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Google Responds On Skewed Holocaust Search Results (bbc.com)
Google says it is "thinking deeply" about ways to improve search, after criticism over how some results -- including ones discussing the Holocaust -- were ranked. From a report on BBC: Searching for "did the Holocaust happen?" returned a top result that claimed it did not, as Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr reported. Now, the ranking has changed for US users. The page -- from white supremacist site Stormfront -- remains top in the UK. "This is a really challenging problem, and something we're thinking deeply about in terms of how we can do a better job," said a Google spokesman. "Search is a reflection of the content that exists on the web. The fact that hate sites may appear in search results in no way means that Google endorses these views."
The issue isn't with showing the result, it's with the ordering of the results. You would hope that more trustworthy results are ordered above less trustworthy ones.
You the reader must take responsibility for deciding what is real and what isn't on the internets. Do not require that anyone do that for you otherwise they eventually will when you don't want them to. If you need a warning label to avoid suffocating yourself on the plastic bag that is the world wide web then just turn around and walk away from whatever device you're using to access it.
Ancient history... you do know that people that there are people still alive today that were IN THE FUCKING HOLOCAUST?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You would hope that more trustworthy results are ordered above less trustworthy ones.
The issue is how Google can measure trustworthiness. While the precise details of PageRank continue to be an ever-evolving secret, there are certain clearly stated ways to raise it. If you develop more content which is linked to by more sites, then your rank will rise. By now it is probable that the heuristics are clever enough to figure out whether a link is being cited positively or authoritatively, or the converse. Due to echo chambers and Dunning-Krueger, it's easily possible for this scheme to automatically result in such sites becoming highly ranked as a bunch of ignorant neo-Nazi shitheels jerk one another off in a sticky downward spiral of arrogance and hate.
What can Google actually do about it without exposing themselves to litigation in the future, though? If they outright flag sites as being hate sites, they might have to defend that decision in court in the future, and they then land in an extremely unenviable position — having to argue either that they are not influential, or that it's acceptable to wield their influence to diminish unpopular ideas.
Ideally, you'd base rank on the proper use of spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the comments left by regular visitors who praise the content, but that's too easy to game...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
History is not only written by winners, it is also proclaimed by people who personally remember it because they were there, personally witnessed what had happened, and were fortunate enough to survive it. I personally know people that fit this category.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Google's stated goal has always been "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Which in the past has always meant returning the results that people were looking for. They now face the problem of truthiness which has disproven the fundamental theory behind Google, that feedback loops from users selecting links will correctly identify which information should be returned. In short, Google has to figure out how to counter the self-delusion of the internet and it's users. It's no wonder they are thinking about it deeply because they are going to need create something like IBM's WATSON to sort reality from delusion.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
...The most likely untruths from the last century lie in internal strategy, unrecorded thoughts, and secret locations. Not whether Hitler ordered genocide.
Ah, but the issue even lies within the genocide itself, questioning the amount of actual deaths that occurred, as if arguing about gas chamber efficiency somehow dismisses Hitlers intent regardless of actual death tolls.
By laying the blanket of doubt over historical markers, the general masses can be convinced easily that events never took place, which I suspect is what will end up in the history books within the next half century, paving the way for repeat offenders.
Look at how bad fake news continues to rewrite the logfile. The only historical fact that will emerge out of the 21st century is showing how gullible the masses really were.
Is stormfront doing better SEO than all the other sites?
Then without some bespoke editorial control of search they are correctly ranked.
And this is where the slippery slope happens...
If Google delists a site that is not illegal (even if distasteful) then you have made the search less a reflection of the web.
If Google tweaks page rank to lower the value of their SEO (and applies it globally) then fine I guess.
While I can point and yell "slippery slope" as well as Chicken Little yelled that the sky was falling, I have no decent answer what to do about it.
I would think that ideally Google would put the Wiki page about the Holocaust as the first result, then natural page rank after that? (And yeah, there's that damnable slope again). I don't envy Google in situations like this.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Due to echo chambers and Dunning-Krueger, it's easily possible for this scheme to automatically result in such sites becoming highly ranked as a bunch of ignorant neo-Nazi shitheels jerk one another off in a sticky downward spiral of arrogance and hate.
This is true, but I think it understates the problem.
It's not just that fringe viewpoints are likely to generate lots of interlinked content, it's that they generate more content, period. Of all of the articles on the web that directly address the question "Did the Holocaust happen?" what percentage of them take the affirmative position? And how widely-linked are they? It's very low, because on this question the world is basically divided into two camps, one which knows that it did and doesn't see any need to argue the case, and one that believes it didn't and is highly motivated to prove that position precisely because it is not accepted by the vast majority. Although the former camp is dramatically larger, the latter is dramatically more prolific regarding the question. The more extreme the fringe viewpoint the more likely this is to happen, as long as there's a community dedicated to churning out support for it.
Of course, when you widen the scope to include all content that references the Holocaust, the mainstream view is overwhelmingly represented... but hardly any of that content addresses this specific question.
Ideally, search ranking on questions like this should consider the fact that the overwhelming content of articles that reference the topic assume the mainstream view, and then ranks content that takes the mainstream view over content that takes the fringe view, even though the mainstream view content may not seem to address the question directly. For example, in this case it would be good to give the top slot to the web site of one of the excellent Holocaust museums, which clearly provide a tremendous amount of evidence to support the reality of the event. The problem is that doing this in the general case almost requires that the search engine actually understand the question and the mainstream and fringe theories, and search engines simply aren't yet that smart.
This is an easy problem for a human, but a hard one for current AI. Because Google et al don't want to try to hand-tune responses to lots of questions, they want to find ways to get the AI to give the right answer. The average user of a search engine, though, doesn't understand that their question falls into a sort of "search uncanny valley" where the AI is smart enough to give highly on-topic responses, but not smart enough to understand that those responses are from crackpots. Instead they just see that "Google says the Holocaust didn't happen!".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The evidence for the Holocaust is enormous. It's one thing to ask "How do scholars and historians arrive at the figures?" But when the question amounts to a thinly coded "The Holocaust was a fraud", then it's not really questioning at all, but simply a rhetorical device used by Holocaust Deniers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So questioning the existence of the Holocaust] instantly makes you a neo-nazi?
I understand how you feel. For years, I've been saying that there's no such thing as Calvin Coolidge. I mean, perhaps it's forgivable that people thought so at the time, but the preponderance of research done by the respected anticalvinologists at nottoocoolidge.biz has since proven conclusively not only that Calvin Coolidge was not the 30th president, but also that he was never even born, and indeed that there never even was a 30th president. We skipped directly from 29 to 31.
Everybody knows that. That's just basic leap year math, people. Get your heads out of the sand, denialists.
You the reader must take responsibility for deciding what is real and what isn't on the internets.
People are incredibly bad at doing this. If you need an example I refer you to The Bible. People have been mistaking that tome of mostly fictional stories as reality for centuries. You think they are going to stop being credulous just because somebody tells them a tall tale on the internet? Not likely.
Sometimes we need a responsible party to stand up and tell the facts. No reason Google can't serve that role in a case like this. Arguably it would be irresponsible for them not to insist that their search engine provide actual true facts instead of made up bigotry.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Holocaust Denier sites, but I said nothing, because I was not a holocaust denier.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Intelligent Design sites, but I said nothing because I didn't believe in Intelligent Design.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Climate Change Denier sites, but I said nothing, because I was not a Climate Change Denier.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Pro-Electoral College Sites, I but said nothing because I believe in One Vote for Each American.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Pro-Gun Ownership Sites, but I said nothing, because I believe in stricter gun control.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Life Begins at Conception sites, but I said nothing because I believed that life begins at birth.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Anti-Assisted Suicide Sites, but I said nothing because I believe assisted suicide is okay.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Anti-One Payer Healthcare sites, but I said nothing because I believe in single payer healthcare.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Sugary Drinks and Fatty Foods sites, but I said nothing because I believe everyone should be eating healthy.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Meat and Dairy Industry sites, but I said nothing because I believe meat and dairy are unhealthy.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Alcohol Industry sites, but I said nothing because I stopped drinking a few years ago. Just in time, right??
They came to lower the page ranks of the Legal Marijuana Industry sites, but I said nothing, because I didn't want my boss to know I smoked weed.
They came to lower the page ranks of the Humor and Satire sites, but I said... wait, what???
They came to lower the page ranks of every few remaining sites outside the walled gardens of a few mega-corporations allied with a global Nanny State with vested interests in controlling what people could read, and I said, "Hey, Now! Wait a minute! What about my Apple Gadget Blog?! Nobody can find my Apple Gadget Blog anymore!
If I were to perform a search for "is mars inhabited by aliens" I would expect to get kooky sites about aliens. If I search for "did the holocaust happen" it is because I am looking for sites that are addressing that question. "Everyone" knows it happened. Anyone upset about these results knows it happened and would never perform this search. People are only performing this search so they can whine about the algorithm which... was doing its job.
I'm sorry that neo nazis are able to get accurate results back for their interests but I would be more sorry if google started weighing in more and more often on "truthiness".
It's not just that fringe viewpoints are likely to generate lots of interlinked content, it's that they generate more content, period.
My four year old son and I were talking about the moon, and he was shocked to learn people had been there. I wanted to show him the moon landing, so I went to youtube. But when you search "moon landing" you get the official footage and then pages and pages of "MOON LANDING HOAX" results. If you just went by the volume of material one would conclude the moon landing must be faked.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
As a boomer I've met both Holocaust survivors (the grandparents of friends) and Germans who weren't Nazis, but supported the regime as patriotic citizens. I've even seen sat at the dinner table with Jews and Germans who lived through the era as they discussed their families' experiences. There was no agenda other than to make sense of an almost unimaginable catastrophe.
And what you don't understand, because you've probably never paid attention to the testimony, much less witnessed it, is how personal that catastrophe was. The Holocaust wasn't some political abstraction, it was having everything your family worked for and stood for stolen; it was having your parents and siblings ripped away; it was experiencing personal suffering, deprivation, and exploitation.
At the hands of smug, self-righteous bureaucrats who had the gall to write "Arbeit Macht Frei" over the gates of the labor camps.
And on the flip side for ordinary Germans it was going along because patriotic gullibility was easy. Hoping for the best was a the path of least resistance. It was also a path to a national catastrophe:
Great Carthage drove three wars. After the first one it was still powerful. After the second one it was still inhabitable. After the third one it was no longer possible to find her. -- Bertolt Brecht
What we are losing is the personal memory of the banality of evil, of how ordinary people can enable and empower the depraved. We flatter ourselves we are better than those Germans who maybe didn't vote for the Nazis, but allowed themselves to be swept up by the vicious, inane bigotries of Nazi propaganda. We assume that we are smarter. Or at the very least nicer people.
We're not. We're not better, and I can tell you from personal experience we aren't nicer or smarter than the Germans who let the Nazis shove their nation's hand into the meat grinder of WW2. The people who went along were pleasant, cultured, educated people who read the papers and loved their families and were good to their neighbors, but in the end let the hope that Nazis weren't really that bad turn them into suckers.
We aren't better or wiser than them. But what we should be is forewarned. And there people who'd prefer we weren't.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.