As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/technology/google-search-bias-claims.html

by mcone • 9 years ago

83 78 9 years ago

trendia• 9 years ago

By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly:

1) Much of their content is original (i.e. not copy-pasted from other sites)

2) A majority of the page is composed of text, rather than images or ads

3) Where there are ads, they are minimal and largely hidden from view.

4) Their website is well organized, with clear and descriptive links.

5) Their website is updated frequently and new content is posted regularly.

So, assuming that WSWS is linked by other sites on the same topic, it seems that it should rank highly in Google search queries. Maybe there is something else that would reduce their ranking, but it doesn't seem obvious to me at first glance.

skj2• 9 years ago

None of those things you mentioned are the core of page rank; they're just extra heuristics. None of that matters if they don't get linked by other sites with high page rank.

SerLava• 9 years ago

Page Rank is essentially deprecated and those other heuristics are more impactful than they were when people still talked about Page Rank a lot.

colechristensen3• 9 years ago

Spot-checking, and I agree, this doesn't at all seem to be "fake news". Much like the actual communists that I've known, I find myself disagreeing with the opinions, priorities, and judgements, but it doesn't seem to be misleading or mischaracterizing the truth.

avn2109• 9 years ago

The thing about "fake news" is that nobody can agree on an objective definition of what it is. So people just train their models on controversial pages and hope for the best.

Torai• 9 years ago

By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)

I also could have my nuances with some things said there. But I don't think there is so big of an ideological breach among people if the debate is proposed from a pragmatic and resolutive standpoint. Wouldn't many of us agree that a government should control or manage some resources and give free land for innovation in others? Couldn't we debate about what would be the most efficient way to organize a public governing body, area by area, and how?

jankotek3• 9 years ago

from a purely algorithmic standpoint

You could use the same argument on any extremist site.

Algorithm can parse content. It probably has list of bullshit related keywords. Just the title:

Marxist analysis, international working class struggles & the fight for socialism

uoaei• 9 years ago

How are these 'bullshit'?

thriftwy3• 9 years ago

Extremist is the tag that Putin bolts on every opinion he doesn't like, so now I may assume you are a putinist.

magicalist• 9 years ago

However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly

But why? None of those things are reasons to link to it for any particular terms, just reasons not to not link to it.

nl• 9 years ago

from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly

I think there is a causality error here. Traditionally things which meet those criteria have been ranked highly, but not because of those things. Rather, those things have been easy to detect and have correlated well with quality search rankings.

But that doesn't mean that they are (or should) be the only signals a ranking algorithm can use. I'd argue that a hypothetical AI search engine would do a lot more verification of content as part of the ranking process. It is absolutely true that this remains challenging at the moment (verifiable implies truth after all), but the point remains.

Animats2• 9 years ago

Google isn't doing very well on "socialist". One of the "Top Stories" is WorldNet Daily: "Chilling! Left on brink of socialist victory in U.S. 'We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity' Published: 6 days ago" That's not even fake news. That's like news from an alternate universe in which Bernie Sanders won.

vkou2• 9 years ago

Sanders? Surely, with a headline like that, you must mean Karl Marx, with his recently exhumed running mate, Joseph Stalin.

pjc502• 9 years ago

I get www.worldsocialism.org at position 4 underneath wikipedia and the dictionary sites. The ""news"" boxes have Bloomberg and the Daily Express, both of which are a bit detached from reality, talking about Corbyn.

I think this tells us (a) results differ from person to person - we knew that, but it means we can't see what's being shown to others and how bad it might be; and (b) "socialist" is mostly used as a swear word these days.

Animats2• 9 years ago

I'm running Firefox in private mode with Ghostery enabled, so all Google is getting is my IP address. Try it that way.

Jerry2• 9 years ago

I think we're close to 1984 world and thought control... but coming from tech giants like Facebook and Google.

oh_sigh• 9 years ago

If our thought is controlled, it is only because we allow it.

wallace_f2• 9 years ago

Ever once in a while I link someone or mentioned what is in articles such as these, below, and I rarely find people believe it until they read it in name-brand media. Maybe I am wrong but from 9/11 to the Snowden leaks to now it feels like we are on some accelerated path towards 1984 where conspiracy theories are becoming reality.

For example: the US gov actively influences movies and TV scripts for propaganda purposes: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-...

Another: US Gov created an incredibly false narrative about Iraq to set the stage for the War on Terror. https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up...

DoD spent millions researching how to manipulate Twitter users: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-n...

We need more decentralized power in media, not less.

vkou2• 9 years ago

None of these adventures are anything new. The US government had been responsible for blatant propaganda in film and print, lied about causes of wars, and spied on, sabotaged, suppressed, and manipulated domestic political movements for decades. This has been happening since the Red Scare gave the ruling classes something to lose sleep over.

jules• 9 years ago

In my experience of telling people these things, there is only a nanosecond between a person saying "that's ridiculous, that can't possibly be true" and saying "of course that's happening, who ever thought otherwise?".

bad_user2• 9 years ago

1984 is very unrealistic. I personally found it boring.

People should study what happened in the Easter European countries from the Warsaw Pact, like Romania.

The interesting thing about our former communists and their security apparatus was that they did not need high tech gadgets, video cameras or online social networks to keep tabs on everybody, you simply need an army an informers. And in a society where people want to be more equal than others, you'll find plenty of people that want to be informers, on every street, in any apartment building, in any group, people that will betray their friends and colleagues for free.

Plenty of unrealistic things in the 1984 novel actually. "Newspeak" for example doesn't need to happen because of a government mandate to ban words. Oh no, there's no need for that. Language simply gets stupid over time, as the public discourse simply becomes "wooden language", from the French "langue de bois", as a natural consequence of having uneducated people in charge yielding unlimited power and controlling the media.

The threat is actually not Facebook or Google, but rather the people, which are guilty of normalizing behavior that should not be normalized ;-)

adrian_b• 9 years ago

I agree with these observations. Unfortunately the people who lived all their lives in North America and Western Europe are very naive about what the communist societies really were and they are not aware that during the last 25 years their countries have evolved continuously, becoming every year more and more similar to the former communist countries. This refers not only to surveillance, censorship and loss of rights, but also to the creation of quasi-monopolies in almost every domain. Most people seem not to realize that communism was not different from capitalism, but it was the worst form of capitalism, where everything was done by a monopoly.

tobylane• 9 years ago

1984 was about a government doing it to us and we are aware. Huxley's A Brave New World was about capitalism doing it to us and we're unaware. It's a heavily underused better fitting reference.

52-6F-622• 9 years ago

I think your comment is underrated, and hopefully doesn't go unnoticed. You aren't the first one to say it, either.

As a whole the experience people are trying to explain is far closer to A Brave New World. The US government isn't doing this. (though it's currently trying to with Trump's "Real News"[0] and constant dismissal of heritage journalism outlets)

This is the after effects of being sedated and corralled and along the path to the end-game of saturated materialism, if it's anything at all.

I'm not so convinced. I think both Orwell and Huxley were brilliant guys, but they had nowhere near the full picture. Present reality is far too complex to tie it up in a little bow and designate an overarching bad guy.

---

[0] https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/videos/1015958429599572...

perlpimp• 9 years ago

Imo these filter blocks are problematic. Maybe google can flag the content with a visual cue instead of participating in censorship. I remember in high school we had a class 'critical thinking', wonder if it is still is taught and whether it is so in other places of education. People should filter content or at least be helped to instead of hering people away from 'harmful' topic. Behind fake news idea there is an elephant in the room - feeble minds, perhaps this is the real problem.

this goes without saying google should promote higher quality content regardless and spammy content should be rated as such.

dalbasal• 9 years ago

Feeble minds is a defeatist characterisation, and unhelpful.

People have the cognitive attributes that they do. We think in narratives. Our political thinking mode is entirely dominated by identity, whether ideological, ethnic or whatever. We prefer confirmation. etc. etc. We just aren’t scientific thinking machines. That’s why scientific methods are designed as they are. They strictly avoid the way people normally come to conclusions, even (especially) intellectual heavyweights that have dedicated their lives to rationality. Take away the scientific checks (e.g., the double blindness of experiments), and even the most robust minds are feeble in this sense.

The actual mechanisms of culture are too complex to understand, but components of culture and group behaviour can be understood well enough to steer things into certain directions.

The underlying problem (IMO) is that FB, Google and others are the only ones in position to play a role they do not want to play. In the past we had “trusted” publications, who had editors and such. We had softer institutions like “journalism,” the culture and methods associated with the profession. These had power, cultural force. None of these were anywhere near perfect (or even decent), but they did have some ability to distinguish between “popular” and “good”.

They don’t as much anymore. Google & FB do. They don’t want the job. We don’t really want them to have the job. Something new needs to emerge, and I don’t think that something is a more robust human brain.

ThomPete• 9 years ago

Fake news isnt done to convince you about a poltical opinion its mostly done to get you to click the link or share it and through that make money on advertising. Judging it on some truth parameter is absurd instead it should be judged on its advertising strategy IMO.

bad_user2• 9 years ago

Also, people should appreciate that fighting fake news hurts Google's bottom line in the short run.

I guess in the long run they are better off with legitimate traffic, since scamy websites and shitty ads are the reason for why many people now install ad blockers. But it's actually rare to see a company thinking ahead of the next quarter.

islon• 9 years ago

Google has often said that it cannot reveal too much or people would use that information to try to game the rankings

Isn't this the same "security by obscurity" argument?

factsaresacred2• 9 years ago

No. Security by obscurity is relying on opaqueness instead of using an alternative and better defense.

For Google to protect it's ranking algorithms, non-disclosure and the legal right to proprietary knowledge is the best defense. It's not obscure, it's private.

factsaresacred2• 9 years ago

"Google said it had added more detailed examples of problematic pages into the guidelines"

'Problematic'. There's that word, again. The news need not even be 'fake' anymore. Simply 'problematic' will do.

Here's Mark Zuckerberg not long ago:

While the amount of problematic content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue.

Problematic to whom, one wonders? The loser? Those who feel most aggrieved? This is little more than an attempt to sanitize information so that all that remains is the pre-approved 'least problematic' truth (fact-checked, of course).

Hillary Clinton, with much irony and little self-awareness, summed up the intent behind this move in her latest book:

“Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism....This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. “The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves”.

So the message is clear: Trust us, you dolts. We know best.

ZeroGravitas7• 9 years ago

If you don't know what "problematic" means you could just look it up in a dictionary.

adjective: constituting or presenting a problem

Or are the "word-checkers" in on the big conspiracy too?

sumfag3• 9 years ago

Maybe you're missing the big picture here. Ever read 1984 or look into George Orwell's history? These books were written as a warning of this type of censorship and Orwell himself was targeted by the CIA and FBI for some of these thoughts. Thought-police comes to mind.

Ever heard of the Polish Pink Files? How about the Stasi? In every instance where this type of policing happens, it leads to major disaster.

The snide comment was cute but totally unwarranted, as conspiracies do occur.

lmm• 9 years ago

It's a hidden way of using the passive voice, and bad for the same reasons: it (deliberately) blurs the distinction between "someone might have a problem with this" and "I have a problem with this".

eighthnate2• 9 years ago

You are being facetious. Problematic is subjective.

Here is a simple comparison. Jews are problematic to nazis. Nazis are problematic to jews.

Feminism is problematic to chauvanists. Chauvanists are problematic to feminist.

You see the problem with problematic right?

dang2• 9 years ago

Would you please not post snarky, unsubstantive comments here? They break the site guidelines and degrade discussion below the level we're hoping for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

yostrovs• 9 years ago

It really is amazing how dangerously wrong her interpretation of 1984 is. I doubt she read it recently, so that must have been her view of the whole book all the while she wanted to be president.

spdustin5• 9 years ago

Problematic to whom?

Readers who seek a factual account of an event.

Why is this so subjective, and why are people so riled up in these threads? News should be objectively true. If it isn't, it should be clearly flagged as opinion, or struck entirely as fiction, i.e. fake.

probably_wrong• 9 years ago

There's a line of thinking that claims that 'true' objectivity is impossible, because even choosing what to speak about (or not) involves a degree of subjectivity.

This idea was taken to the extreme with outlets like Fox News, and I think we are witnessing a counter-move in the opposite direction as a result. Once the pendulum swings enough in that direction, and 'legitimate' news start being censored, the GP comment will probably feel a lot more relevant.

pjc502• 9 years ago

The problem is not so much factual/nonfactual content as the opinion and contextualisation, as well as the choice of stories. You can generally tell the stuff that's at least trying to be an objective report because it's syndicated AP/newswire content and is substantially identical across the different news sites.

But there's no real boundary between that and the opinion.

e.g. opinion: http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/26/tucker-carlson-battles...

news: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/09/27/mortar-rounds-land-a...

(both items selected from the Fox front page above the fold at time of writing)

The simple act of deciding what is and is not "newsworthy" is not objective and cannot be made objective. So truly objective news is impossible.

eighthnate2• 9 years ago

Readers who seek a factual account of an event.

"Factual"? You do realize that "events" have many different sides to the story right?

Why is this so subjective

Because life is subjective and life is complicated.

How about this? There is a lgbt protest in saudi arabia. The saudi arabian news says "Police stopped anti-islamic protest that offends muslims". Should that "factual" story be the only one allowed?

It is factual right?

If it isn't, it should be clearly flagged as opinion, or struck entirely as fiction, i.e. fake.

By whose standard? Who decides it's fake? You?

So if the western media said "Saudi authorities attack peaceful lgbt protesters", then the saudis are right to block it as "fake" news right? Because it isn't "factual" right?

If the story is fake, then expose the fakeness rather than banning it. It's better that people openly expose fake news.

jochung• 9 years ago

If the issue is truthfulness, then they should complain about that instead of labeling things as "problematic". The word is terminally underspecified, and its usage should be avoided for that reason.

The fact that it's so popular is a sign people using it are not used to articulating their objections concretely, which is a red flag.

the6threplicant• 9 years ago

Remember when the right wing groups were up in arms about the censoring of non-liberal news by the news moderators and FB had to reorganise the whole team.

Now we know the so-called liberal bias was that they were censoring all the (mostly) right wing fake news stories coming from the Russian backed troll teams.

sumfag3• 9 years ago

Russian backed troll teams Is there any hard evidence whatsoever that this is the case, and may you point me to it? I'm fully aware that Russians never "hacked the election" as many news outlets will have us believe (low confidence from the intelligence community, the previous president, and others) but I would believe that claim with hard evidence.

52-6F-622• 9 years ago

Your comment is going way off the general subject of the conversation, but I thought I'd oblige.

If it's your confidence in the IC, and the previous admin, judging by your comments you might not be opposed to written testaments from the current administration's DHS Cyber Division: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/06/21/written-testimony-ia-cyb...

---

Further context:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/22/electronic-voting-state-ha...

( And in case you resent the "liberal" media: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-informs-21-states-they-were... )

gldalmaso• 9 years ago

IMO, I think that there's a more troubling problem brewing behind the scenes.

I believe Google increasingly doesn't understand their own outputs. This is also true of products other than search like youtube related content and ads.

They have put so many eggs in the AI basket they're not really sure if the eggs are being made into omelet or boiled or pidan.

It's a kind of Algorithmic Dissociative Disorder.

Digit-Al• 9 years ago

I seems to me that Google are 'damned if they do, and damned if they don't'.

They get loads of stick for linking to fake news, but if they try to do something about it they get loads of stick for 'trying to control what we see'.

The biggest culprit in the spreading of fake news is ourselves. The number of times I see friends spreading stories on Facebook that smell false on first viewing, and can be shown to be false with a 20 second Google search is amazing.

Nobody can be arsed to spend a tiny bit of time fact checking and when you call them out on it they just shrug and give the feeble 'just in case' excuse.

pgnas• 9 years ago

I recall Eric Schmidts remark in a meeting with Charlie Rose back in 2005:

"When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do, well, that is a bug. We should be able to give you the right answer. We should know what you meant."

What is "right" or "wrong" (or problematic) today will more than likely later be proved the opposite.

This is censorship. It doesn't matter what the meaning of problematic is.

We are headed into a digital dark age.

As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm

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