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Google To Prohibit Fake News Websites From Using Its Ad-Selling Software (reuters.com)
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is working on a policy update that will prohibit fake news websites from using its ad-selling software. The move would ultimately make it more challenging for those fake news sites to earn revenue. Reuters reports: The policy change is imminent, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told Reuters. "Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," she said in a statement. The policy change comes amid an intensifying debate over how much responsibility technology companies bear for monitoring the accuracy of content as more and more people access news through sites such as Facebook rather than traditional media companies. Facebook, in particular, has been criticized over the spread of inaccurate articles promoting U.S. president-elect Donald Trump on the site. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has denied that the site influenced the outcome of the election. Google's AdSense advertising network is a key financial driver for many publishers. The company places various restrictions on where its ads may be placed, including bans on pornographic and violent content. Work on the policy update began before the election, Faville said.
There's been a shit ton of these stories on the front page already. Isn't there anything better to talk about? This is a big part of why Slashdot sucks now. It used to be a mix of lots of stories that would appeal to nerds, but now we get a barrage of stories about topics like this. Slashdot used to be a site where nerds and people working in IT could get practical ideas and keep up date on trends in hardware and software. Those days are long gone, and Slashdot pretty much sucks now. And no, I'm not saying this isn't relevant, just that we don't need more stories about it.
Just what we need... Google deciding what is and isn't real news. What could possibly go wrong?
What about CNN, that was lying about it being illegal to read Wikileaks? And yes, that was a lie, read this: https://popehat.com/2016/10/17...
Why didn't they want us to know about it? Oh, because we have emails between CNN and the DNC, they leaked the debate questions. Then they brought Donna Brazille on there to tell us they were somehow modified. Except, not so fast, Donna: they have DKIM authentication, which provides non-repudiation. And make sure you actually read the damned DKIM headers, because they include the b and bh parameters. So if you try and tell me they only protect the headers, you're going to get a lecture on the DKIM specification, because you're not just wrong, you can be mathematically proven wrong.
Anyhow, there's no great loss to the clickbait sites. Good riddance to such. However, inasmuch as they believe they can use this to control what people say and believe, I can only remind them of the Streisand Effect and laugh. Google took down the video from this story quite a few times before they started allowing it once it hit the news: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
In case you're wondering what Snopes says about it, they say it's "mixed." You see, there was a fender bender and the guy wanted to exchange insurance info before they brutally beat him and dragged him from the back of his own car, which they stole while nearly killing him.
The goal is to eliminate "fake" news, but the problem isn't even who defines what is real, what is opinion, and what is factually untrue. The real problem is google has stated its intention is to starve sites they dislike into nonexistance.
Are sites with news about "Ancient Aliens" banned? Easy to show as fake news, but as history channel shows - hugely popular and what many in the public enjoy. Real? Fake? Who cares, the public wants it.
News stories about Clinton Foundation "pay to play" corruption. "Someone" will decide if this is misleading fake news. No convictions yet, must be fake. Ban them and bury the story.
News story about Trump being racist? No proof he isn't, must be legit. Pay the website.
This is how the internet will die, in a flood of corporate decided and approved facts and filters.
Why buy the politicians anymore, when they can own and control what is considered worthy of being "legit"
there are a lot of people who visit the onion on purpose looking for satire/humor. plus the onion's biggest 'marketing' strategy (IIRC from a report I read) was actually social media sharing and the like.
The onion also doesn't "misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," It readily admits that it is satire. so it shouldn't be affected by this.
It readily admits that it is satire...
Which turns out to be more truthful than the "serious" sites...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For NBC then. Now we need Google to ban:
- sites that intentionally withhold news stories from the public for partisan reasons
- news sites that feed pre-selected questions to a candidate before a debate
- sites that frame Hillary getting investigated by the FBI as "Republicans pounce on Hillary allegations"
- Upworthy
- IPCC predictions
- political polling
- Twitter
- and the rest of everyone trying to troll and clickbait and hyperbolize current events
"Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property".
This is straightforward. Why is everyone acting like Google is trying to control news?
Does this mean I can stop getting stories on my Google News page from 'Ecumenical News' and 'Christian Daily', two religious news web sites that apparently went belly-up some years ago, had their domains purchased by scammers, and now serve clickbait bullshit constantly? All they ever do is somehow zero in on some search term I used recently and then feed me fake headlines about that thing.
Like, for months now, I've constantly had a story on my news page about Rick and Morty (which I searched for one day in July, and these stories started the next day) from one or the other of those sites. Today, it's "'Rick and Morty' season 3 update: Release date revealed and other spoilers" from Ecumenical News. I don't click them; they're just a gibberish mishmash of rumors from elsewhere on the web. I 'Personalized' my Google News feed and set both of these news sources to the lowest they'll go, but unfortunately, it seems impossible to exclude them completely.
Before that, it was a constant stream of rumor-mill bullshit about The Arrow and the drama between cast members. These sites are NOT NEWS, they're just algorithmicly generated clickbait. Preferably, they would both die a fiery death, but in the meantime, if I could just get them off of my news feed, I'd be mollified.
Of course it will apply to CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. If it didn't then it would just be more liberal bullshit.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think the alt-right and the alt-left are both a pack of delusional morons. This is the source of fake news; if you write it, no matter how absurd, there's some fucking retard partisan who will lap it up.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
F**king BeauHD cannot get over the butt hurt of the election. His twitter feed, "Trump is a saggy sack of shit. If any one of you is even remotely considering voting for him this November, please unfollow me. "
"That sack of shit next to Hillary is attracting flies! #debate"
"Clinton wiped the floor with Trump tonight. Say hello to your next president, America!"
" It's only a story because it has the 'Trump' buzzword. Stupid media is stupid."
"I bet Trump hired the climber for publicity."
I'd have thought the election would have calmed you down a bit, Mr Bannon.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politic...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Google doesn't have a monopoly, for the record.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe Google should just get out of the censorship business, rather than trying to use their ad service to micromanage what people see and hear. Fake news is not good, but it is not Google's job to "correct" it. By feeding the conspiracy theorists, they are just making the problem worse.
How exactly will try differentiate between satire and fake news?
The answer is if course that you cannot.
Stupid announcement.
You've hit on an important point, but not carried it far enough. The reason we're inundated by fake news is that the more blatantly extreme and fake you make your story the more people will feel compelled to share it.
Every obscure website dreams of the riches that will result from one of their stories going viral. They've now caught on to the fact that making up political lies to get a fake "scoop" on something that will really outrage hyperpartisans into thinking that the future of civilization depends on forcing everyone they know to read your story is the most effective shortcut to do that. I'm sure some of these stories are manipulation for political reasons, but some of them are just in the interests of profit. And their profit is what google is hoping to make a dent in.
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A) CNN didn't say anything about people with clearances, instead they divided the world into two groups, the media (where it's okay) and the rest, where it's not okay.
B) That part is explicitly covered in the Popehat article which I linked, anyhow.
C) Wikileaks publishes all verifiable and true material leaked to it and goes for maximum impact, but they're not a hacking group, they can only operate if they have leaks.
For most leaks, you can simply go to ABC / CBS / NBC and avoid playing spy. Wikileaks was needed here, because the media themselves are complicit in many of the things in the Podesta dump. I mean, we have emails like this one showing them going behind their own lawyers' backs to send donors to the Washington Post's party, after being forbidden to put it on the price sheet. That really looks like a campaign donation of some kind, and their own lawyers explicitly forbade it. This is just one of many, many, many such examples. With the media doing things behind everyone's back, how can we be expected to just shut up and trust them, as CNN tried to encourage?
But there's no way for them NOT to do that. Ad-revenue follows the amount of views, which means if they do nothing they're essentially taking a stance of 'we'll facilitate the spread of any type of mis-information as long as it makes us money". So they're already doing it now, they're just slightly changing their parameters. It's their product and platform, they have no obligation whatsoever to spread lies to make money if they don't want to.
And why not? It's a search engine, the point of which is to provide people accurate information. If some trolls/hackers/political shills/whatever try to skew the search results so that upon googling thing X, instead a completely unrelated/false article Y comes up, that means their product is not operating as intended and they should correct it.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Oh man, Slashdot is screwed ;)
or a hard worker for Putin
Really? We're scared of Russia now? The Cold War ended because the Russian economy completely collapsed and still hasn't recovered to anything like the previous levels. Their GDP is under a tenth that of the USA or EU and has been declining steadily for years. Their GDP is slightly above that of Spain and well below that of Italy (two of the 'failing' economies in the EU, which are both a fraction of the size of Russia).
Mexico has an economy that is only about 20% smaller than that of Russia. Should we now be afraid of them? After all, they're a lot closer to the USA
China is at number 2 (3 if you count the EU as a single entity, even if you remove the UK), so they'd make a much more credible threat, but they aren't being touted as one because no one wants to offend a country with an economy that big.
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