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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Why do none of our categories match actual submissions? Just Asking.....

OK! Here is the real deal! Google! Trying! To! Determine! Truth. Something of a let down, when if we had know from the beginning, it would have been so obvious as to demand a Captain, Obvious. But on to the news.

Inside Google's Struggle to Filter Lies from Breaking News

  This is our actual title, from Bloomberg. [bloomberg.com] But it is the subtext, as usual, that is the more telling, and the more interesting. Voila!

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.

Oh, where we mythical creatures, trolls, have a firm foothold and a place of honor on the intertubes, the unicorns are much more elusive. But they may be more effective in spinning the dross that the internets has become? We crave more, do we not?

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.

"As soon as an event happens, everything is new," said Nate Dame, a search specialist at marketing firm Propecta. "There's no system for the algorithm to filter out truth and reality."

Unicorns, surfacing in a void, like Narwhals trying to breathe in an opening in the Arctic Ice? No, unfortunately it is more like a frost pist, that appearing to one not having been a Soylentil who remembers the foibles of the "other" site, it is taken as actual information. So the point seems to be, if you are going to do dis-information, get it in early, before there is a preponderance of actual information to blow you out of the water. So, Donald Trump, president? Just saying, first post!

Besides stuffing the page with key words, Jarbo said there are other tactics for getting attention: Be detailed in descriptions; for video titles and tags, use catchy and colloquial phrases. To go wider on YouTube, he will often track trending topics on Facebook and Google for inspiration. "It seems kind of shady to talk about," he said. "This is what they want. This is the game you have to play."

We are furquing doomed. I say this as a representative of the species, and one of the longer lived ones. Doomed.

Original Submission