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Google Surfaces Fake News About Election Results (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Last week, Facebook faced criticism that the platform's habit for surfacing fake news contributed to the election of Donald Trump -- a claim Mark Zuckerberg denied. This week, Google faces a similar problem, as its search algorithm surfaces fake election results. As Mediaite's Dan Abrams first reported, when you search "final election numbers" or "final vote count 2016," the first result in Google's "in the news" box is from a scrappy-looking Wordpress blog called 70 News that appears to be run by one person. The article, posted on November 12th, features the headline "FINAL ELECTION 2016 NUMBERS: TRUMP WON BOTH POPULAR ( 62.9 M -62.2 M ) AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ( 306-232)HEY CHANGE.ORG, SCRAP YOUR LOONY PETITION NOW!" First, the numbers in this post are inaccurate. Though millions of votes have yet to be counted, but Clinton has already been shown to be leading the popular vote by a sizable margin. Current counts have her ahead by around 668,000 total votes, with some polling experts projecting Clinton will ultimately rack up a 2 million-vote lead. Second, the writer of the 70 News post claims that the source material for the article is "Twitter posts," specifically, this tweet from a user named Michael. Michael, on the other hand, is sourcing an article from the ultra-conservative tabloid USA Supreme, which argues that Clinton might win the number of votes "counted" but will not win the number of votes "cast" because of ignored Republican absentee ballots. (Michael also believes that Trump has been singled out by God to be president of the United States, a conspiracy theory popular with 4chan users who believe that Pepe the Frog is a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian deity.) And yet Michael -- by way of 70 News, by way of Google -- has become the sole source for a story squatting at the top of Google's search results. 70 News has since updated its post with a single line admitting that CNN is showing different numbers -- the headline and the body of the post remains the same.
...with some polling experts projecting...
Honestly, after this election, I'm surprised anyone takes that phrase seriously.
People in the cities need to realize that in exchange for living so closely packed together their votes are worth less in aggregate than the rest of the country. It's part of the checks and balances that make this republic function. If you don't like it, don't live in the city.
Can we please move on already?
Why do we need to keep rehashing this? Trump won. I voted for Hillary and she didn't win. BFD, it happens. Move on....
Let's give the guy a chance instead of getting all worked up over it. Maybe he will be the best POTUS ever (doubt it, but you just never know).
At the very least, we have no more excuses for not getting stuff done. It is all under republican control now so there should be no more gridlock, we can actually see a government in action for once. Bring it republicans, show us what you got. Fix all the problems! No more excuses!
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Believe it or not, fake news can be filtered out... if the majority of reports are correct or if the report is from a trustworthy source. You have to make associations with initial results and compare all the overlapping associations overlap. The more times a site is correct, the more weight you give to it's reporting and vice-versa. Basically, you have to make IBM's Watson.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
> if trump had lost I guarantee there would have been protests against Hillary
You mean like all of the protests and rioting that occurred when Obama was elected? Oh wait.... that never happened. Why would you assume that trump supporters are as whiny and childish as Hillary supporters when that never happened for Obama? Oh sure, there were a handful of morons trying to claim he wasn't edible to be president because of the nationality of his father but that was nothing compared to what's going on right now. To make it even more idiotic is that they're destroying the cities that actually voted for Hillary. That'll show all those trump supporters!