Google Plans To Remove 'In the News' Section From Its Desktop Search Following 'Fake News' Criticism (businessinsider.com)

Nathan McAlone, reporting for BusinessInsider: Following criticism over fake news on its platform, Google plans to remove its "In the news" section from the top of desktop search results in a matter of weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. It will be replaced by a carousel of "Top stories" similar to what now exists on mobile. This move had been planned for quite some time, the source said. The removal of the word "news" will, hopefully, help draw a sharper line between Google's human-vetted Google News product, and its main search product. Earlier this month, Google faced scrutiny when one of its top results for "final election count" was fake news. The top result in Google Search's "In the news" section was a Wordpress blog named "70 News," which falsely claimed Trump won the popular vote by a margin of almost 700,000. He didn't.

Comments

So sad that SJWs were the reason

[NotInHere]

I think that personalized news sites are orwellian and they create an echo chamber. You can't form an informed opinion if you only get news that already have your opinion.

Instead of banning these sites out of this reason like it should be done, they are removed because the filters are not conforming with what SJWs think is non-"offensive" articles.

Its so sad that reports about Clinton's corruption is classified as fake news by the SJWs who only care about "microagressions" and "pussy grabbing" instead of real crime.

Similarly the undercover footage that proved how the democrats have rigged elections (by abusing tolerant state laws and driving over voters with busses) and paid protesters since decades went almost unnoticed by the mainstream media (only Fox reported about it I think).

I don't agree with republicans about most of their issues, and clearly Clinton was the candidate I was rooting for, but in this election almost all of the mainstream media have supported clinton, and I still think that journalism critical about the democrats should be allowed.

Re:So sad that SJWs were the reason

[serviscope_minor]

SJWs who only care about "microagressions" and "pussy grabbing" instead of real crime.

Hate to tell you this buddy, but sexual assault is actually a real crime.

Re:So sad that SJWs were the reason

[AthanasiusKircher]

How about you stick to what he says ?

I quoted him exactly near the end of my post. I have no idea if he ACTUALLY committed sexual assault (though there clearly are some women who have accused him of it). But the way he phrased it strongly implies that he did, or at least that he was okay with it.

OR all he said was just "locker room talk" and bragging about stuff he never actually did. Which is fine (I guess), if that's what you believe. But if you take what he said literally, it's disturbing.

And oh -- I also was REPLYING to another post by the way. My post wasn't only about Trump. In general, I think the whole concept that "I think she wanted it" when she doesn't say so has historically been used to excuse way more cases of sexual abuse (or at best, unwanted sexual advances that a woman just "went along with") than it has been for cases of women who want a man to "take charge."

Finally, keep in mind that we're talking about encounters apparently between strangers. It's definitely different if you're in a relationship already with someone and sexual "touching" is okay to try to get someone in the mood or whatever. With a stranger -- particularly if you're in a position of power -- you want some sign of approval or permission before grabbing genitals. Sorry, that's not only the moral but the legal thing to do... whether you're Trump or anyone else.

(I frankly cannot believe I actually had to say that to someone.)

Re:Who decides?

[slack_justyb]

Okay I'll bite. But I'm sure I'll regret it.

So when the story is that Trump won the popular vote, that's fake news. It's pretty easy to show, Trump just up and up didn't win the popular vote.

My favorite from the Denver Guardian (to which I might add there is no such organization called the "Denver Guardian" which the "Denver Post" who does exist had to post a story on their site to ensure that no one confused them with this made up organization) of "FBI Agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apparent murder-suicide." The story went a little something like this for those who forgot, "Investigators believe FBI agent, Michael Brown, 45, shot and killed his 33-year-old wife, Susan Brown"... Needless to say all of those names are made up, the event is made up, no one of any of those names were ever shot/found dead in the Walkerville, MD area or by those names in the state of Maryland period.

One more just to hammer the point, Denzel Washington's support of Donald Trump. First, Denzel Washington openly supported Obama in 2008. Second, the words quoted as coming from Washington were actually someone else's words. Finally, Washington was never public about whom he supported in the 2016 election. He could've supported Clinton or Trump, but the fact remains we don't know because he never made any public comments about it.

Now some might argue that this is all lame crap anyway. Who cares what Denzel Washington thinks, seriously I can't remember the last movie I ever saw him in and he really doesn't strike me as being all that big of a political influencer!? One could say, "just look up the popular vote and those who don't actually research deserve to be treated like idiots." And finally, the Maryland murder some might just reply with, "Well that's what they want you to think!!" Or as I've heard a lot of folks make the argument for, "Well CNN/MSNBC/(insert some liberal scum's name here) are posting stories that aren't based on fact! So who are you going to trust!?"

The thing about it is that you need to take information in aggregate. We don't base scientific fact on just a single result, people shouldn't become homogenized to a single outlet, even though that is what every news site wants you to do when they say things like, "The most trusted source of ... ". Additionally, fact outright rids itself and refuses introduction of just false at face value results. Hence the reason we are sorely lacking in theories describing the relationship of unicorns to gravity, all of those theories tend to get ousted from the word go. And yes, one might argue that news is different from scientific fact, because news is subjective or whatever. The thing is, is that news is events that have actually happened. Finding out the exact details of what happened, why it happened, and what possible outcomes from it happening are domains of journalism and I would dare say that that's evidence that while the methods of getting from point A to B in science and journalism are different, they are both ultimately motivated by an underlying desire to find truth.

Is there going to be bias, yes. Of course, there will be bias, it happens in science, it happens in news, it happens in politics, there's always some level of bias and we should always go into something with the understanding that there's going to be that bias there and it's the reason why we need multiple sources of information so that we can see where the points of truth intersect between the different sources. Fake news, is a source where zero of it's points intersect with any source of information and sometimes zero of its points intersect with reality. Yes, it's fun to go full on tin-foil hat and think that everyone is in on it and thus the reason no points intersect is due to some larger conspiracy, but geez I can tell you it gets very tiring working for the Illuminati having to modify all those Tweets and news stories from local vendors to keep all the sheep happy, it's just a ton of work.

As someone