Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.