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Google Looks at People As it Pledges To Fight Fake News and 'Offensive' Content (betanews.com)
Google said today it is taking its first attempt to combat the circulation of "fake news" on its search engine. The company is offering new tools that will allow users to report misleading or offensive content, and it also pledged to improve results generated by its algorithm. From a report: While the algorithm tweaks should impact on general search results, the reporting tools have been designed for Google's Autocomplete predictions and Featured Snippets which have been problematic in recent months. Updated algorithms should help to ensure more authoritative pages receive greater prominence, while low-quality content is demoted. Vice president of engineering at Google Search, Ben Gomes, admits that people have been trying to "game" the system -- working against the spirit of the purpose of algorithms -- to push poor-quality content and fake news higher up search results. He says that the problem now is the "spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information."
Great, another self proclaimed judge to "offensive content". I'm sure the automated tools will be great at banning all the bad words.
I find google offensive, now, ban google.
Unfortunately, if real people say things that are false, then it's still real news to report on what that person said. Especially, if we're talking about people of note. Of course what most people are going to see (especially, if they want to believe the statement) is: Important person says, "Dogs can be milked" ==> Dogs can be milked.
The problem isn't fake news. The problem is people not taking an unbiased and well-thought-out view on life.
Sort of like how MSNBC blamed the recent riots in Venezuela entirely on a Trump campaign donation, and made no mention of the rampant starvation or roving death squads supporting the regime?
Yeah... Tell us more about fake news, dipshit.
"Offensive" is not the same sort of thing as "misleading", "false", and "low quality".
Regardless if I think Google can do this effectively and neutrally, I don't think this is the answer. I don't think any service or institution curtailing "fake news" is going to do a good job of it, and even if they do, I don't think it will be effective.
The problem is people actively seeking support to their view and disregarding anything contrary. By filtering results, you are just ensuring those people go elsewhere for their fake news.
I believe that real change on this front will only come from a long-term investment in education. We can't filter everything a person sees, nor should we want to. What we should want is every citizen capable of determining fake news for themselves. We aren't going to change a majority of view's or opinions by marking news fake or filtering it and in fact, I believe it will make the problem worse as people feel their information is being controlled.
People in this country need to have to tools to determine what is fake and what is real on their own. If they don't have those tools and are unable to critically consider facts, then there is no codling that will help them.
Really - the same Google who manipulated their search engine to bury news that were damaging to the Clinton campaign is now promising to protect us from fake news?
Frankly with Google's record of integrity, I don't trust them to decide for me what is fake news.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10