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[Editor's note: This story has an interesting viewpoint given the proliferation of "Deep Fake" videos we recently covered here. I see it as a portent of discussions to come. How much can we trust reporting? How much slanting and posturing of "reports" and "studies" are going to be promulgated in the lead-up to the next presidential election? Is this item all a bunch of crap or an indication of things we can expect to come? How much can we trust, and how to we go about assessing the veracity of what is presented to us by not only the main-stream media, but also social media, too? We hereby disclaim any assurance as to the credibility of the accusations made here and present it solely as an example of what may be coming -- and an opportunity to practice techniques at validating/corroborating or challenging/refuting it. The story submission appears after the break.]
NOTE TO READERS - this is scummy content and scummy journalism, at best. That said, it is news, as the story has been commented on by two congressional questionings and the president. Ugh.
Congressional testimony and comments by the president are being made on a Project Veritas video/report, which details how Google biases their search results to favor certain political narratives. REP Dan Crenshaw (TX) and SEN Ted Cruz (TX) have made comments on the Google reports (link below). President Trump made the comment "they're trying to rig the election".
Basically, Project Veritas had an internal whistleblower at Google who detailed how they bias content against conservative sources. The leaked internal project documents (which may be fake) present a relatively technical discussion on how to bias existing trained neural networks. These are somewhat correlated with leaked internal E-mails (which may be fake) describing how the algorithms are modified to create more 'fair' results as part of "search engine fairness". The whistleblower was interviewed, but their face was masked and voice changed (may as well be fake). This is then correlated against a certainly-illegally-obtained-and-selectively-edited interview with a Google executive, which appears to be at a hotel bar from Project Veritas "undercover" agent. This was all combined into a report from Project Veritas that indicates that Google is politically biasing search results as a byproduct of algorithmic tampering and human influence. Ugh.
Predictably, the Project Veritas video was banned everywhere (YouTube, Reddit, Twitter), with accounts suspended/banned from certain platforms. Some people would say that it is an attempt to silence the "report". Some other people would say that this "report" is dubious at best. I think reasonable people would say, at a minimum, posting illegally-obtained material to the internet warrants a ban. Personally - if Veritas wants to do this 'reporting' then it needs to *report* - and not produce material that is illegally obtained or fake.
Original Source: https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/
Summary: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-believes-google-is-trying-to-rig-the-election-project-veritas-video-cb82f03caee3/
Washintgon Times: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/24/google-exec-project-veritas-sting-says-only-big-te/
Congressional Testimony: (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueCMWBixP4Y (2) https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE?t=44
Final note:
Among other things, the "leaked internal E-mails" indicate that Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager are Nazis. At the time of writing, this "story" was picked up by Fox News, TheBlaze, and the Washington Times, according to duckduckgo News ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&iar=news&ia=news ). This "story" doesn't exist according to Google News ( https://www.google.com/search?q=jordan+peterson+nazi&source=lnms&tbm=nws ). The combination of the report, its details, and my own observations when comparing against DDG results have influenced me to switch my search engine to DDG rather than Google. Something is going on.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday July 01 2019, @03:17PM (8 children)
How about the other link [wikipedia.org]?
Is that "biased" as well?
I'd also point out that, with a few, possibly hyperbolic, adjectival exceptions, https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Project_Veritas [sourcewatch.org] appears to stick to published news reports, court filings and other public records in their descriptions of the activities of Project Veritas.
As such, I'm not really clear on the point you're trying to make about SourceWatch. Even this hit piece [washingtonexaminer.com] on them and their parent organzation [wikipedia.org] doesn't claim that they are lying or distorting the facts. They merely claim that their funding sources are progressive individuals and groups.
No one appears to be saying that anything SourceWatch has published is false or manipulated. Rather, the main complaint seems to be that they are "progressive" or "liberal."
While that may or may not be true (I have no knowledge either way), I have yet to hear anyone say that Sourcewatch is publishing false information or manipulating information to deceive others. Do you have some evidence that this is the case?
If so, I'd really like to see it.
tl;dr: Having a political stance doesn't make you a liar any more than putting salt on your food makes you a stooge for the mining industry.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @03:56PM (5 children)
All I'm saying is that a lot of the controversies listed relate to how they gather the information. Including lying to targets, breaking wiretap laws, acting like assholes, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean that the information they release is misleading. Some other group could adopt the same methods and produce better results. If you don't accept the "sting" as a valid investigation technique, then you are obviously going to have a problem with Veritas.
It's safe to say that employees at Google and Facebook believe that they need to alter algorithms to help prevent certain information sources from reaching more people, and that search and timeline algorithms could affect election outcomes. These companies also want to be proactive to avoid new government regulations or worse [nytimes.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday July 01 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)
Okay. You (as usual) make a bunch of valid points.
Given that Project Veritas (PV) has been documented not *just* to use stings and undeclared recordings, but to take those recordings and remix them to make others *appear* to be saying stuff that they're not, doesn't impugn their collection methods, but their manipulation of the information collected to smear others.
I'd note that I didn't call out PV for their collection methods. I called them out on their disingenuous manipulation of recordings.
But none of that (nor does your comment to which I'm responding right now) addresses your assertion that SourceWatch's article is somehow "biased." Is there any evidence that it is? Is there any evidence that SourceWatch (SW) engages in printing false and misleading information?
If there is, as I said, I'd really like to hear about it. In the case of SW's article about PV, there doesn't seem to be anything that's factually incorrect or intended to deceive. Whatever you might think about PV and/or their activities, information from *referenced* and easily checkable sources doesn't imply bias. At least not to me.
As an aside, I chose that particular link as it contained a fairly comprehensive list of controversial PV projects, rather than digging up a long list of articles in individual links. That saved time and effort.
Please note that I never said that such was or wasn't the case. I don't know. I did, however, say that I didn't trust Google.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Troll) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
Right off the bat, they call O'Keefe a "right-wing provocateur", whereas Wikipedia calls him an "American conservative political activist". That sets the tone for the article.
The worst offense is this section:
Here they present O'Keefe's mugshot and trespass conviction from 2010 even though it has little to do with his group's 2016-2017 Wisconsin activities. It seems like that was put there as a bookend to not end the section with a ("threatened") AG "[appreciating] the work" that Project Veritas does.
The Wikipedia article is better and has more details of deceptive editing by the group.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday July 01 2019, @05:39PM
Fair enough.
I did say that there was some hyperbolic use of adjectives.
That aside, it's my understanding that from a practical standpoint, O'Keefe *is* Project Veritas, and pretty much everything they undertake is at his direction and behest. That may be incorrect, but I'm not aware of evidence to the contrary.
As I said, I used the SourceWatch link as it contained most of the controversial stuff about PV. That it also included details about O'Keefe is reasonable IMHO.
As for the bit you claim to be "the worst offense," once again aside from unflattering adjectives, I don't see anything factually incorrect here:
It does seem a bit speculative to claim that O'Keefe's comment that "We should investigate you and you should lose your job." was the proximate cause of the Wisconsin AG's change in attitude, at least based on the information provided.
Regardless, AFAICT, the article as a whole is generally factual, if a bit hyperbolic. I do agree that the Wikipedia page is good as well, which is why I included it in my post.
I suppose that reasonable people may disagree and I respect your position, even if I'm not as annoyed by the hyperbole as you seem to be.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday July 01 2019, @04:59PM (1 child)
Correct, it's the part where they edit that video to make it imply the opposite of reality that makes the information misleading.
The first parts are merely felonies...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @05:28PM
People committing mere felonies can be a great thing. Such as hacking the NSA, Stratfor, etc. Deceptive editing and/or not releasing anything useful? Not great.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday July 01 2019, @04:37PM (1 child)
Wikipedia is definitely biased. It's biased by whoever last edited the page. (Does Wikipedia still have those "editing wars" where people gain status by making changes to a page, which are then changed by the next person to gain status?)
NEVER trust Wikipedia. It may provide useful references, but don't trust it. Last I heard it was refusing posts by experts in the field in favor of those who reported on what those experts were doing...and introducing the inherent distortions even when they tried to be accurate.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday July 01 2019, @05:47PM
I never said there was no bias on Wikipedia. I asked specifically about the article I linked, not Wikipedia in general.
There have been, and are, issues with some Wikipedia content.
However, it doesn't (at least not to me) appear that there's significant bias on the James O'Keefe entry.
In fact, compare his page with the *only* Project Veritas Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] (in German), which is hagiography [cambridge.org] at *best*.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr