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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."
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.
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.
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.
The internet that we want must be open and free and there is also a thing in some places called free speech.
Agreed. Let's talk about it.
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.
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.
it is you're like in you are. stupid
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
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.
They're an ad company that places paid favored links towards the top of their searches, so yes they are a gatekeeper.
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.
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.
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..).
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
They're an ad company that places paid favored links towards the top of their searches, so yes they are a gatekeeper.
Particularly after ending its FCF program, every single one of the websites Google returns in a search can be freely accessed without leave from Google.
Simply installing a huge neon sign pointing to a particular gate does not make one a gatekeeper.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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??
That's like saying you trust dogshit more than you trust horseshit.
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.
I do trust dog shit more than I trust horse shit. But 4chan is far from being either form of shit. The trolls and lulz are all over the place, but that's half the point. There are also plenty of serious boards and posts.
But 4chan is far from being either form of shit.
This is a point that I doubt we'll ever agree on.
... 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
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 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