Slashdot Mirror
Google's Featured Snippets Are Worse Than Fake News (theoutline.com)
Adrianne Jeffries, reporting for The Outline: Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK? Shulman was taken aback. He confessed that he was not aware of that allegation, but that Harding had been in favor of anti-lynching legislation, so it seemed unlikely. But then a second student pulled out his phone and announced that yes, Harding had been a Klan member, and so had four other presidents. It was right there on Google, clearly emphasized inside a box at the top of the page. "I understand what Google is trying to do, and it's work that perhaps requires algorithmic aid," Shulman said in an email. "But in this instance, the question its algorithm scoured the internet to answer is simply a poorly conceived one. There have been no presidents in the Klan." Google needs to invest in human experts who can judge what type of queries should produce a direct answer like this, Shulman said. "Or, at least in this case, not send an algorithm in search of an answer that isn't simply 'There is no evidence any American president has been a member of the Klan.' It'd be great if instead of highlighting a bogus answer, it provided links to accessible, peer-reviewed scholarship."
If sites like Google and Facebook want to let algorithms decide which information to highlight, they will need to spend more time doing human assisted ranking of various information sources. Crowd sourcing will be very helpful here, but you will still need some human moderators who can perform real research to help determine which information has credibility. I know too many otherwise intelligent people who are becoming so disenfranchised they just don't believe anything they read anymore, which is the ultimate goal of these misinformation campaigns.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I wonder if Prof took the time to review with the students the difference between a search result and a fact.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
It'd be great if instead of highlighting a bogus answer, it provided links to accessible, peer-reviewed scholarship."
That scholarship is behind a paywall.
I'm more bothered by the implication that the results of an internet search engine should not return results representing what's on the internet.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Typing the same search "presidents in the klan" into DDG also puts the same fake news result at the top (at least it's at the top if I set my location to UK. If I set it to worldwide it comes in second). Bing also puts the same story at the top. So this is not just Google's problem. It's a problem that all search vendors need to tackle collectively.
Tabloid trash used to be contained within that special group of "news" providers, and quarantined near grocery store cash registers.
Unfortunately, the quest to extract revenue derived from clicks has pushed damn near everyone to publish and aggregate a similar flavor of clickbait bullshit.
Hey Capitalism, stop rewarding Bullshit. Otherwise, You Reap what You Sow.
Maybe the problem is that the incorrect information is free and the peer-reviewed article costs $30 to read.