Google Executives Are Floating a Plan To Fight Fake News on Facebook and Twitter (qz.com)

Fake news, bots, and propaganda were hot topics at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last month, and Google executives there floated an intriguing idea to some fellow attendees -- what if the company could tell users whether information is trustworthy before they shared it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter? From a report: Representatives from Google and its parent company Alphabet eagerly discussed how the company can play a greater role in reducing misleading information online, several Davos attendees involved in and briefed on these conversations told Quartz. A notification system, perhaps via an optional extension for Google's Chrome browser, was an idea that these people said was broached more than once. Such a browser-based system controlled by Google could alert users on Facebook's or Twitter's websites when they're seeing or sharing a link deemed to be false or untrustworthy. Right now, this appears to be merely an idea company executives are discussing, not a product in development.

Comments

Re: wow

[ranton]

All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.

They had said there was no public evidence supporting this claim, and until October of 2017 that was a true statement. In October a Washington post article showed that while it was originally funded in 2015 by Republican donors, the Clinton campaign began funding the research in 2016 as opposition research.

Within 24 hours of the Washington post article, and other corroborating research from CNN and Fox News, Snopes updated their information on the topic. This is what good fact checking looks like.

source of information for people on both sides

[Geoffrey.landis]

While it's true not everything is black and white, the problem with sites like politifact is, after reviewing the facts, the final judgment of their meter is still subjective.

I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.

I've seen evidence of bias in their final judgments before, but the coffin nail for their objective credibility was, for me, when they rated Michele Obama's statement "slaves built the White House", as a very positive "Mostly True". Their own research concluded that slaves were used to quarry the raw stone that was used to form the bricks of the building, which were further cut, refined, and placed by skilled masons. Slaves also did much of the white washing at the end. However, the rest of the labor were freemen, white and black, as well as European contractors: Architects designed the building. Masons carved and fitted the bricks (probably the bulk of the building aspect). Carpenters built much of the structure as well. Glass, marble, and tile workers did their thing. Skilled labor collectively did most of the building, yet her statement excludes them in totality.

OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.)

So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.

Equating the quarrying of stone to "building the white house" is like claiming that Home Depot built your house, because that's where you got your building supplies from. Or claiming the people who painted your house built it. Her declaration was also slightly misleading in that the White House did not force anyone to directly work for free, the gov't paid for everything - the question is whether slave owners who got paid bothered to share it with the slaves or not. From what I can gather, some did, though I doubt their slaves had any say in whether they wanted to do the job or not!

and your source for this is.... Politifact.

In any case, the picture comes across as the country forcing slaves to build the White House, and without compensation, much like how we used to believe the pyramids were built. This is simply inaccurate and should have rated a Mostly False or maybe a Partly True at best.
So my judgment is, no, they do not do a good enough job when it comes to the bottom line, they let their bias affect their final score.

Interestingly, they have an article discussing the objections to their rating of "true" for that story.

Re: wow

[DNS-and-BIND]

Negative. Fusion GPS was contacted by a GOP member for Opp research. The Steele Dossier was separate. The media / DNC are pushing that narrative, but itâ(TM)s flat out wrong. The GOP didnâ(TM)t ask for the Steele Dossier, they asked for separate Opposition Research. The DNC / HRC campaign started the Steele Dossier.