Slashdot Mirror
Google News Will Purge Sites Masking Their Country of Origin (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Google moved to strip from its news search results publications that mask their country of origin or intentionally mislead readers, a further step to curb the spread of fake news that has plagued internet companies this year. To appear in Google News results, websites must meet broad criteria set out by the company, including accurately representing their owners or primary purposes. In an update to its guidelines released Friday, the search giant added language stipulating that publications not "engage in coordinated activity to mislead users."
Additionally the new rules read: "This includes, but isn't limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises." A popular tactic for misinformation campaigns is to pose as a credible U.S. news outlet. Russian Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed organization, used that technique to reach an audience of nearly 500,000 people, spread primarily through Twitter accounts, Bloomberg reported earlier.
Additionally the new rules read: "This includes, but isn't limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises." A popular tactic for misinformation campaigns is to pose as a credible U.S. news outlet. Russian Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed organization, used that technique to reach an audience of nearly 500,000 people, spread primarily through Twitter accounts, Bloomberg reported earlier.
This is not rocket science.
"This includes, but isn't limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises." A popular tactic for misinformation campaigns is to pose as a credible U.S. news outlet.
How about 'home grown" internet sites that actually manufacture fake news? One such site was mentioned by our president recently.
Now, to be fair, listen to this clip at the 1:38 mark.
Then you wonder why the ordinary folk fee the way they do, about our media.
Let them do what they want- I won't be using Google News as long as they waste my screen space and my time. Why do they need three columns, two of which are mostly empty, for their presentation? Why do they need, in addition to the three columns, a header and a footer? Why do I only get 4 headlines per page-down, on a page 4 feet long?
Yes Slashdot and many other sites are also guilty. But you might expect Google to be more thoughtful; to offer some design leadership.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I entered the OP text into "Google Translate", here's what I got:
We're making a bunch of private rules which are ill-defined, fuzzy, and overly broad. We're going to couple these with selective enforcement backed by AI algorithms using a high false-positive rate, and use it to remove sites without warning or identifying what specific sections are in violation or what rules are violated.
In that way, Google will strip out all fake news, ensuring that only true and correct news remains.
They already exclude anything to the right of Trotsky.
It's even worse than that.
There are actual published papers, such as this one, that can't tell the difference between fake and real.
The cited paper specifically calls out the infamous spirit cooking article from InfoWars.
The problem is, although that article sparked a torrent of fake claims, everything actually presented in that article was verified. None of the "fakeness" came from the article, only by people repeating the information and adding hyperbole. John Podesta did get an invite, it was a spirit cooking invite, and Abramovic did in fact pose with a bloody goat's head. Nothing to do with Clinton, and Podesta declined the invite.
That article was roundly derided on the internet because it went against the narrative. It's now enshrined as a classic piece of fake news simply because the informations presented were politically motivated and "inconvenient".
It almost seems like we're entering a new age of internet news, where what is considered "fake" is judged by the consensus of likes and dislikes.
Stupid answer: in Soviet Russia, country of origin masks YOU!
Slightly less stupid answer: it won't work. They'll find some flaw, bodge, frig or loophole.
At the bottom of the
This is a very reasonable form of defense (this is information warfare after all) but I hope they coordinate with other sites too. Sure they know a bunch of Twitter accounts point to false/misleading news but will they then automatically alert Twitter so that they can investigate and possibly take down rings of accounts created to mislead or halt the links made by fooled bystanders?
I know this is a dangerous technology because it can be misused but the same could be said about the internet but we still have it. Information warfare is real and we've already been lambasted. It's time to defend ourselves.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Presumably Google AI is now able to read the minds of people posting articles to know their intention they harbor in their hearts with over 98% accuracy. Sometimes even when even the said people are completely unaware of it!
Google will stretch forth its will to censor and arbitrate discourse supported by brainless illiberal leftists
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
Ãzà verÃur Ãtrýmt. JÃrÃin verÃur aà vera hreinsuÃ. allir Ãvinir verÃa eytt.
You should get the Blinkers browser extension. You tell it whether you're a Republican or Democrat and it filters out any sites that might cause you unpleasant cognitive dissonance and only shows you stuff you'll agree with.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
so they're gonna block foxnews, infowars and breitbart? sweet. so i can use google news again. that's great!
Google. Helping you build your liberal echo chamber since 1998, one biased filter at a time.
lucm, indeed.
China owns Pakistan 3 times over
You guys bitch when Google doesn't do anything about the fake news and political hacking
This has never happened. You're the one posting fake news.
lucm, indeed.
Who needs a scapegoat? The responsibility for Trump's election is obvious. A faulty electoral system and an entrenched partisan division that would lead to a pair of space aliens being the leading contenders if they had the proper letter across from their names.
There's no desperation, except by those who are frenetically in denial that their standard-bearer is a corrupt, lying, fraudulent, pompous, charade of a man, and the fact is, we have needed help to sort through the lies, that's why dozens of websites exist for the express purpose of identifying them.
I mean, you could just assume if their lips are moving, that a politician is lying, but then we'd run out of rope.
Speaking of which, they haven't blocked Fox or Brietbart either, that was just the paranoid ranting of a /. AC. You reacted like it had already happened.
Fake news indeed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
so they're gonna block foxnews, infowars and breitbart? sweet. so i can use google news again. that's great!
Google. Helping you build your liberal echo chamber since 1998, one biased filter at a time.
Thanks for your opinion, Ivan.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I never heard anyone telling people to question dogma, only to switch from one dogma to the other.
That's how America worked since the Mason-Dixon line. But recently a few big tech companies and the mainstream media have decided that one of the dogmas didn't deserve to be discussed anymore, discarding the fact that 49% of the population thinks otherwise, and they have used their power to push their agenda.
We need (at least) two points of view. But real ones. You know what I want for Christmas? Politicians who actually represent the values of their party and who go head to head on real issues, instead of having crooks and sociopath paving the way to WWIII in their scheming to get or keep power. Can you imagine having a Sanders / Romney debate? A debate where Sanders doesn't have to pretend he's in favor of unchecked immigration and where Romney doesn't have to pretend that he's opposed to abortion and gay marriage?
But no. Let's keep looking at $50,000 worth of foreign ads in a campaign where Trump/Clinton spend 80 millions and pretend this has changed the outcome, and let's also keep looking at a $2 million donation from Putin's cronies to the Clinton foundation to get a business deal approved by Clinton. As if the world didn't have more important issues to address.
lucm, indeed.
Google, Facebook, Twitter are actively engaged in pro-liberal agendas. CNN, The New York Times and the Washington Post as well.
There is a reason why over the last century or so the first thing that leaders of military coups used to do was to take control of national radio, newspapers and later tv stations. It's because when you control information, you control people.
Yes, there's breitbart and fox news and a few others, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the giant liberal players. I don't know how things are in UK, maybe you can tell us, but here in America there is a de facto liberal monopoly over news, and it's not even difficult to see it.
lucm, indeed.
So deranking search results informs users?
How about going back to been a search engine and not just adding more SJW guidelines.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
the search giant added language stipulating that publications not "engage in coordinated activity to mislead users."
That would get rid of most mainstream media, no?
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
What I do care on the other hand is that fox news is spreading blatant lies. People keep complaining about "fake news" but the reality is one of the biggest purveyor was not the russian (which *maybe* did it for the election) but fox news which does it 365 days/year. They distort most of the time and outright lies sometimes. That may be my scientific training, I can't stand such bullshitter attitude.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Why not let me decide what news is "fake" or fake? Censorship is a very slippery slope, and what starts as a well-meaning effort always ends up getting taken over. Let me inform myself and choose which source can be trusted and which ones need to be tossed out. I realize that Google can choose what sources it puts up on its website, and the criteria does make sense. But where does it stop?
...to support net neutrality. Now that Google is editing the internet it's time to swing the anti trust hammer.
What explains this fetish for the working class? What is the working class?
> You guys bitch when Google doesn't do anything about the fake news and political hacking, and then bitch more about when they do. I'm beginning to think you just like bitching about things.
You are conflating two entirely different groups with two entirely different ideas about how to deal with contrary viewpoints.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Censorship is rarely if ever the answer. The fact that a giant alt left company is doing it does not make it better. The solution to propaganda and disinformation is more accurate, factual information, and historical perspective.
The reason we are in this mess to begin with is the news media degenerated from it's original goal of reporting "Just the facts, mam." to actively shilling for the alt left and the Democrats, often using he said/she said with no underlying facts or background on the parties involved or deeper investigation into the truth.
Thus, about 65% of the country (the 35% alt left don't even notice the echo chamber) have lost confidence in the MSM to give them the truth on any kind of contentious situation or topic. This was a long slide for the MSM, from the rise of talk radio in the 90s through to the foundation of online only outlets like Breitebart and The Drudge Report. At this point, the majority of people in the US spend more hours online than watching TV and it is just a natural extension that they would rather get their news online than listen to the alt left propaganda coming out of the MSM.
Russia is just the latest foreign power to recognize this trend and utilize it to spread their propaganda. People who get their "news" from Facebook or Google are at the same level as those who get it around the water cooler, as it is essentially gossip and not much more. Facebook and Google want it to be more, but until they start to honestly and impartially vet sources across the ideological spectrum, they are nothing more than another alt left gossip rag.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I'm getting loads of of French and Polish spam on my gmail accounts. Go Ogle wants to serve Norwegian ads on my phone when I'm connected on my Wi-FI network. I live 80 miles from the Norwegian border the way bird flies. My landlord is getting the Internet and IP-television from Viasat, a Norwegian company.
For the love of Pete ... we didn't need Russian "fake news" to not want to vote for Hillary. (Nor did most of use even see any, but whatever.)
No, really, we didn't. It's a great story to tell yourself, but we didn't. She was no-votable all by herself. With stuff she really did and said. Really.
Can Google News filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
I don't think so.
Casteism