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Google and Facebook Failed Us (theatlantic.com)
The world's most powerful information gatekeepers neglected their duties in Las Vegas. Again. From a report: In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet. But they did not do so by themselves: They used the infrastructure that Google and Facebook and YouTube have built to achieve wide distribution. These companies are the most powerful information gatekeepers that the world has ever known, and yet they refuse to take responsibility for their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public. BuzzFeed's Ryan Broderick found that Google's "top stories" results surfaced 4chan forum posts about a man that right-wing amateur sleuths had incorrectly identified as the Las Vegas shooter. 4chan is a known source not just of racism, but hoaxes and deliberate misinformation. In any list a human might make of sites to exclude from being labeled as "news," 4chan would be near the very top. [...] Of course, it is not just Google. On Facebook, a simple search for "Las Vegas" yields a Group called "Las Vegas Shooting /Massacre," which sprung up after the shooting and already has more than 5,000 members. The group is run by Jonathan Lee Riches, who gained notoriety by filing 3,000 frivolous lawsuits while serving a 10 year prison sentence after being convicted for stealing money by impersonating people whose bank credentials had been phished. Now, he calls himself an "investigative journalist" with Infowars, though there is no indication he's been published on the site, and given that he also lists himself as a former male underwear model at Victoria's Secret, a former nuclear scientist at Chernobyl, and a former bodyguard at Buckingham Palace, his work history may not be reliable. The problems with surfacing this man's group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. But to Facebook's algorithms, it's just a fast-growing group with an engaged community.
You blame Google and facebook for bringing up results from 4chan? Google isn't the problem here, it's 4chan.
This is the way free information works... most of it is crap. You can't have a system where it is possible for people to post unverified stories about life behind a dictatorial regime that is also moderated.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No thanks, I don't want to live in China.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
These companies are the most powerful information gatekeepers...
(Emphasis added)
This is what is commonly referred to as a flawed assumption. Everything that proceeds after it is therefore suspect.
It isn't incumbent upon Google or Facebook to separate fact from fiction, never mind deal in shades of grey. It isn't their job to think for us, and anyone who thinks so, clearly isn't thinking. ;)
If it's all the same to you, I'd really rather not entrust censorship to Google, Facebook or any entity.
Perhaps people can stop being so fucking gullible instead?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
We're not their customers. We're their PRODUCT.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
4chan is a known source not just of racism, but hoaxes and deliberate misinformation.
And dick pics.
These companies are the most powerful information gatekeepers that the world has ever known
I don't use either of those companies products, because i do not WANT "information gatekeepers" on the internet. I want to decide what information I have access to for myself, thank you very much.
If we build the mechanisms of censorship into the internet they WILL are ARE being abused for purposes less noble. People may not criticism the king. They may not publish information embarrassing to the regime. They may not blaspheme. No... I do not need you or anyone deciding for me what I may see and say.
That way lies madness. The internet was supposed to be free, not a controlled corporate playground. Freedom is messy and it can be ugly, but it sure beats the alternative.
Google and Facebook shouldn't be GateKeeping anything.
If your too stupid to know #FakeNews when you see it, then you deserve what you get.
But seriously asking them to filter is like asking guys in brown shirts to burn books, we all know what comes next.
sing along.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
It's not even limited to Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al.
The momentary news cycle is leading to the rush-to-publish, with the inevitable errors. When you measure the news cycle by minutes or even less, you will get this. Somehow lamenting that we are not getting accurate, to the second valid reporting is not a symptom, it is THE problem.
Learn to let go. Let a story be reported with valid, accurate facts, which may take up to an hour, God forbid. Accept that initially you will get only general statements, conflicting facts, and confusion, and be willing to let a comprehensive report be delivered when it can be accurate, not merely FIRST.
This has afflicted CNN and FOX for decades, lest anyone forgets, and they have been trolled mercilessly in some high-profile cases. The second-tier networks have been abused even more, deservedly so. If you are looking for a sub-minute lead on some other network, you will make terrible mistakes.
This also highlights our distraction by celebrity and horror. We have to, HAVE TO KNOW NOW what happened and WHY WHY WHY.
No, we do not. Waiting for accuracy will not diminish the importance of the event, and will not diminish your experience, unless you revel in the agony of others.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Because it's cheaper than investing in a strong public education system!
I remember when /. used to be an awesome site. A posting like this is an example of how /. has failed us. The internet that we want must be open and free and there is also a thing in some places called free speech. Even though you may not like or agree with what people have to say, they have a right to say it just as you have a right not to listen to it.
The alternative is to have one or two media companies just shovel feed us shit. I will take what we have over that any day.
The moral of this post is not to rant about free speech, but to rant about this article. Just because the delivery method of a message is the internet doesn't make it news for nerds.
The problem with filtering is it can become a form a censorship. Blaming Google or Facebook or any other social conduit is blaming these entities for something they are not responsible for. The real problem is people believing everything they read and see, and relying on these social conduits for accurate news.
I don't use Facebook or twitter anymore, I never really liked them but I had to try it of couse, but once you had found your old classmates, had a party, discovered that you had notning in common, I really disliked most people when they were on facebook, or at least the facebook version of them.
I feel like these social media platforms encourage people to be narcissistic assholes. Being a genuinely good person of value to your surroundings and local community are of no value, unless of course that you are ready, camera in hand to document it all.
What matters are being the loudest voice, the biggest victim, the most outraged couch potato.
I don't feel like it enhances anything that's good about humanity but amplifies all that is bad for a healthy community. It's the way that content are rated by likes and that people are in their own filter bubble of reality.
4chan is a known source of [news that others won't cover].
4chan has managed to be right more than they've been wrong. They're not bound by narrative like many gatekeepers - which frees them to crowdsource media-unfriendly facts.
That alone shows something wrong with the media and its bias. If Buzzfeed has a problem with 4chan, that's their problem and nobody else's.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
The more people click on an article, the higher it ranks. If people won't be so stupid to read things from 4chan, it would never show in the results.
Don't try to make Google to do your censoring.
If you really want a censored internet, then publish an Edit Decision List for it, a.k.a. moderation, a.k.a. RBL, a.k.a. boycott list.
If your list has value, then other people will use it.
Why wouldn't Google provide us with the informational safe space, something like what they provide for their employees on campus?
Social media aren't there to suppress anything about human nature. They can only exacerbate and accelerate it. Unfortunately some of it is bad.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
When everyone read newspapers and had the same 3 main channels for the evening news, the level of understanding of the world was somewhat better. You can make the point—and it's a fair point—that our curated news stream also robbed us of knowing things that the powers-that-be didn't want us to know. But in general, the news that was reported was the news that actually happened.
We have precious few trusted sources now, and part of the problem is that Google represents itself—or at the very least doesn't try to disabuse people of the notion—that they're a way to search for knowledge and truth, and so people take Google at face value when it returns results, and the people that would like to undermine the news for whatever reason (their own gain, their own amusement) know it and they game the system.
It's not censorship to mark sources like 4Chan as of dubious value. Yes, yes, people should be less gullible, but who's teaching them to be less gullible, and what damage can be done before they learn?
Perhaps the real problem is that Google has too much trust and authority, and too much ability to control the news. Or that Facebook is many people's main source of news on any given day, and that too is subject to exploitation. It's impossible for the government to regulate companies like Facebook and Google effectively; not only do I not think the government would do a bad job of it, the value of those companies comes exactly from the massive network effects that lead to this fake news problem in the first place.
Better to let Google and Facebook try and find some way to indicate that a news source is probably untrustworthy than let governments in the world do it. And they WILL do it if the corporations don't.
and given that he also lists himself as a former male underwear model at Victoria's Secret, a former nuclear scientist at Chernobyl, and a former bodyguard at Buckingham Palace, his work history may not be reliable.
Which is satire. The more disturbing thing is that Buzzfeed thinks that those were meant to be factual statements.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Much of the fake news was carried on Cat5 ethernet cable and over Wi-Fi.
Thus, Cat5 and Wi-Fi have failed us again! When will we learn???
You demanded instant information, and this is what you get. It isn't Google or Facebook's fault, it is yours-- for wanting to know things instantly while details are still foggy and people who want to make a name for themselves or spread an agenda can dominate with their canned story.
You want Facebook to help-- get them to brand people as "unreliable" or "has difficulty separating facts from fantasy" or "lacks critical thinking skills." But don't complain when you mistake data for information and bear the brand as well.
Google is not a gatekeeper, you fucking retard.
The power they have, which you so obviously covet, is an unfortunate side-effect of their popularity. It is not a feature, it is the failure of their competition.
Is anyone else a little bothered by the idea that the government needs to "do something" about inaccurate news? As much as the line that "censorship means the government does it, not private corporations" has some kernel of truth, this seems to very quickly lead the way to a system where the government forces the corporations to do the censoring, with the former retaining deniability and the latter squashing more and more "fake" opinions in an attempt to keep up with nebulous demands.
i have a baaaaaaad feeling about this.
All this FUD is not gonna end well. Soon they will start choosing websites we can visit and block others. Oh wait, never mind - they did that already.
Guys, it's time to start looking at this "mis-information" bullocks for exactly what it is: A buzz word - pun intended - for them to control the narrative and start restricting the internet.
should have been the title
Censorship is good, as long as only the "bad" stories are censored? Good luck keeping that pandora's box in check...
Use your head. If news seems fantastic and outrageous, it probably is. If news seems reasonable, remember that everyone has a limited perspective and the story has inevitably been told from some writer's or editor's point of view.
Informational noise has existed since people began sharing information. The Internet has made sharing information easier--that is all. There is quite literally nothing new to see here.
No, Facebook and Google did what they do .. successfully sell ads.
Facebook isn't a news source, it's an ad company. And while Google does try to have a news section, if the stories are picked by algorithms based on current events, how it is to know if the stories are hoaxes?
But as Zuckernuts likes to point out, Facebook isn't a news site.
You want news? Click on what you know to be reputable news sources, and understand that not all "news sources" are worth a damn in terms of factual reporting. Some days, Al Jazeera provides more facts than Fox. Ideally, look at several different sources to make sure you're not getting too much damned spin.
The problem is, people want their news tailored to their own stupidity, so Trump and his followers think Fox is a good source of news, and anything which doesn't reinforce their own beliefs is clearly fake.
Know what failed us? An educational system which has produced so many people with a stunning lack of critical reasoning skills.
Google and Facebook are corporations who exist to make money for their shareholders. Companies do not own the public any sort of loyalty, quite the opposite, companies are supposed to exploit the public to make money. Political and social loyalties do not figure into it all.
Corporations exist at the will of the state, the state serves the people. If people want the nature of corporations to change then it is with the will of the people. But right now corporations are nothing but exploitive money making machines.
Instead of relying on some kind of algorithm to magically figure out what's true, how about teaching people to fact check and apply critical thinking skills?
Those arguing that "gatekeepers" failed you, should be careful what you ignorantly accuse and demand from information providers.
Especially when you're rather busy protesting censorship and promoting free speech.
I find it amusing that this was posted here, with no mention whatsoever about how hard Slashdot failed us as well during the same period. It was so pwned by low-uid posters with pro-Russian (and only incidentally pro-Trump) posts that I had to quit reading. Anything sensible got modded down to oblivion, and the only way you even knew it ever existed at all was if a Russian ridiculing it got modded +5 insightful.
Previous elections I really relied on /. for good well-reasoned statements of positions on both sides. The paid Russian trolls this time around made it completely useless.
It's clear this article is all about pushing censorship. Google should be returning all relevant results, not censoring the internet to push a particular message.
It's likely Google themselves didn't know what was going on, so they couldn't effectively filter information. Even the mainstream media frequently reports incorrect information on breaking news stories while the situation clarifies itself.
Censorship is never good. If the government could censor information so that only 'the truth' was reported, you'd have found all the videos of Spanish police beating the hell out of Catalonian voters would have quickly disappeared from the internet.
Censorship can never be tolerated.
Yes Google and Facebook are to blame but let's not forget who's fault this really is. Donald Trump, Obama, Democrats, Republicans, and of course the Russians. If it were up to me Hillary Clinton would be in jail for this.
You may as well hang yourself.
news at 11
It turns out news should be handled by the professionals (or at least skilled amerateurs) and not by a mob of people? But then again the professionals have also failed us. Look it, here's the atlantic telling us how social media has failed us as a news outlet. Is that really news when there's a mass shooting that just happened?
This just in, the super volcano in yellow stone park has erupted. Let's go to twitter to see what internet celebrities are saying about it.
And while we're on the subject. I'm incredibly frustrated by the "real" news talking about what President Trump says on twitter. Yeah, I get it. This is the first time that a President of the United States has ranted on the internet. But really, after the first week or so of "Isn't that weird, he's yelling about things in 160 characters or less" can't we move onto something else that's news. There's a lot of it going on. Even some of it that involves President Trump. Many major news agencies indicate a disdain for the President, but they lying. This is the best thing that's happened for their careers since the printing press and they're milking it for all it's worth.
Because I don't see one, unless the problem is that some people want to kill other people.
That is the only problem. Not Facebook, not Google, not 4chan, not guns. All those other "problems" are only stomping around the real one. They are distractions, derail attempts.
The Atlantic doesn't give a shit about news or impartiality. They sell news and opinion via various media and are upset that the barriers to entry in their chosen field have been lowered by Google and Facebook and 4Chan.
This horse left the barn a long time ago. Anyone can report news in real-time thanks to their smartphone.
The Atlantic isn't really upset about Google and Facebook - they are upset that anyone can report news and can broadcast an opinion of that news to the entire world.
The high-priests of media aren't happy about this and there is nothing they can do about it.
Mencken wrote, “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” which is often misquoted as No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The latter may be more accurate, however. My guess is a lot of people believe anything they read or hear in conversation, regardless of its source, else, how do the American people make many of the decisions they do which includes electing some of the folks in public office.
Like many said or implied, we have to distrust our information sources. With that in mind, I can easily imagine why a magazine like The Atlantic would be against unfiltered information, in favor of its idea of intellectual, curated content/editorials (I imagine they would at the same time be upset if they didn't show up in search results..).
he calls himself an "investigative journalist" with Infowars, though there is no indication he's been published on the site, and given that he also lists himself as a former male underwear model at Victoria's Secret, a former nuclear scientist at Chernobyl, and a former bodyguard at Buckingham Palace
Crap, that asshole stole my identity.
If only the news media had policies in place to make sure they verify and fact check information before hastily regurgitating shit that gets posted on 4chan.
OMG a free service that I don't pay 1 cent for, FAILED ME. I'm going on a moral crusade to make right this horrible wrongdoing!
We'll make great pets
Blaming Google and Facebook for other people's lies is like blaming the builder of a perfectly good road for car accidents. Stop whining for censorship, O Atlantic, or it will come back to bite your ass!
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
People who pay to get their information verified, who are willing wait for the verification to be done, get accurate information. They read smudges of ink and dye on dead tree mashed to pulp.
Sadly people like you not willing to pay for accurate information is why newspapers are dying.
You are responsible for the rise of fake news purveyors. You are not protecting and nurturing your tomato plants. Your garden is now overrun with weeds. Why blame others for it?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem is that people accept everything as the Truth until proven otherwise and even then, some people will refuse to believe the truth because it doesn't fit into their World view.
I see and hear a lot of things that I don't like, but I have to accept them. And as I get more information, I change my opinions. And it's unfortunate in this society that people who do what I do are called "flip floppers."
I'd say slow on the uptake but more like brain dead for a decade or so.
If you looked at a Facebook group or a post from 4-chan without a critical eye, you have failed yourself. Any noise spewed by idiots will be soon washed away by intelligent rebuttal. If the noise sticks around, it may be that the science isn't really all that settled after all. The answers to bad information is not censorship. It is good information with supporting evidence.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
This is what is commonly referred to as a flawed assumption. Everything that proceeds after it is therefore suspect.
I think this is a very reasonable assumption. Yes, Google and Facebook aren't strict gatekeepers as in traditional media, but the way it ranks search results, and the way users rarely get past one or two pages worth of results, it effectively makes it into a gatekeeper. That powerful influence allows them to direct focus and attention similarly to news editors of old.
Null route 4chan, that will keep it off the surface web but still allow the loons their little playground.
The problem isn't Facebook or Google themselves -- it's how people use them. People with an agenda of any kind love this new world of instant communication because their views can have just as much weight as anyone else's, including what most people would consider mainstream. I'm of the opinion that this brings out the worst in people, and the anonymity of the Internet makes it even worse because people don't feel typical societal pressures to behave nicely.
For ages, society operated on a more or less even keel because fringe opinions were marginalized and information didn't spread across the entire country in seconds. Before TV, it wasn't well known that FDR had polio and was confined to a wheelchair, for example...try running for President with a condition like that today, in a world where every syllable coming out of political figures and every muscle movement they make is tracked 24/7 by multiple news sources. Even after TV, there were only a few news sources and newspapers of record covering goings-on, and by and large the public didn't get a front-row seat to see "how the sausage is made." For example, it baffles me when I hear that people are surprised that political corruption exists. It's been going on forever, and it was just well-hidden from the public. The only time anyone ever got to see anything was when it got too big to keep under wraps. Everyone in public office from the lowest town councilman to the Senate accepts direct bribes and other favors; just because it's easier to uncover now doesn't mean it didn't happen.
That's what I think will eventually bring us down...the constant infighting generated by the ability for anyone to craft an official looking "article" on social media that is specifically targeted to anger a certain group. We're already fragmented as it is and social media makes it worse. For example, I'm a lefty who thinks gun control is a bad idea for the simple reason that it will give every gun nut out there free reign to post their paranoid anti-government fantasies and start a redneck revolution. We have to find some way to keep the peace in a world where it's so easy to upset it.
This seems to be the same ages-old call for censorship that authoritarian scum always do when they think they can get away with. The pattern is always the same: Use an event that sparks public outrage and then suggest that certain people using their free speech rights are responsible for the event or something closely connected to it. The authoritarians hope to create a general feeling that free speech is not something everybody has a right to and that is subject to what people will say using this right. This is of course just one thing, thinly disguised: The removal of free speech by trying to establish the censorship that authoritarians are so in love with.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
As bad as the MSM may seem at times, at least they have a semi-reputation to protect, and are usually more accurate than "news-by-likes".
Table-ized A.I.
More guns, more violence.
More guns, more suicide.
More guns, more dead cops.
More guns, more dead kids.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and...
When a car company makes a dangerous product, they get sued by the victims.
When gun manufacturers and dealers do the same they need to be held similarly accountable.
A free market solution.
Buzzfeed.
Why would anyone consider information from ANY Social Media site trustworthy ?
Google and Facebook are designed as information gathering . . . er . . ENTERTAINMENT platforms, not news.
If you're relying on such platforms for accurate information, it's not Google or Facebook that is failing, it's you.
Do we really want the likes of Google and Facebook to be curators of information? They are like the phone system - the phone company does not prevent people from making false statements on the phone. If we expect Google and Facebook to do that, we give them the power to tell us what is true and what is not - and we relinquish our individual ability to decide for ourselves. Better that we have deep distrust for Google and Facebook.
The person who write the bullshit about Google and Facebook's "duty" is so deeply wrong that I think it's important that we all call him out, shame him, and make him feel like shit for doing his part to spread bullshit and make the world a worse place. He's just as bad as the 4chan trolls, except that he's also taking the position of righteousness and trying to use their lies to advance his lies. Let's get this jerk.
Those ad companies don't have a duty as "information gatekeepers." You, the reader, now have that duty. We have been voting, as a society, over the last two decades to fire all "information gatekeepers." If someone tries to be a gatekeeper, we have decided that we want to financially starve them to death. This is what we have been doing, and training Google, Facebook, and a thousand other media/ad companies to comply with. If the ad companies deviate and start acting gatekeepery, we will punish them. And when I say "we" I don't mean some little group of people-like-me; I mean over 95% of the adult population in the US. My friends, my foes, the right, the left: we all have rejected the idea of gatekeeper as being supremely intolerable. It's one of the few issues where we have unity.
We want raw data, and we decide which of it is information.
This is so deep within us now, that even other cultures see it and use it (e.g. Russians buy ads to persuade Americans how to vote).
This is all a consequence of freedom of speech, and it is good because it means if someone were to try to suppress the truth by censoring gatekeepers, it wouldn't work. If you don't like what this set of values has accomplished, then go get a time machine and move to 1970s East Germany.
You should be teaching people to see through noise, check things, etc. instead of bitching about noise. The signal can't be stopped, but we can develop our skepticism. Foster critical thought, and denouce dogma when you catch someone spreading it. Like, for example, the douchebag who wrote TFA.
Google, Facebook: keep selling ads. It's what you're for. It's the only thing we expect from you. Why else would you visit Facebook's website, if not for the ads? They don't have anything else to offer.
Onto the essense of the problem. I'm going to single out one sentence because it's where the author best explained his stupidity, openly for you to see:
Dear fuckit: ever watch a sitcom? Was it irresponsible for TV to let the characters like Archie Bunker, Frank Berns, etc have lines? Or did they provide humorous counter-point to common sense, as examples of how peoples' thinking failed, leaving them with their gullability in full charge of their personality?
That scumbag you're talking about, fills that very same role. The problem isn't that someone might read Jonathan Lee Riches or hear Archie Bunker's lines, it's that they might think "that's what I heard!" You're afraid that some people are thinking like our president talks. Well, if that's true, then you think whacking one mole is going to address the problem of peoples' gullability?!? You are talking about millions of people. You can't silence them all. You have to fight them head on, with debunking, fostering skepticism, demystifying, etc.
Fucking TEACH, dammit!
Dole Office Clerk: Occupation?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher.
Dole Office Clerk: What?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension.
Dole Office Clerk: Oh, a *bullshit* artist!
Comicus: *Grumble*...
Dole Office Clerk: Did you bullshit last week?
Comicus: No.
Dole Office Clerk: Did you *try* to bullshit last week?
Comicus: Yes!
The fucking summary links to a single fucking article which itself links to some fucking twitter.com post with a screenshot that has a Google "top story" about some dipshit that some other dipshits thought was the shooter. The "top story" had nothing to do with the actual shooting but only with the dipshit suspected by other dispshits as being the shooter. WTF?
Now, he calls himself an "investigative journalist" with Infowars, though there is no indication he's been published on the site, and given that he also lists himself as a former male underwear model at Victoria's Secret, a former nuclear scientist at Chernobyl, and a former bodyguard at Buckingham Palace, his work history may not be reliable. The problems with surfacing this man's group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human.
Wait, how is this guy's Facebook account and group different than any other Facebook account/group?
...At people from Buzzfeed complaining about fake news.
Swamped by trying to be relevant with rumors alone.
CNN once reported the gunman fired so many bullets they set off the smoke detector which pin pointed his location. I never heard another report of the smoke detector.
Searching it one gets 230K results today, down from 800K yesterday. las vegas shooting smoke detectors = https://www.washingtonpost.com...
not to censor anything, but to highlight entities that have developed a track record of being reliable while remaining totally optional for the user.
I use such a system when I download from the Pirate Bay, I use it when I order things from eBay. I even use a variation when I read comments here on /.
It would not be perfect of course, but would simply be another tool in the arsenal to be used alongside common sense. Or not.
Errm, would being published at Infowars speak for or against his credibility? Infowars is the QVC for right wing conspiracy nuts after all.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The man is a violent, crazy lunatic. He spreads hateful propaganda that inspires people to perform these horrible acts of violence. Somebody has to stop him.
Please enter your US Internet User ID. Your post will be unviewable until it's verified as non-fake by our algorithm.
In the mean time, would you like to buy some cheap MASS MURDERS on Amazon?
95% of what you read on the internet is completely made up.
-- Henry Ford.
And 10% is about the Kardashians.
-- Bertrand Russel.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How is this problem of Google or Facebook, or even of 4chan? It's the problem of the users who are just not mature enough for these technologies, who are not capable of distinguishing solid, verifiable, non-sensationalist news from all the crap that constantly floats out there. The "fake news" phenomenon is a laughable excuse for stupid people without a shred of critical thinking abilities, who are willing to believe anything they're told.
What, did Google and Facebook somehow forgo an opportunity to advertise to their users??
If you want validated searches, you are going to have to pay people.
But who are you going to trust to be biased the way you want it?
Whomever wrote this summary has a fundamental misunderstanding of what Google and Facebook are doing.
Google, for example, strives to steer you to information that is RELEVANT and TIMELY, not necessarily ACCURATE.
Neither company is claiming journalistic credentials.
4chan is a known source not just of racism, but hoaxes and deliberate misinformation. In any list a human might make of sites to exclude from being labeled as "news," 4chan would be near the very top
I trust 4chan far more than I trust BuzzFeed.
The problem we run into is that we've made it so easy for folks to get information, it appears that the common person can not differentiate between the tabloid story and the scientific article other than the number of pictures. When you get sites like Drudge that conflate the two along with total junk stories you get folks that say and believe things like "I go to Drudge because I get a good mix of different news outlets because I click on links that point me to all of the news sources."
People just aren't good at critical thinking unless it has everything to do with what they are engaged in at the moment. People feel they are forced to have an answer on everything because if they don't, their peer will "google it" next to them and then have the answer, which in a social setting makes folks uncomfortable. Everyone wants to have the most succinct and correct answer.
Its a hard fight against ourselves as humans. Its a hard fight because what is right for mom and her gossip circles isn't right for dad and his hunting buddies, and none of them should be talking about climate change. Sometimes one wants to look at nonsense, sometimes one wants to look at a full bore technical peer reviewed article. When grandma is reading them all like they have the same weight, while she feels smarter, she is now most likely in favor of whatever she just read.
Google and Facebook's normal results are fine, but when they decided to get into the "News" business, that is the key-word that dictates they should be following the rules we came up with a long time ago due to this exact problem.
-Arzaboa
Back in the day, tech journalists were people who knew tech. Many were dabblers in coding. Even the worst of them usually knew enough to understand that a computer isn't a magic box.
Nowadays, tech journalists are usually just writers who like gadgets and who discovered that there's money to be made writing about tech. They have no background in computer science or information theory. They have virtually no understanding about what makes any of it tick, the problem space, or the solution space. So they write about how twitter should get the Nazis off their platform. And how Facebook needs to fix its fake news problem. And how google should filter results better to provide more truthful stories.
Because they don't understand technology, they write incensed articles complaining about these technology problems. The reality is that what we are seeing are social problems. And all of these problems existed before any of these companies existed. Sadly, I see some tech people starting to agree with these misguided assessments claiming technology failures. But I am heartened to see the slashdot community commentary here pretty firmly grounded in reality.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
We're the product.
I went on 4chan when my girlfriend mentioned the shooting. Yes there was a lot of rubbish. But 4chan was naming the shooter hours before the msm. My girlfriend was blown away by this, but this is why I go there. Somehow, through all the bullshit on that site, I know I can get a better coverage of things from there than I can from sources owned by, and edited in the interest of the super wealthy. 4chan is no more evil than the average person in our society, and I'm sure, far less evil than those who rule over us.
It only took you fifteen years to catch up with the rest of us. Please don't expect us to be impressed.
But because it is highly profitable from ad revenue and convenient because "RSS is so hard," both you millenial dumbasses and peer pressured generation X & Y made it this way. The ability to roll ones eyes at news and switch the channel died about 16 years ago. Now that everyone's hearts bleed at EVERYTHING, Google and Facefarm both realize they can twists the world in any fashion they wanted given how much they make people feel like they have to use Google and have a Facefarm account. And because of this pressure, they are able to use news to bring in most of their revenue, especially the civil rights and tragic ones ($$$). Governments took notice and now they will never go bankrupt or just fadeaway. They have a platform that can be utilized easily to a huge mass of people.
... I don't use facebook as a news source. Girlfriend uses it as a source of funny cats though - perhaps theyre fake?
I use google to search for stuff - but not as a source of news. I have newspapers for that. Some online now, not wasting so much paper. But google was never a newspaper.
Well of COURSE, google, twitter, fakebook, the national media would "get it wrong". They are always hoping a few things when there is something like this that happens. 1. It's a white male 2. He's Republican 3. He's a member of the NRA 4. He voted for (insert name of any republican president) 5. He's a member of the KKK. If the person is black, other minority, or a moslem...it's DROPPED. THIS is the problem with "instant" so called news. The so called news station, in the effort to obtain an "exclusive" are more concerned about being first, that being right, ESPECIALLY if it means the above 1-6 are into play. Journalism has been dead for a LONG time.
Rumours, misinformation and lies have existed long before Google and Facebook. It's almost like... we need to learn to be skeptical of things we are told, especially for events that just took place, and not believe everything we read. I, for one, would definitely prefer that over big tech choosing what we do and do not see.
Speaking of skepticism, the unnecessary use of words and phrases like of "right-wing" and "racism", as well as referencing sources like BuzzFeed, such as in this article, makes me skeptical, because they tend to indicate ideology, which tends to hold bias. Same as using "left-wing" or "SJW", or sourcing from InfoWars and Breitbart. No idea if that affects this specific article, but I wouldn't feel comfortable giving this article credence without additional research.
... Google and Facebook did not fail people. Ass-holes at the Atlantic and Buzzfeed, that think Google and Facebook need to think for us, failed us.Google and Facebook did not fail people. Ass-holes at the Atlantic and Buzzfeed, that think Google and Facebook need to think for us, failed us.
IMHO it's the dying old-media flaming their competition.
A Free Press doesn't work by each outlet covering everything accurately and without bias, sorting TRUTH from Fake News, and serving as an omniscient gatekeeper which decides what the population needs to hear.
A Free Press works by many, competing, unregulated outlets each covering what they want to cover, reporting it with their particular biases, filters, and attempts at accuracy, and each member of the public making their own choices on which to believe and which to patronize.
For centuries we've had such media - word-of-mouth, minstrels story-telling news, movable type printing presses enabling pamphleteers, etc. - and people understanding they must do their own sorting of truth from rumor, bias (self-serving or otherwise), propaganda, delusion, and other chaff. Then we had a period of several generations where the cost of printing presses and broadcast networks, along with regulations on broadcast licensing and economic fallout from it, has progressively concentrated the news media into the hands of a tiny number of players with a reasonably consistent bias.
Now we have the (still reasonably) unrestricted Internet dropping the barriers to entry. So we're back to the explosion of different viewpoints, augmented by the exposure of the biases of the old mainstream media by unfiltered coverage. The honeymoon is over and we've been shocked at the bias exhibited by the mainstream media. We're back to "drinking from the firehose" and making our own judgements of what to believe.
This has reduced the mainstream media from the only team in town to just one small cluster in the mob of biased sources. That impacted their revenue. They're trying to get their market back, and one way to do that is to "sell" their particular set of filters as a service - and try to convince everyone that it's better than any of the alternatives.
Of course, when a breaking event IS breaking, there's a flood of rumor. The rush to fill a demand for information and to "scoop" the competition leads to a flurry of under-vetted reportage, much of it in error. And with ALL sources available to the users of the Internet, there's plenty of errors to chose from.
So it's a golden opportunity for the old and dying media outlets to point to the most egregious falsehoods in the flood and claim that ALL the alternatives to THEIR filtering are as bad.
Thus the Atlantic article, flaming Google (which started as an indexer of ALL the content of the Internet and still claims to be mostly that) for not refusing to index any report that doesn't fit THEIR OWN set of filters, and implying that any such indexer SHOULD join a de-facto conspiracy to hide such competing outlets from public view.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Fuck centralization
Are you anti-free market and profitability?
Hoaxes are relevant, I want Google to give me the most relevant results - I'm the human, my role is to tell fact from fiction. All I want from Facebook are connections to friends and family. I don't want these giant companies claiming to give me the truth, I don't want their truth, I don't want anything from them as a source.
Google, Facebook, YouTube did not fail us and they don't need to change. We have failed ourselves because we ate to lazy to look at all the information to determine what is true. There is no good list of news providers, because even the mainstream media is wrong and biased (out right lies, half truthes, personal biases). Masking trees companies the gatekeepers would be censorship and against free-Speech. Don't give up our freedom because people are too lazy to do the research what is true or not.
Censorship at any level is BAD......
Google and Facebook are not responsible to anyone except for themselves. This is a stupid topic.
It is not just Google, Facebook or another, it is also all the great and well stablished media who can "create" some "unreal" news in some way. Just your inteligence and degree of analysis, which you need to develop, will save you of these kind of "info-bugs".
"Google and Facebook Failed Us" Really? Are you a stockholder? Are they losing your money? Because that's the only duty they have as corporations other than to not break the law. They have no higher moral calling. If you want that, I recommend you watch more NFL.
...and Gargle
Did Google fail in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I don't want them acting as gatekeepers. Stop asking them to directly control the search results.
You lost me at "BuzzFeed".