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."

Comments

Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[sjbe]

Google said today it is taking its first attempt to combat the circulation of "fake news" on its search engine.

That should be easy. Just delete anything said or tweeted by Donald Trump. Viola, less fake news.

Re:Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[ganjadude]

better off banning slate, salon, msnbc, foxnews, cnn, breitbart. that would clean up a good 80% of fake news

Re: Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[Anonymous Coward]

Have leftists ever thought about why so many average people are turning away from so-called "mainstream" news sources, and instead choosing to get their news from alternate sources?

Yes, over three hundred years ago:

Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believâ(TM)d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceivâ(TM)d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effectâ¦

Seriously, look at your own recitation and find the lies and falsehoods in them. There are plenty.

And yours aren't even new. The anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party was preaching its hysteria before the American Civil War. Civil War secessionists built their cause on a house of lies. Anti-Indian, Anti-Irish, Anti-Chinese, Anti-German, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Russian sentiment was similarly fostered with fraud.

The question you should ask, is why you think leftists don't know, while you seemingly demonstrate great depths ignorance yourself.

Or rather, you should answer it.

Re:Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[Nethemas the Great]

Anyone can gin up nonsense to fit a curve. That's what fake news largely is. The biggest error I see in most mainstream media is the assumption that details and context can be omitted. It is far easier to digest a simpleton falsehood compared to reality when the audience lacks the foundational information to understand it. You cannot communicate the complexities and nuance of reality in 30 second sound bites.

Re: Aka "The Trump Muzzle"

[imnobody]

You are full of s***. Your argument boils down to "I am right. But I can't bother to explain why. Anyone who wants to know that I am right can investigate for himself" (add some smugness).

This is an unfalsifiable statement. If somebody says something different (such as GP's comment), you only say: "Oh, he's so wrong. Of course I can't bother explaining why. Google it".

Maybe GP's comment is completely wrong. But you can't win the argument by default. GP's comment gave some assertions and you can dispute that with arguments, logic and links. You are not God to say "They are wrong because I say so."

It's no wonder that you love traditional news sources. They are the same as you. "Trust us", "Everybody else is fake news". The same smugness as Rachel Maddow saying Trump could not win in any way https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

These traditional sources were the same media that told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We only had to trust them. The same way we have to trust you because. ... because... because.... Ok, just because.

But I love offensive content!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think I'm on the fucking internet in the first place?

Users can report?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's a democratic process to determine what news is fake? Ah yes, the "if we all agree it's not true then it isn't" method of understanding the universe.

Let's go burn down the observatory so this can never happen again!

Re:Users can report?

[Nethemas the Great]

Google is in a tight spot. If they rank things by purely objective algorithms, they'll be accused of leftist censorship. If they democratize things, there's at least a notion of openness with a hopeful prospect of balance and counterbalance to ensure moderate outcomes.

Re:Users can report?

[Penguinisto]

Instead of an objective algorithm, how about a transparent one? Post it (or them) publicly for all to see, so that there can be no allegations of bias (assuming the algorithm(s) is(are) not biased.)

Do No Evil

[110010001000]

They are the leaders.

Better idea

[OYAHHH]

Google needs to quit pretending and just limit it's search results to NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

That would fix it.

Google is evil right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect so, and I don't trust Google, or, Alphabet.

I never asked for censorship on the internet. And an algorithm? A freaking experiment on society.

Re:Google is evil right?

[jonow]

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.

Slipery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Real people saying fake things

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

*licks finger, sticks it in the air*

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Offensive today?

This is bullshit

[JWW]

Either all speech is protected or none of it is.

Re:This is bullshit

[doconnor]

Google is exercising its right to free speech by not including fake news in its news search.

Re:This is bullshit

[GuB-42]

Fake news publishers are still protected, they have every right to publish it.

Not everywhere. Among "free countries", Europe tend to put much more limits on free speech than the US.
For example, in France and Germany, it is almost impossible to talk about the Nazis in a way that isn't approved by the state. You can get condemned for defamation even if you speak the truth. In some cases, insults are outlawed too, and they can lead to prison sentences if they are racial in nature. In general, "hate speech" is considered a serious offense.

Re:This is bullshit

[Gravis Zero]

Either all speech is protected or none of it is.

Caveats of threats of violence aside, your speech is protected because you have conflated freedom of speech with freedom from consequences of said speech. If you read the actual U.S. constitution then you will notice it's protecting you from the government. There is nothing that says you are free from the consequences of what you say from other people.

Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The underlying problem is Google is supposed to be a *search engine* It's supposed to show you where to find stuff on the internet. At some point in time they decided to complete with Ask Jeeves and become an "answer engine." Good luck with that.
 

Re:Truth

[Blue Stone]

It is insightful and about sums up the issue.

I think a lot of this has to do with (excuse me while I silently vomit as I say this) 'thought leaders' - (or in proper terms) 'influential people' deciding that Google should or shouldn't offer up - from politicians to the heads of certain political, social, or other advocacy groups.

In so far as Google intends to placate these concerns, it's up shit creek if it just wants to return actual valid results that aren't influenced by such concerns. That ship has sailed. It has become too big and so must 'reflect society's values'.

Unless it's a little crafty.

All it has to do is create a seperate domain for unfiltered results that operate as old Google did (I know, nothing is unfiltered/unbiased) and let the politicans and media mouths have their sanitised Google results, while anyone who wants real(er) results bookmarks rawfeed.google.com, or whatever.

Re:Truth

[swillden]

The underlying problem is Google is supposed to be a *search engine* It's supposed to show you where to find stuff on the internet. At some point in time they decided to complete with Ask Jeeves and become an "answer engine." Good luck with that.

It has always been an answer engine, and that's the reason it became popular.

Back in the day (mid 90s) most everyone was certain that search engines could never be very useful. Lycos, Altavista, etc. weren't terrible, but they also weren't very good, because although they could effectively spider the whole web that just meant that any search matched thousands or millions of pages, and they had no way to determine which of those were the best answers for the query. The "smart money" was betting on Yahoo!'s approach of manually curating enormous lists of links.

Then Larry Page's pagerank algorithm found an excellent (not perfect, but excellent) way to figure out which of all of those answers were likely to be the best ones. That insight launched Google. It took off precisely because it provided better answers, rather than just returning a list of everything that was on the Internet. A list of everything on the Internet is not useful.

Re:Truth

[AthanasiusKircher]

While I guess you have a point that Pagerank was designed to deliver better results, so were all other "search engines" of the time. Pagerank was just a better algorithm than others. But by your definition all search engines back then were "answer engines," since they all were trying to rank results somehow.

The thing is: back then Google's algorithms were still based on terms actually found in the searched pages. Hence, it was still a search engine. The ranking may have been tweaked, but you were still searching for actual text and actual search terms.

Somewhere around 2005 or so, it became possible for Google to serve up top hits that no longer contained the literal search terms. At that point it ceased to be a "pure" search engine and became about trying to guess what you wanted rather than just retrieving pages with your text. As the years went by, Google deprecated and screwed up the plus operator, increasingly screwed up verbatim search until it became nonfunctional for people who just want a literal search, and incorporated "personalization" to serve up pages more like other pages you've viewed, rather than what you literally asked for.

Google hasn't been a functional search engine in about a decade.

Re:Truth

[swillden]

Google hasn't been a functional search engine in about a decade.

Perhaps by your very narrow definition. But it's vastly better than it was at finding what people are looking for, which is what they always wanted, regardless of terminology.

However, it's *not* as good at "keyword regexp bingo" as it used to be. But if you're still trying to use those old-style queries, you're doing it wrong. Try typing complete natural language questions for what you want to find. I find this works amazingly well, even on obscure technical topics which include lots of "keywords" which are heavily overloaded in other contexts.

One of these things is not like the others.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Offensive" is not the same sort of thing as "misleading", "false", and "low quality".

Google Search Manipulation

[AnalogDiehard]

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.

Google isn't as important as they think they are

[zerofoo]

Does Google really think that Salon, Infowars and Breitbart readers are getting to those sites via Google? I'm sure some do, but I'll bet most go right to their site of choice.

In our world of ideological teamism - the players have picked their sides and I'm willing to bet that Google had very little to do with their choice.

Yay! Leftist indoctrination for everyone!

[Chas]

Fuck that noise.

Freedom of speech. It's for everyone, not just those who agree with you.

Re:I guess Truth == Troll for the Right

[goose-incarnated]

It's not "an effective fake-news filter", because it would allow things like "It's illegal to read wikileaks" to be viewed while filtering away "Stem illegal immigration" as 'racism'.

It's the Ministry of Truth, not a filter for facts.