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from the that-didn't-work-out-quite-like-we-hoped dept.
Google has apologized on behalf of its algorithm(s), which promoted a fake news story identifying the wrong man as the recent Las Vegas shooter:
After yesterday's mass shooting in Las Vegas, Google briefly gave its "Top Stories" stamp of approval to two 4chan threads identifying (and triumphantly smearing) the wrong man as the shooter. Google apologized for including "inaccurate" web pages in its top results, saying that its algorithm had spotted a burst of activity around a little-used search term (the name of 4chan's so-called suspect), created a Top Stories carousel, and favored "fresh" content there above more authoritative sources.
This is far from the first time Google's search results have purveyed misinformation. In March, it finally instructed human quality raters — who manually evaluate web pages to train the Search algorithm — to flag offensive and factually incorrect material, which Search could then downgrade for users seeking general information about a topic. As the 4chan incident shows, though, it still has blind spots. And that's not really because of a problem with Google's algorithm. It's happening because Google's core business has never been about defining truth — yet that's what Top Stories is implicitly promising.
Facebook also promoted the "fresh" content:
[A] story by the pro-Trump political website "The Gateway Pundit" named a different person as the shooter, citing a Facebook page to claim the individual was "a far left loon" and "a Democrat who liked (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow." Posters on the anonymous, anarchic 4chan.org forum likewise trumpeted supposed findings that the same individual was both the shooter and a "social democrat." BuzzFeed saved screenshots of the stories, which no longer turn up on either Gateway Pundit or 4chan.
[...] Facebook said its security team removed Gateway Pundit results and other similar posts from its social network, some within minutes. But because that removal was "delayed," the company said, images of the incorrect story were captured and circulated online.
"We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.
Also at BBC.
Previously: Over 50 dead in mass shooting in Las Vegas
(Score: 4, Informative) by idiot_king on Wednesday October 04 2017, @12:57PM (11 children)
People wonder how fake news spreads? THIS is how! We need stronger algorithms, or better yet, just omit those crazy nut websites from Google altogether. The only people that need to know about them are the ones that ALREADY know about them (InfoWars, Zerohedge, other far-right fake news moron sites). Just let the idiots stay in their tanks. Goes to show how much better we can do with deep learning and web search. Here's to hoping to an idiot-free future (fingers super crossed).
(Score: 4, Touché) by ewk on Wednesday October 04 2017, @01:38PM
'hoping to an idiot-free future'...
So... who are you going to be king of then? :-)
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 04 2017, @04:39PM (2 children)
Before 4chan, reddit and Facebook, it was the Drudge report and DIGG, and next year there will be a new one. Quality of information varies constantly.
All the algorithms know is what the chatter says - they have little, if any, ability to discern the quality of that chatter. Maybe in the future that will come, but these are still early days on the information frontier.
Also, beware of wishing for "quality filters" on the leading sources of information - that's another step back down the road of implicit censorship for the poor masses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:01PM (1 child)
Yeah...but, at large search and/or social sites like Google and Facebook any link to sites such as Gateway Pundit or 4chan should through up some big flags.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:40AM
As should the tabloid rags, etc... who makes those calls?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @07:23PM
Bill Clinton is a Rapist!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:23PM
Or Google could just start acting like a search engine and stop trying to hide results and keep people in their bubbles. Facebook should just vanish from existence. Everyone should refuse to use monstrous surveillance engines like Google and Facebook.
In any case, the problem is hardly that people can find bad things on these atrocious 'services'.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:21PM
Or, maybe--just perhaps--people could be a whole lot less fucking gullible. Look, I despise the purveyors of fake news just as much as anyone, but the next time you get duped by a fake news story, maybe the first place you need to look for someone to hold accountable is staring right back out at you from your mirror. Just a thought.
Oh, don't worry. I wouldn't dream of chasing you and your idiot pals out of your tanks..
Indeed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:47PM
It's going to take a bit more than crossing of fingers and hoping to achieve an "idiot-free" future. First, you will need to do a bit of discerning fact checking of your own on the news you consume. What's that you say? That's just too much hard work? In that case you will just have to resign yourself to quite a lot more idiocy in your future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:32AM (2 children)
Google is already censoring.
The thing is that what they are censoring are some the more reliable, fact-based sites.
Previous submissions:
Evidence of Google's Blacklisting of Left, Progressive, and Anti-War Sites Mounts [soylentnews.org]
Google's Blacklisting (addendum) [soylentnews.org]
The veracity of those sites:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/world-socialist-web-site/#page-17089 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/consortium-news/#page-5281 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/media-matters/#page-651 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/common-dreams/#page-605 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/democracy-now/#page-4082 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/wikileaks/#page-6024 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/counterpunch/#page-607 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-intercept/#page-896 [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/american-civil-liberties-union-aclu/ [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
.
Note that Media Bias/Fact Check has put styling in their HTML and hasn't verified that.
Their pages, viewed as HTML-only, have black text on a black background.
(View; Use Style; No Style)
They REALLY should validate their crappy code. [w3.org]
5. Fatal Error: Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.
[1] I am irritated by entities which call things "Leftist" when those are NOT Anti-Capitalist.
Organizations which make no distinction between Right-Center and Left aren't doing their jobs properly.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:08AM (1 child)
You really are that retarded aren't you? You are trusting a "media fact check" site that flags Wikileaks as RIGHT-CENTER BIASED (caps in original) and passes on World Socialist, Media Matters, Common Dreams and the rest of your commie go-to news sources with only a passing note that they have an opinion? And you expect sane people to not laugh at you? Actually most really sane people will nod politely and quickly walk away because you give off a dangerous loon vibe.
And Google is censoring a heck of a lot more than the most crazed voices in the Left fever swamp. They also aren't demonitizing the left's Youtube vids. And they aren't seizing the left's domain names.
This debate about indexing the chans and reddit into the normal Google search is silly anyway, nobody should be looking to anonymous shitpoasters for news. They DO dig and over time can turn up interesting nuggets but it needs a good sifting and vetting before most material there should be allowed to escape into the real world. If a link there turns up, only those experienced with dealing with those guys should bother clicking. And anyone who isn't a total newb should know that.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:58AM
It's clear that you didn't actually click a single one of the links.
...but you did give your uninformed opinion of what those pages said, assuming that I had quoted them in full.
Nitwit.
you give off a dangerous loon vibe
Keep posting. You're good for a laugh now and then.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]