How Climate Change Deniers Rise To the Top in Google Searches (nytimes.com)

If you searched for the words "climate change" into Google, until earlier this week, you could have gotten an unexpected result: ads that call global warming a hoax. "Scientists blast climate alarm," said one that appeared at the top of the search results page during a recent search, pointing to a website, DefyCCC, that asserted: "Nothing has been studied better and found more harmless than anthropogenic CO2 release." Another ad proclaimed: "The Global Warming Hoax -- Why the Science Isn't Settled," linking to a video containing unsupported assertions, including that there is no correlation between rising levels of greenhouse gases and higher global temperatures. These references were first reported by The New York Times (the link may be paywalled). From a report: America's technology giants have come under fire for their role in the spread of fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign, prompting promises from Google and others to crack down on sites that spread disinformation. Less scrutinized has been the way tech companies continue to provide a mass platform for the most extreme sites among those that use false or misleading science to reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Google's search page has become an especially contentious battleground between those who seek to educate the public on the established climate science and those who reject it. Not everyone who uses Google will see climate denial ads in their search results. Google's algorithms use search history and other data to tailor ads to the individual, something that is helping to create a highly partisan internet. A recent search for "climate change" or "global warming" from a Google account linked to a New York Times climate reporter did not return any denial ads. The top results were ads from environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. But when the same reporter searched for those terms using private browsing mode, which helps mask identity information from Google's algorithms, the ad for DefyCCC popped up.
[...] The climate denialist ads are an example of how contrarian groups can use the internet's largest automated advertising systems to their advantage, gaming the system to find a mass platform for false or misleading claims.

Comments

I'm looking for a good alternative to Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking for a good alternative to Slashdot.

Things haven't always been good around here, but I think they're looking bleaker than they have in a long time. Today has been a particularly bad day. We've been subjected to one useless political submission after another.

I think it's almost as bad as during the Slashdot Beta era. But even then, although the Beta web site was shitty, at least the submissions then weren't as obviously biased and political as they tend to be today, and the discussion was tolerable.

There are some other sites out there, but I'm not impressed with them.

Hacker News doesn't cut it. There's far too much censorship there, in my opinion. It's not what I'd consider an open discussion venue. If you don't partake in the established group-think, I think they will attack you and drive you out.

The same goes for Reddit. I find that too many of the subreddits are like Hacker News, with rampant censorship, and the only discussion that is allowed is sterilized drivel.

Don't even bother mentioning Soylent News. It might not be as horrible as Hacker News or Reddit, but I think it's still a joke of a site. Its moderation system is worse than here, and is often abused, based on what I've seen of it. It also often gets submissions on its front page well after they're on the front page here at Slashdot, and Slashdot isn't known for being particularly fast at reporting news! Soylent News is an example of exactly what not to do!

Pipedot is effectively dead at this point, I believe.

Basically what I want is a site that:

* Is focused on technology, science, mathematics, engineering, computing, programming, and relevant stuff like that.
* Allows anonymous commenting, because having to create an account is fucking stupid.
* Has little to no censorship, since the best discussion is free discussion where people don't fear being silenced for expressing their own opinion.
* Doesn't try to work politics into literally everything.

If anyone has any ideas, please let us know!

I don't think that Slashdot can be salvaged, at least not without firing all of the existing editors and replacing them with impartial, apolitical editors who aren't trying to attack President Trump and the Republicans, and who aren't trying to constantly push a leftist agenda.