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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.
Also, they should post conflicting versions of stories and events to help readers make better informed decisions as to whether or not a news item is believable.
The problem with that is that it gives credibility to fake news sites by presenting them as genuine alternatives to reputable sources.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You will note that when no WMDs were ever found, these news outlets in fact reported that. As opposed to some of the alt-right "news sources" who kept peddling bullshit like the uranium claim and Pizzagate long after both had been fully debunked. And that's the difference. Inevitably even the very best journalists are going to get it wrong sometimes, but there's a degree of accountability there as well. Rolling Stone ate a lot of crow after the Rape on Campus story was debunked, and retracted the story. That's what journalists do when they fuck up. But the fringe bloggers on all sides of the political spectrum are not accountable, and seem to completely reject the notion of accountability. They are propagandists through and through.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You should read the book "All the President's Men" - it goes into some detail on what the Washington Post considers a source. It has to be confirmed by at least 3 people who were actually witness to the thing they are trying to source.
Is this perfect? Of course not, but it speaks volumes on why some neckbeard on 4chan should never be a source - ever - for identifying who the shooter was.
But yes - Google is just a news aggregator - ranking news sources who would source 4chan should have never happened really.