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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @06:42PM (18 children)
So also banning Britain First, InfoWars, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, Breitbart... and anybody else opposing the globalist agenda.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday December 18 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
Where's the Demigod when you've got some Augean Stables to clean up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @08:56PM
He's busy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:15PM (2 children)
It excludes, but is not limited to, the establishment media.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
Indeed: CNN is going to get a pass, despite being caught on numerous occasions generating nonsense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:42PM
How about you clean out your own house first and then you get to complain about the other kids, mmmkay?
I'm sure at some point, we'll even get to 'her e-mails'.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @08:18PM (9 children)
Guess I should have commented before somebody modded you troll because you mentioned dread Breitbart and Infowars.
It's leftist sites as well [wsws.org]. WSWS and Alternet and Common Dreams. Anybody opposing the globalist agenda.
I hope we can all quickly forget this artificial, left-right, red vs. blue, R team vs. D team knee jerk we've been indoctrinated and hypnotized to have. Net Neutrality is gone. What happens after TwitFace and Google News get entrenched as the new cable channels you flip between with a four button remote because those are the only websites you can afford to purchase with your internet plan?
I see more common ground among Breitbart, Infowars, WSWS, and Common Dreams than I do between what any of us want and what the ultrarich corporate elite want.
Please tell me that this era of unprecedented democratization of communication and record-keeping isn't just an anomaly that lasted between 1990 and 2020.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday December 18 2017, @08:31PM (4 children)
Perhaps because they're all Opinion/Editorial organizations and not NEWS organizations?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:48PM (3 children)
What NEWS organizations do you suggest that aren't giant corporate behemoths?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:26AM (2 children)
NPR? They're such a giant corporate behemoth that they literally have to beg for money every quarter or so. I know, I know, that's their member stations that are asking you, but really, in the end, that money goes [largely] to NPR and so in essence, it is them that are asking you for money. Let's not get on our pedant-horse here...
Clearly, they're not doing Corporate Behemothing right because they're asking the people for hand-outs, instead of what the Big Boys do, and that is asking Uncle Sam for money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:55AM (1 child)
Are you serious?
NPR not asking Uncle Sam for money?
Poor, broke, shivering-in-the-cold NPR? So broke that they have to pad their thrice-turned coat with wads of greenbacks ... wait a minute.
NPR's sitting quite pretty, by the standards of modern media companies. And they still get to whine to Congress about how important it is that they not go broke because ... some reason. And beg for more - oh wait, they're not begging from Uncle Sam, that's right.
Except when they are.
By the same token, Google gets to pick winners and losers because of some handwaving around public morality.
Google? Public morality? Google "yeah, OK we're pretty evil" Inc.? Oh, sorry, Alphabet ...
Sorry, I must have lost the thread of where you were going, what with all the insanity on plain display. Please, do continue.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:19PM
Yeah. I'll bite on this troll for the sake of others reading.
The point which you conveniently ignore is that NPR is a News, not Opinion, organization. There are a few others,
And I conveniently point you to the facts regarding NPR financing: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances [npr.org]
There's more to say on the topic, but no more time I'm willing to invest.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 18 2017, @09:53PM (2 children)
The record-keeping part is definitely an anomaly, because all of those "records" are stuck in obsolete formats, some readable only on obsolete software, maintained only as long as the web server stays online [xkcd.com].
Someday, historians will look upon the 17th-20th centuries as a golden age for record-keeping that remains accessible to the future. Moving forward, all information will be stored electronically, kept alive only as long as it is useful. And when web servers cycle out of existence, some archivist may be able to take its dead husk and reverse-engineer the hardware interface and data formats to access and interpret the records (assuming it hasn't been recycled and the bits haven't rotted to oblivion), but she will NEVER be able to reconstruct the entire hypertext network that gave it context.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:36AM (1 child)
Yeah sites like archive.org are like airport lockers. For example even if a page is still on archive.org it doesn't really have a decent search engine[1] so it might as well be gone if you or other stuff are dead or don't remember it well enough (exact URL, keywords that work on archive.org).
For example there used to be a page about an amusing "engrish" menu, and the page was titled: May I take your order
Not easy looking for it with just archive.org
You need the actual URL: http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order.php [rahoi.com]
But that means you need another source/search engine to help you find that URL.
Last but not least if someone in the future takes over the domain and changes the robots.txt archive.org could make all the past archived stuff inaccessible (or maybe even delete it?). Ah seems they've stopped being retarded about it: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ [archive.org]
Took them quite a while to stop being retarded about it though...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:47PM
Archive.org is pretty much useless for all but the most mainstream non-english speaking websites. You'd be lucky if there's a single capture between 2000 to the present, and even then it will be 99.99% broken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @04:50PM
yeah i am waiting to buy a computer stick that plugs into a smart tv to let me choose one of channels 2, 5 or 7, with a few shitty stations thrown in to make it look like there's choice.
then if you don't pay for that, they'll send around thought police vans to try to make you admit guilt somehow like how ontv and att and comcast and others all did. clearly you have something to hide if you aren't wanting to hear what they say.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Monday December 18 2017, @11:06PM (2 children)
Is 'globalist' the new 'socialist'? (ie: the catch-all word for anyone you don't like)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)
Socialist: prefers heavy government control of the economy and of family life. This can be an intermediate step to a communist utopia (Marx) or a more long-term state (Hitler).
Globalist: prefers the reduction of national identity. This creates a race to the bottom for wages in developed countries, a violent clash of cultures, the loss of many cultures, a tiny class of superwealthy people, exploding population, and environmental destruction.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:35AM
Hey, I’m a nationalist and a globalist. I’m both. And I’m the only one who makes the decision, believe me.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:26PM (3 children)
I for one, would like to thank the Glorious Google for taking a stand and ensuring my access to information is guaranteed to result in factual and accurate data. Where would we be without this guardian, this pinnacle of virtue, to protect us from untruths.
Finally, I can rest assured that anything I read on the Internet is approved by our dear leaders and therefore true, but I repeat myself.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday December 18 2017, @07:34PM (2 children)
The beauty of Net Neutrality is you can use any news aggregator and search engine you want, even Yahoo News and Bing!
Oh, wait...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:40PM
Surely you mean
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday December 18 2017, @09:58PM
And Twitter can afford the Fast-Lane.
Can StormFront? Not that I don't enjoy watching them get hoisted by their own petard.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Monday December 18 2017, @08:34PM (2 children)
Finally, for the establishment asslicking of the day, we report that the search giant Google has dealt a decisive blow to all antagonist information sites, that is, all sites whose content is not liked by the governments of their audience.
By delisting or burying content that "masks country of origin" as their ominous newspeak PR release proclaims, they also kill all of the sites that HAD TO use a foreign provider because local providers will either not allow or report them to authorities.
This action is part of a strategy that completely disrespects their product, the user, deemed unable to distinguish and acting upon fake news and so forbidden to being exposed to independent ideas. This strategy of course is either going to fail or to lead to an orwellian society, which is probably the intended outcome.
The average user won't even notice, the people which used to be free will have to consider adopting en masse dark web tools, because getting in the same boat as pedos and terrorists and warez distributors by exchanging encrypted packets is ironically the most moral choice.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
I get where you're coming from and going to, but let's be honest: many of their products/users are indeed unable to make the distinction between what is real and what is a lie or opinion. (I'm not even sure where I'd count myself in that segregation, it's hard to be well-informed and critical at all times)
You try using the intertubes while blocking any and all Google-/Facebook-related domains and tell me how that is going... add the CloudFlare AS to your blocklist as well for good measure and tell me again you're not in an Orwellian Surveillance Society.
We have had an Orwellian Total Surveillance Society for a couple of years now. These fucker see everything and anything, and not playing is not even an option anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:17PM
> many of their products/users are indeed unable to make the distinction
That's where they have been led to by authorities since the dawn of communication. Now authorities act using corporations and their edicts are called ads. This is why governments and corporations are pursuing the censorship route, they have no choice. In fact they began to put censorship in place way before actual crises happened, that should give people a hint. Control is not reaction to terror, terror justifies control.
Given that fake news cannot be prevented because all parties resort to it, especially those in charge of censorship, what else do you propose other than let people decide for themselves what news item to believe? They will burn themselves? yep, but the alternative is getting enslaved.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday December 18 2017, @09:22PM (1 child)
Now Google has taken this step to prevent sites from hiding their origin, perhaps they could work on preventing blogspot.com subdomains redirecting to Top Level Domains specific to the apparent location of the client. (Example: myblog.blogspot.com redirects to myblog.blogspot.co.uk if I am in the United Kingdom.)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday December 18 2017, @09:48PM
But they know best! They know where you are (well, where your TOR or VPN exit node is located)
So they know what you need; no need to *think*, just consume!
Of *course* you want/need the site closest to you - your tribe/groupthink/circlejerk is where you belong.
Now stop looking for information, and absolutely stop thinking!
Also, stop using someone else's domain/location; what ar you trying to hide? Are you a terrrrist or kiddiefiddler?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @10:34PM (1 child)
It is not a librarians job to hide Mein Kamf or Das Kapital away incase someone is misinformed by it.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 18 2017, @11:19PM
Google News is not the library. It's, well, the newsstand.
Not that anybody clears out the pop rags at actual newsstands, "incase" someone is misinformed by the latest weird scandal no one's heard of involving [the royal family|Hillary|some Hollywoo celebrity].
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?