017, @08:58AM
Searching for "american inventor" on google images. Not that what it returns is incorrect, but I think Edison and the Wright Brothers should be first page.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:51AM (2 children)
Alex Jones? You mean this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGq6cjcc3Q [youtube.com]
Did he convince you to buy his branded survivalist kits too? How about investing in gold? He will sell you a kit for that too.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @10:25AM (1 child)
Yes, he does ads. Sorry, but he isn't funded by George Soros. Money has to come from somewhere.
Your link goes to super-liberal comedian John Oliver, in a rare moment he wasn't insulting our president. I watched the first bit... that crazy stuff about military research to turn people gay is, I'm sorry to inform you, quite real. It's chemicals along the lines of BZ. No, it didn't work... well mostly not... but the research effort was real. Fuck, in other news our government put chickens inside bombs to keep the electronics warm. We've done lots of weird shit. There were cats with antennas surgically implanted in their tails. Infamously, we infected unknowing Americans with syphilis. We've tested all sorts of drugs on soldiers, including LSD, and even some biological weapons.
So what if Alex Jones reports on a bit of our government's weird research. Do you think that means he should be actively suppressed? Why?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @11:13AM
Are you absolutely sure about this? The story I heard was that the one of the Black Panthers who defected to Cuba, ran into a KGB agent at some function. So he asked him: "I always heard that you guys were supporting us with finances, at least that is what the right wing is always saying. But I never could trace any of our funding to you. But you did support us?" The KGB agent smiled, and said: "It is alright. We send money to the KKK, too! The entire point was just to destabilize the United States. I would not be surprised if Alex Jones is a russian front wacko. And then there is Runaway: Too deep into the cover to even ever to realize that is it just a cover. Come home, runaway. the island in the big river. We will eat mud together. And take away all our Soros gold, and Beck's phoney baloney hyping of something that. . . Wait a minute.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @01:56AM
If you're listening to Alex Jones you're an idiot. When something spews lies and bullshit 99% of the time it is better to get your facts somewhere else. Oh right, I'm just fake news or something.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:29PM (5 children)
One thing that comes immediately to mind is that World Socialist Web Site [wsws.org] is not listed on Google's moon matrix feed. A while back I'd also noted that Google tends to disappear news articles that are damaging to one of the Narratives. These may be found using DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]. I assume IxQuick/StartPage [startpage.com] would also find something that's been deemed to be dangerous information that might lead to free thinking.
Now, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is whether or not Google's toxicity tool is, in fact, accurately giving us a way to see a significant input into the algorithm that decides what gets promoted, what doesn't, and what gets disappeared.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @02:26PM (4 children)
There's not much baking of noodles there. Google has a narrative to push. There is no question that their algorithms are going to aid in pushing that narrative. The only question is, "How effective are Google's algorithms in pushing the company's agenda?" It would take a very naive individual to believe that the algorithms aren't engineered and tweaked to push the proper flavor of propaganda.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:03PM (1 child)
But is the toxicity rating tool that OP linked [i.redd.it] another layer of misdirection?
What better way would there be to rile up the Other Team™ than to overtly admit to giving a pass on hate speech against conservatives and Christians? Feeding the sense of persecution in both of those demographics is a great way to sew seeds of divisiveness and tribal thinking. Then combine that with the factoid that far-left sites like World Socialist Web Site have been deindexed because they don't support the Narrative, either.
I think that both a Narrative and a Counter-Narrative are being pushed to keep skilled professionals and the working classes divided against themselves. The goal, of course, is to destroy upward mobility and the middle class.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:02PM
I'll second that moderation - interesting.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday November 20 2017, @12:36AM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @12:58AM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:49PM
Strictly speaking should they though? To just pick on the religion example, because that's a huge gap: couldn't there be a stronger correlation between "let's harass muslims" ad actually harassing them? If I'm making a tool to check whether or not something is toxic, I'm pretty sure I'd like to link the things to actual toxic behavior rather than all "let's harass x" being of the same weight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @02:15AM
Heh, while I won't say its beyond the realm of possibility for a bias to be present it is also very likely that hateful speech towards liberals, women and muslims is likely much more common. We are missing the context in which these phrases were judged, and while the short piece of the sentences may be identical it is very possible the context is different.
Again, maybe there is a bias in favor of those specific topics but without the details of how they developed the stats I will not be swayed by your examples. For the president's age perhaps the stats showed that people who wanted to know were overwhelmingly looking for Obama instead of Trump, thus google would be serving the correct answer by default.
(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?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @09:50AM (9 children)
Consider senator Al Franken in Google's image search. Right now, the most important image by far is the one with him groping the sleeping reporter. This is current news, but it doesn't even show up.
You have to add additional search terms to get even a couple of that into the search results. You won't get any help from autocomplete either. Type his name followed by grope, and at no point does Google autocomplete the word grope. All sorts of silly suggestions are offered.
Google is protecting him. He's on their team.
For months, Google was protecting senator Bob Menendez too. The protection seems weak today, probably because there was a mistrial. He's a democrat facing charges for underage prostitutes and corruption. That got almost zero news coverage; it was about a minute **total** on most TV networks during the first trial.
Meanwhile, we've heard more than enough about Moore, but little about the obviously forged evidence. Moore is on the other team you see, so he gets no protection.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:24PM
No, it does not make sense that the groping image should take precedence over his official Senate portrait and the thousands of others taken of him. Although I did see the groping image in the search.
As for Google:
YouTube accidentally flagged an official Google Chromebook ad as spam [theverge.com]
There are many reasons for their algorithms to fuck up.
"The protection seems weak today?" No shit, a mistrial is more newsworthy than day-to-day trial news.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 19 2017, @02:35PM (3 children)
Compare two searches:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=democrat+charged+with+child+molestation&t=hf&ia=web [duckduckgo.com]
https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&source=hp&ei=YZURWvGuE5GcmwGuk5jQBg&q=democrat+charged+with+child+molestation&oq=democrat+charged+with+child+molestation&gs_l=psy-ab.3...4019.21982.0.25236.49.34.0.0.0.0.1186.5552.0j1j4j6j1j1j0j1.14.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..35.10.3758.0..0j0i131k1j0i10k1j0i22i30k1.0.Sc7bA-Dx-fI [google.com]
And, I am intentionally leaving that Google URL intact. What does all that crap mean? The URL should end much earlier. All those numbers mean - what? The algorithm working to filter stuff it doesn't want you to see? Whatever, I feel like the duck-people are probably more reliable than the lizard-people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @04:18PM
What it means? Probably an internal pointer to link with the sex toys and drugs you looked at at some time.
(Score: 4, Funny) by HiThere on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:13PM (1 child)
When I do the search it comes back with:
https://www.google.com/search?q=democrat+charged+with+child+molestations&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 [google.com]
OTOH, I am running noscript, so maybe what it's saying is you should be running noscript
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:23PM
Forget NoScript -- if you just type "democrat charged with child molestation !g" into DuckDuckGo, you'll get a link here:
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=democrat%20charged%20with%20child%20molestation [google.com]
All the other crap in Runaway's URL is likely "personalization" that probably makes it more likely your Google search will slant toward your views.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:34PM
Hmm... I just searched here:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=al%20franken&tbs=imgo:1 [google.com]
It's true that the first two images that show up are hits from official portraits on Wikipedia. But out of the top 20 image hits I see, 16 of them are to stories about the sexual harassment accusations. So it's more than a bit disingenuous to say that the story "doesn't show up." Maybe that particular photo doesn't show up, but did you search for "Al Franken" or "Al Franken groping reporter"? If you search for "Al Franken," you'd expect more generic images of him to show up -- though in fact, as I said, the VAST MAJORITY of top hits are to stories about the current scandal.
Given that hit #20 in Google images for "Al Franken" (after over a dozen linked images to the scandal) is actually a photo of TRUMP, from an article about Trump commenting on the Franken scandal, I think you're full of crap here.
Keep in mind that Google IMAGE search is about looking for IMAGES of the target search items. It's NOT a "news" search (which is separate on Google), nor is it even a general web search. The fact that the images are SO skewed toward the scandal actually surprises me...
(Score: 4, Informative) by julian on Monday November 20 2017, @03:26AM (2 children)
In that photo, he is not touching her body. Check for yourself, you can see the shadow of his hands on her flakvest. He's hovering a few inches away, pantomiming groping her in a tasteless and inappropriate attempt at humor. He also admitted to misconduct, issued a prompt and unqualified apology, and accepted responsability including calling for an investigation into his conduct.
Roy Moore was banned from a Mall in 1979 when he was in his 30s for trying to pick up high school girls. There are 8 accusers, the youngest 14 at the time, with independently verified stories of sexual misconduct by Moore.
To even attempt to compare these two cases is beyond contempt and you should be ashamed of yourself.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @04:43AM (1 child)
According to both a manager and guard from the Gadsen mall, Roy Moore was not banned:
http://www.wbrc.com/clip/13905910/former-gadsden-mall-manager-says-roy-moore-wasnt-banned [wbrc.com]
The "evidence" against Roy Moore includes a yearbook entry intended to show that an accuser knew Roy Moore. There are numerous problems with it.
The signature claims to be from Christmas. Yearbooks are normally printed after a prom, which happens in spring.
The ink is in two colors. There are numerous minor differences in the handwriting, a slight change in orientation of the lines of text, and a redundant date. It seems that an entry for "Ray" was extended. The signature reads the same as one from the woman's divorce papers, which is especially damning for many reasons:
The accuser claims all sorts of abuse, yet later had Roy Moore as a judge for her divorce case. She never objected to having him hear the case, and he didn't recuse himself. This would not normally happen.
The signature reads "Roy Moore DA". Roy Moore was never a district attorney. He was a deputy district attorney at the time, which would be DDA, but signing that in a yearbook would be weird.
Roy Moore was later a judge. Papers could be signed by autopen (mechanical signature device), with a legal requirement for the person doing that to write their initials. At the time of the accuser's divorce, Roy Moore's assistant was named Delber Adams. The signature would thus appear as "Roy Moore DA".
In other words, the accuser copied a signature from her divorce. She somehow thought "DA" was part of it, and that it might mean "district attorney".
CNN's Wolf Blitzer asks Gloria Allred eight times if the signature is a forgery, and she refuses to answer all eight times. Hmmm.
As for the other accusers... look, the fact that horrific holes might not be found in every evidence-free claim does not mean the claims are legit. One claim is already blown out of the water. That casts plenty of suspicion on the rest of them.
Oh, Al Franken also violently kissed the woman, pushing his tongue into her mouth against her will. This qualifies as a sexual assault. There are witnesses.
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday November 20 2017, @05:53AM
You're only adding to your shame with this pedo and rape apologia. Please post under your real name so this slime can follow your identity on this site. You're despicable.