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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday October 04 2017, @12:17PM   Printer-friendly
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


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:12PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:12PM (#577025) Journal

    True. I've heard the difference between "jail" and "prison" is that the first is for suspects, and the second is for the convicted. You can be jailed without any conviction, just suspicion. They're not supposed to hold you for long. Seems there should be a standard on that, 3 days maximum? Yet there are people who were left to rot in jail for months without ever being formally charged. Happens through carelessness, neglect, and bureaucracy, and sometimes vindictiveness.

    Even 1 day in jail can mess up your life. While in jail, obviously you can't go to work, and a lot of employers will fire you in an instant for missing work because you were in jail. You can't pay bills either. When released, you may no longer have a job and be facing a bunch of penalties for being late with bills. Maybe you're even facing eviction. And there's the suspicion that maybe you are a criminal, even though you were never charged with a crime. As if that's not bad enough, the prison system itself loves to pile on fees. Phone calls are extremely expensive. The poor get the harshest treatment, are the most likely to have that low paying job with the fire-you-in-a-heartbeat for the-least-tiny-mistake management, and to be constantly treated as if already guilty, because everyone just knows the poor are more likely to commit crimes.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 04 2017, @03:12PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @03:12PM (#577052) Journal

    In fact they should be called openbsd prisons. I have fellows who lived there all the time.

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    Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 04 2017, @03:44PM

    by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @03:44PM (#577061)

    On top of that you can be held in prison for two years while awaiting trial.

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    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek