Slashdot Mirror
Google Tackles Fake News With Global Fact-Checking Rollout (betanews.com)
Google is calling on fact-checking organizations to help it bust fake news -- but it's starting in a small way. From a report: Google's Fact Check feature is not new, but today the search giant is rolling out the feature around the world. A global rollout is important if such a tool is to have any real impact. It's all well and good have reports fact-checked on one side of the world, but it's of little use if the same fake stories remain unquestioned and untested elsewhere. Google is doing its part by making the Fact Check label available in Google News everywhere, and spreading it into search results in all languages as well. The Fact Check label has been around since October, providing an at-a-glance way to determine whether or not a particular story has been verified as true. Google admits that it will not be possible to fact-check every single search result it displays, and the company points out that it is not responsible for the actual fact-checking process.
Is this fact checking going to be like Politifact, which has said that an article or tweet is "mostly false" while saying that the facts it contains are true?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's only fake when it comes from non-MSM sources and doesn't peddle the neocon talking points.
It tells you a lot about a company when they're more concerned about Fake News (TM) than they are about the advertising revenue they're receiving from a plethora of scammers that regularly bilk less technical folks out of piles of money, specifically seniors looking for phone numbers for well known companies.
Since they're not fact checking, this will depend entirely on how well they oversee the organizations who do. That ought to be a fun dive into governance issues.
It is very easy to lose trust. I can understand why they would want to do this---between meaningless news and fake news, it is already hard to learn about things that matter. But they are going to encounter legitimate scandals and legit-or-not accusations of bias. I hope they have a plan for dealing with this.
Fact checking is an essential piece of journalism. It addresses the same underlying issues as the replicability requirement for science---poor data collection, fraudulent claims, bias, etc.
This is an important function, and if Google cannot deliver it then I have to wonder who can.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The Fact Check label has been around since October, providing an at-a-glance way to determine whether or not a particular story has been approved by the Ministry of Truth.
What exactly are facts when it comes to government anyway? A Spin Meter may be a more appropriate use of Google's time. Stating a single fact is one thing but when munged together, most things government deal with are so complex that anyone can pretty much spin things any way they like and still seem factual to one group or another..
Isn't this google using their almost total dominance of search to control the news industry? If a story happens to be true but doesn't fit with the narrative that google wants to put forth could it get burried?
It's not just about libertarian or conservative bloggers. What if an advertiser, let's say big agribusiness, doesn't want peta exposes of bad farms to be seen? Could that be labeled "fake news"?
Isn't it odd how every mainstream media outlet simultaneously adopted an identical narrative about "fake news" after the presidential election proved them to be utterly out of touch with what the average citizen wants?
It's almost as though traditional, corporate media companies are all directed by some single entity about how to report on certain topics.
Nah, couldn't be...
...you're merely uninformed. If you do, you're misinformed.
Pick your poison.
The Ministry of Truth.
I don't see an entry for what probably most hurt Hillary's chances in the 2016 election. That is, she blamed a YouTube video for the 9/11/2012 terror attack on the U.S. ambassador to Libya and his staff in Benghazi.
I also do not see an entry for the oft repeated phrase "the Russians hacked the election."
There's a ton of hair splitting regarding statements made by Trump and other Republicans.
PolitiFact appears to be just another propaganda site. It's probably sponsored by the Russians with the intention of demoralizing Trump supporters (cf., ABC, CBS, *NBC, NYT, WP, LAT, PBS, ...).
In all seriousness:
Most media is alt-left libtard.
CNN and MSNBC are both masters at using a cherry picked set of facts to support a narrative. Other sources often do the same, just not to the same extent.
Using a very limited set of facts to support your position is called confirmation bias. People introducing additional facts to question the narrative are simply labeled "fake news". "Conspiracy theorist" is a bit dated, but that was the line pushed from the 60s or so. The people exposing CIA operations were labeled, yet we found through more facts that many nefarious operations did in fact exist.
Conspiracies are relatively common, yet the media has demonized the term so that people can't talk about them. This is despite knowing that the Mafia was and is a real group, US citizens have been and are being kept under surveillance illegally, etc...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Will there be a truth detection algorithm? Who will be in charge of it? Will it be co-opted? By whom? Can't be just ban BadThink and make it punishable by banishment or death or something?
What if the fact checking is fake? Look at urbandictionary, I'd argue that less than half of the entries are accurate. It's a fake dictionary.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Does Sarkeesian have an exclusive contract with Twitter?
Can't we just call it what it is: propaganda?
with yesterday being 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson declaring war on Germany, I recall an article some years ago good propaganda is formed in a way that it does not look like propaganda. On outbreak of WWI, Britain cut off communications lines from Germany so US does not get "news wires" from Germany, only from Britain. With just one side reporting, US gets news media from just one side (which Britain became good at writing articles with some facts not mentioned, others embellished) that sways US opinion. Of course sinking the Lusitania and Zimmermen letter didn't help Germany's standing with US. There's lots of other dirty laundry... ethnic cleansing was a huge driver.
Speaking of 100th anniversary of the Great War, back then the world was changing with new energy sources, technology, growing nationalism (much of world was empires but some localized areas wanted their own identity). CSPAN had an interview with president of the WWI museum, he said with social media and rise of nationalism in many countries [I'm thinking passion driven by Trump, Putin, Brexit.] is much like what happened 100 years ago. What was not expected was number of deaths in the millions which was new, even those that count casualties did not know how to tally such large numbers.
mfwright@batnet.com
They should start with fact-checking fake news like: "Women make 80% of what men do." or "Climate change threatens the future of humanity." or "Gun control reduces homicides." or "The welfare state helps people become productive members of society." or "Paying more for education than we do improves educational outcomes."
I suspect it isn't that kind of fake news that they are going to fact check.
This has a very fishy smell of censorship to it.
" The majority voted for Clinton"
Not according to the Electoral College, despite numbers.
Perhaps you should get rid of that bullshit, since obviously the popular side lost (Guess what happened when Hitler, the popular choice, got power?)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So, you suffer a severe deficit in reading comprehension. Interesting.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There is a pretty high correlation to trump supporters and people who argue against fact-checking. Just saying.
Hillary lost the Electoral College, which is how _EVERY_SINGLE_PRESIDENT in US History has been elected. We do not elect Presidents by popular vote, and never have. The reason for this is solid, and I can only recommend you do your homework instead of repeating bullshit talking points handed down by people who LOST the election. (Not unique to this batch, but this is certainly the worst I can recall).
Following the law is not a "technicality", it's called LAW. Your ignorance of the law demonstrates a big problem with the left.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I've sometimes heard leftism described as a "mental disorder". I never really gave that claim much credence until I read your comment.
After seeing the amount of delusion in your comment, I can now see how leftism could be considered a type of mental disorder. It's like you've gone out of your way to ignore all aspects of reality, and you've substituted in your own perverted, twisted sense of what's "real".
Pretty much every single sentence you wrote is wrong. If you haven't denied reality outright, then you've twisted reality so badly that it no longer resembles reality at all.
Normal people don't twist reality like you have done. What you've done comes off as really, really abnormal.
...screams every right-winger simultaneously.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
AK? Their home state of Alaska? You'd think they'd have a better copy/paste script for you to work from for your baseless rants.
Quite interestingI wonder what the German news wires would have been? I was actually referring to a cultural habit of giving feel-good names to things that already have names. Instead of "propaganda", we have "fake news." Instead of "genocide", we have "ethnic cleansing". The feel-good names remove all mention of intention, rendering the terms impotent.
Then why did Comey admit that RUSSIANS sourced the hacks?
More lies by the rightards
Proof of dead voters REQUIRED when you say those lies chump!
What grief?
A fraud took the office thanks to Electors refusing to obey the Constitution.
That isn't a grief, that's a grievance.
Notice how the right trolls are out in force claiming fact checking is biased therefore must not be done?
Knew this was coming
Can't win the argument, lie about the evidence.
> There is a pretty high correlation to trump supporters and people who argue against fact-checking. Just saying.
There's a pretty high correlation between lib-left (Clintons and Dems) and people who argue for internet gatekeeping... just saying.
The lib-left loves their lapdog MSM...
* The same lapdog MSM that kept quiet despite knowing that JFK was screwing more women than Bill Clinton could ever dream of.
* The same lapdog MSM that suppressed the story of Bill Clinton's sexcapades.
Actually, if the MSM had broken the Clinton/Lewinsky story, Matt Drudge would've remained a nobody. Instead, the Clinton/Lewinsky story proved that the MSM couldn't be trusted, and that "alternate media" (e.g. Drudge Report) was more reliable at times. The MSM have only themselves to blame for people trusting alternate media more than MSM.
Just as they love their lapdog MSM, the lib-left hate/fear "alternate media". http://www.breitbart.com/big-j...
> Three years before Matt Drudge changed the world and how news
> would be consumed, President Bill Clinton's White House feared
> that the Internet was allowing average citizens, especially conservatives,
> to bypass legacy gatekeepers and access information that
> had previously been denied to them by the mainstream press.
Like husband, like wife; fast-forward to 2016... http://dailycaller.com/2016/08...
> Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign has sent out a
> fundraising email arguing the website Breitbart News has no "right to exist,"
> and suggests that if elected, the website will be shut down entirely.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
No bias there.
Seems rather nefarious to have a single entity that determines its own sources as being true, and then use those same sources to determine whether or not other sources are true. What would stop Google from false-flagging (no pun intended) accurate content? What about the other way around? Who's to say Google would neglect to flag something that's deemed totally false (for the likes of CNN or Fox News)?
I guess what I'm getting at here, is how do we know we can trust this? By simply taking their word for it? Seems like somebody is trying to hide something or label alternative news sites as false to essentially pass down a narrative. Just my opinion...
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/25/...
> In 2003, Savage had enlisted a digital army to tie Santorum's name with
> an...unpleasant sexual definition...and then "Google bomb" the Republican
> until the new term became the top search result for "Rick Santorum."
And we're supposed to trust their "fact checking"? NOT!
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
No one suffers any deficit in reading comprehension when they dismiss your assertion that Hillary won the 2016 Presidential election by any meaningful measure. The election was not decided by popular vote, but by states votes and representation in the Electoral College.
You are barking up the wrong tree. Persisting in doing so marks you as either a sore loser, which is excusable, or dismissive of the law and Constitution, which marks you as perhaps a revolutionary, more likely intolerant of your political failure, which is also excusable, if you are only ranting. If you intend to refuse to accept the elected President, it marks you differently.
The 'popular' vote was not used to decide the election, If that's your sole complaint, get the constitution changed. Or have the fight so many seem ready to have.
Molon Labe.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The point of the Electoral College is so that ALL States, even the smallest, have a voice in the Government. The founders knew that Democracy suffered numerous failures because simple people are persuaded by rhetoric, not facts. You demonstrate their position quite well, and are a perfect example of what they were trying to protect against.
I am happy to criticize President Trump for things he does wrong. For example, I believe it was a mistake to bomb Syria for numerous reasons (You appear to be too simple to understand, so I won't extrapolate). Wanting to reduce taxes and fix our broken tax code is something every single politician has said since I was a kid. I'm waiting for that bill, and will criticize if necessary. Trying to resolve immigration in the US is again, something politicians have been claimed they would address ever since I was a kid. President Trump is taking steps to do so, and the outcome is yet to be measured. Wanting to fix trade is yet again something we have been promised by every politician since I was a kid, President Trump is actively taking steps to address trade issues. As with the previous, results are yet to be measured. Neither of those last two have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Americans as Bernie likes to claim, and so far the US economy has been improving almost purely on optimism.
Save your ad hominem for the other simpletons who will believe it. I measure facts and results.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How do you know that the "facts" are facts in the first place?
Indeed. "Fact checking" groups/sites are always going to be biased towards someone/some group. There is no such thing as an unbiased independent "fact checking" anything. Might as watch the horrid unashamedly biased news sites like CNN and Fox News who are two different sides of the same coin.
Pure rubbish. Cherry picking is a common tactic for fake news. Look up CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and even ABC removing content to portray a narrative. To show that this is not new, look back at the first reporting of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case by NBC. Who was caught editing audio to make George appear to be racist instead of answering a dispatcher's question, they lightened his photos to make him appear to be white instead of Hispanic, and instead of displaying current pictures of Trayvon Martin pulled pictures of him as an elementary school kid instead of a 17 year old 6'1" young man who enjoyed MMA.
Cherry picking and editing are common tactics for media propagandists in the US. If you were fooled, shame on you. Plenty of lawsuits have been won against these media outlets for various civil reasons. Off the top of my head, ABC and CNN have both had to issue public apologies and retractions in the last month and a half for doing this, or would have faced even more civil suits.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Clinton received more votes than Trump. About 3 million or so. The obvious, relevant point I was making.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Given the lack of credibility of existing media and Google's Silicon Valley alignment, this is a narrative checker more than it is a "fact checker".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You're just plain delusional about this (and that's putting it nicely.)
She did; he didn't. She won the vote. Handily.
No, she didn't. The Constitution is very specific that the only vote that matters for POTUS is that of the electoral college. Trump won, handily, by the rules of the constitution. Whether or not you agree with the constitution is your own opinion that you are welcome to, but Trump did play by the rules, and under said rules, he won by a landslide.
Furthermore, Trump only achieved the presidency on a technical basis which was created by a bunch of red-state electors acting well outside their intended charter
First of all, you're deciding whether they were red or blue based entirely on the popular vote in their particular state on that particular day. In fact, if you look at the map on a per-county basis, most of the states look quite purple to me, including the ones you'd plainly label as blue:
http://www.awildpoliticalnerd....
Second of all, the electors did exactly what they were "chartered" (as you put it) to do, with only four exceptions, and three of those were lawfully intended to vote for Hillary but instead voted for Colin Powell.
If it makes you happy to pretend that Trump "won" in any sense that is meaningful
Are you dumb or something? He won in the one and ONLY sense that is meaningful by law.
Honestly with as delusional as you are being about this, I wouldn't be surprised if you're the kind of jackoff who blocked public streets and wanted to raise hell simply because the election, which went exactly as legally prescribed, didn't go your way. And by the way, this country was built from the ground up as a republic, not a democracy. This means that by design, a popular vote typically doesn't necessarily overrule checks and balances, and we have various provisions (such as inalienable rights) that a simple majority vote cannot take away. And in my opinion, direct democracy would in fact be a mistake. If you disagree, then go watch C-SPAN for at least 8 hours a day, for every day of your life, because that's the equivalent of what you'd be asking every person in this country to do.
Not that I wanted Trump to win mind you, but this nonsense about Hillary being the real winner is exactly that.
No, you obviously suffer the lack of reading comprehension, as well as historical comprehension.
Come back when you can prove you actually took and passed middle school civics, child.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Get back to me after you figure out what the preview button does.
That's right, there are people so pissed at the Electoral College nonsense, that they'll use its own weakness against it.
No, they're not. That is not a "weakness", nor are they using anything against it. They're still participating in it EXACTLY as intended. You're kind of dumb and probably won't understand what I'm about to explain (because you've already demonstrated a rather profound ignorance of the whole thing) but I'll explain anyways:
In the original days of the constitution, several states (such as New York for example) had no general election for POTUS. That is, individual citizens did not and were not allowed to vote for the president. Instead, the state government decided through its own processes how it would send electors. Typically the way it worked is the citizens would vote for their state government, and either their state senators or the governor would decide on its own who it would send to vote for the president. Those were, and still are, the only votes that actually count for anything at all.
Now, if a state government decides that it wants to totally disregard what its own population does and instead cast its electoral votes based on what the national polls show, that is fully within the purview of the constitution as it is written, and thus perfectly legal. There is nothing "weak" about this, nor is it in any way working against itself.
People don't like its bullshit. Except when they get elected, of course.
If this was truly the case, then it would have gone away a long time ago through a constitutional amendment.
Selective leaks, SELECTIVE. Hacks mattered because the hackers refused to divulge Trump's entangled Russian affiliations
Proof required when you repeat that lie!
Not if this is a rePUBLIC!
The most relevant possible thing here is from the Declaration of Independence
"...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed".
Trump didn't get that.
Nope, sorry, but the lack of specification in terms of elector selection IS a weakness
It seems pretty clear to me:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
In other words, how the electors are sent is entirely up to the state legislature.
If the state legislator wants to send electors that it chooses arbitrarily, it may do so.
If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote within its jurisdiction, it may do so.
If the state legislator wants to send electors based on the popular vote of the entire nation, it may do so.
It's flexible, which is quite a strength. Otherwise, you may as well argue that skyscrapers in Japan are weak because they bend and flex instead of being rigid. The rigid buildings don't survive earthquakes.
Actually, it is, when you realize that the whole point of state's deciding the Presidency over the people is resoundingly claimed as the intent.
That's not the intent. The intent is that it's up to the state legislature how exactly they want to do it. It's quite simple. If they want to do it over the people, that's up to them. If they want to do it based on referendum (which is how it currently works in all 50 states) that is up to them.
Sadly, there's a lot of intransigence to that, because people are so defensive about the Constitution
That's actually the way the constitution was designed: Simple, deliberately vague in some cases to allow wiggle room, and difficult to change. And as it turns out, the US constitution is the oldest written constitution still in use today. And there's a reason for that: Things that don't bend break. In other words: In a large population, you're invariably going to get people who think and behave differently from one another as co-cultures form, and over time people's attitudes change. Our current system is highly flexible to that end due to its simplicity, and if you make it overly complex and/or inflexible, then it will break, which is also why it is resistant to change by design.
Clinton received more votes than Trump. About 3 million or so. The obvious, relevant point I was making.
Which is also wrong. Notice that Jill Stein started a recount, Trump gained a lot of votes. That stopped them cold because the truth was about to come out. If they did a national recount I'm sure Hillary lost by at least a million, probably many million as people are not as stupid as she thinks. Certainly the women that she bashed recently and maligned. She knows she lost big time too. I think you know it too. I want to remind you about the election. How many Obama signs were out there both elections? How many McCain and Romney? What were the results?
Now about this election. I didn't even know what a Hillary sign looked like (and I drive though many states, counties) because I couldn't even find one. If I were to offer you a million bucks the last week of the campaign to photograph 100 Hillary signs in 3 hours, I bet you'd lose. On actual lawns put there by the people living there. Almost nobody was even attending her campaign stops. No problem with Trump signs. You'd be back in 10 minutes. I came across one guy that I bet had 100 on just his property. Not until the last week of the election and then I was surprised to find the logo was the twin towers with a plane going through them. Can't make this up. I mean, WTF? Really? Trump signs were plastered everywhere. Republican areas, Democrat strong holds, didn't matter. So by campaign sign alone, he clobbered her. Wasn't even close.
The aftermath has been very revealing as well. 50 years ago we had racist and bigots that were all verified Democrats walking around in white outfits with a cone top. The KKKK (Why the 4th K? It's Knights of the Klu Klux Klan and that fits into their little symbol if you look at it. There are four Ks in it). Nothing has changed. We have people running around in now black outfits, hidden faces again this time without the funny hat. Same racists, same fascists (those that still believe in God, otherwise same communists), same democrats terrorizing the country. Just like in the past we had kids that didn't even know better wearing the KKKK outfits, I have a feeling the kids today are useful idiots as well.
Totally different. If you looked at the "refugees" flooding into Europe, they looked like an invasion force more than real refugees. Mohammadists, they've been trying to kill us for 1400 years. They rape, kill people and the PC bullshit is stopping everyone from calling a spade a spade. They do this at their own peril. Europe will cease to exist if they don't get rid of the invaders.
They don't assimilate, they demand that you adopt their way of life or they'll kill you. Sharia law. The sooner everyone understand this the better. It's not racism BTW, that's bullshit too. This is an idiology, not a race.