Eric Schmidt Says Google News Will 'Engineer' Russian Propaganda Out of the Feed (vice.com)

Justin Ling, writing for Motherboard: Eric Schmidt, Executive Chariman of Alphabet, says the company is working to ferret out Russian propaganda from Google News after facing criticism that Kremlin-owned media sites had been given plum placement on the search giant's news and advertising platforms. "We're well aware of this one, and we're working on detecting this kind of scenario you're describing and deranking those kinds of sites," Schmidt said, after being asked why the world's largest search company continued to classify the Russian sites as news. Schmidt, in an interview at the Halifax International Security Forum over the weekend, name-checked two state-owned enterprises. "It's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt added. "We're well aware and we're trying to engineer the systems to prevent it."

Comments

Censorship, plain and simple

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing to "engineer" - this is just censorship.

Re:Censorship, plain and simple

[mccrew]

There is nothing to "engineer" - this is just censorship.

This is a correct observation. But it does get me thinking about some questions:

1. As a private business, Google is in the business of data quality, that is, filtering out spam, link-farmed content, and so on. Is that censorship too? Or is that just maintaining data quality?
2. As a private business - with no first amendment obligations, I might point out - what is their responsibility to facilitate distribution of intentional falsehoods?
3. Does deliberate misinformation and propaganda merit the less / more / same weight as other factual content?
4. A plurality of the average American voter have demonstrated their inability to detect fact from fiction, or even know how easily they are getting played by well funded enemy states that are plotting our demise. Isn't it in our national security interests to combat false data, which is individually hyper-tuned to punch the buttons of each mark's biases, fears, and beliefs?

Re:While your at it

[Hal_Porter]

I'd rather Google just dumbly indexed news sites and didn't try to do editorial control. The problem with labelling sites propaganda and de-indexing them is where would it end. You can actually make a case for de-indexing most news sites

teleSUR - communist state funded propaganda paid for by Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Bolivia

RT, Sputnik - Russian state channels, paid for by Kremlin. Knowingly pushes lies if they suit it

BBC, Guardian - Knowingly push lies if they suit London SJWs. Very biased on BREXIT.

CNN, NYT, Huffington Post - Knowingly push lies if they suit the US Democratic party. Very biased on Trump.

Fox - Knowingly pushes lies if it supports US Republican Party

Breitbart - Used to be an US Republican mouthpiece, was later described by Ben Shapiro as 'Trump's Pravda', now pushes Bannon's odd agenda of 'Trumpism without Trump'. Currently in a quixotic quest to save Roy Moore who Bannon backed but Trump failed to endorse from allegations of paedophilia which most people have concluded are probably not completely baseless. Increasingly hated by establishment Republicans for backing a flawed, unelectable outsider candidate against their man, Luther Strange who was also endorsed by Trump. Hate by all Democrats, who would probably shut it and Fox down if they could.

I.e. pretty much any news site you can find some story they've covered in a very biased way and ended up making fools of themselves. And the Tech Journalism sites are even worse than the normal news ones - everyone knows the people who write for them are bloggers who care even less about journalism than the people who write for 'proper' news sites.