The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence

https://blog.google/products/news/new-google-news-ai-meets-human-intelligence/

by devhxinc • 8 years ago

74 64 8 years ago

ABeeSea• 8 years ago

I hope this fixes the current issues with google news on ios. The app crashes constantly and freezes my phone completely for a good 20-30 seconds until it restarts. This has persisted across multiple iPhone 8’s. Not a fan of the UI of apple news either.

bitmapbrother• 8 years ago

FWIW I've never experienced those issues using Google News on iOS.

notheguyouthink• 8 years ago

Yea... this is the last thing I want. Another massive company (ala Facebook) controlling the feed of information into my brain.

I thought we were trying to get away from that?

fareesh4• 8 years ago

Disappointing to see that it relies on Snopes for "fact checking". Also disappointing to see that what constitutes "quality journalism" is decided by a giant technology company. This is a big step backwards.

remyrylan2• 8 years ago

There's definitely an agenda out there, FB and Google now are both using Snopes for fact-checking. https://steemit.com/health/@holisticgreen/snopes-is-the-auth...

cevn• 8 years ago

The agenda is the garbage article you just posted. I've never seen such a severe case of ad hominem.

mwexler• 8 years ago

Do you have another preferred source? I've actually been quite pleased with my spot checking of Snopes support or refutation on various claims. It may not be truth incarnate, but it seems to do a pretty good job of surfacing a set of verifiable facts when it can.

croon3• 8 years ago

Have any examples of things they've gotten wrong?

fareesh4• 8 years ago

I find that they include their interpretation of a statement when it suits a particular point of view, whereas other times they take things very literally, without a measured reading.

One example is this case: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-compliant-citizenr...

There's also the fact that the team behind the website does not have a stellar reputation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...

nickysielicki2• 8 years ago

I wrote an angry email to a Politifact intern after seeing this article: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/apr/03/...

They rated this article as "pants on fire" for reporting on something that came directly from the mouth of a public official. The politifact intern actually reached out to the official in question and he personally confirmed that he gave the outlet bad information, and yet it retains the rating that insinuates intentional lying and misleading. I think it's infuriating that Google is getting away with giving these institutions an elevated voice. They do not hold an ounce of the journalistic integrity that they claim to and they make little effort to be nonpartisan.

edit: The issue isn't with any particular institution, it's the general problem of any authority claiming to be an objective purveyor of truth and Google giving anyone like that an elevated voice. Even if it's not corrupt now, it's corruptible, and it serves no purpose. People need to come to decisions on their own.

(edit: for the record, I feel it is necessary to say that I do not regularly read this blog, I came across the fellowshipoftheminds.com post as a result of seeing the politifact article on reddit, I do not endorse the site in question)

bbitmaster• 8 years ago

Snopes is very quick to claim things as "False" if it goes against their left leaning lens of the world.

As an example arguments used by pro-gun advocates are marked as false. Here's a specific example:

They falsify a claim that doctors kill more people than guns https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/doctors-kill-more-people-t...

Yet this article linked on hacker news article states that medical error is the third biggest cause of death in the USA. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627213

I used to have many more examples, but the reality is that the facts that they "objectively" check aren't necessarily unbiased.

jadbox• 8 years ago

do you have a source with higher integrity than snopes and factcheck.org?

kevincox• 8 years ago

The thing that gets me about Google news is that the personalization is incredibly coarse. I can see a "17 apps that take great selfies" article and the only way to express disinterest is by removing Android from my interest list. I might dislike an article because the publisher is low quality or I'm not interesting in one aspect of the content but it just picks one "reson" to justify showing the article.

saudioger2• 8 years ago

I believe you can blacklist publishers, which has always been my favorite feature.

combatentropy2• 8 years ago

From the article:

  > We’ve also built easy-to-use and easy-to-access controls
  > so you can decide if you want to see more or less of a topic or publisher.

ehsankia2• 8 years ago

You didn't really answer the problem? The person above was complaining that "17 apps to take a better selfie" is under the "Android" topic. Your only other choice is to block the entire publisher, which may be good if all that publisher posts is similar bad articles, but it's hard for you to know.

A far better way would be to get upvote/downvote per article, and then have the AI figure what your interests are, rather than base it purely on clicks, which tends to favor clickbait.

3steve4• 8 years ago

I don't want personalized news, I use Google News for the exact opposite reason. I want to see semi-random headlines from a variety of source to increase my exposure to stories I might not have seen otherwise.

dmix• 8 years ago

The same interface could easily do both...

ucaetano2• 8 years ago

see semi-random headlines from a variety of source to increase my exposure to stories I might not have seen otherwise

Isn't that exactly personalized news?

But you can just load it on incognito or signed out and not have any personalization other than location/country.

bamboozled• 8 years ago

What a horrible UX, loading it in “Incognito mode”, no.

3steve4• 8 years ago

Personalization does not arise from passive use. Consider the converse, articles from a list of user selected sources. That sounds more like personalized news. Besides Google News used to function that way so I think I should be entitled to my opinion of how it should function.

thankthunk2• 8 years ago

I don't want personalized news, I use Google News for the exact opposite reason.

That's what I used to use google news for too. Then a few years ago, google "personalized" and "localize"d news to your area and it became pointless. Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then. So you could see the difference in coverage between our media and china's media and europe's media and middle east's media of the same event.

Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories. And considering they espouse the same message on pretty much everything, I stopped using google news.

I understand that google was heavily pressured by the news industry to push traffic to major US news sites, but I wish they would have given us the option to opt out of personalization and localization.

What's even more disappointing is that google search was updated to heavily favor local news. So if I search for "North korea news" or "syria news", the search result is ridiculously skewed to US news' perspective. They used to list forums, messageboards, etc on search for international events, but they scrubbed those from the search results.

Social media used to have alternate/external/foreign sources but after US media pressure, they've also "personalized" and localized.

It's amazing how easily the news industry has pressured tech companies into limiting what the public sees and hears.

I wish there was a news aggregate site which had a page per news event where it listed international coverage of the event.

r00fus• 8 years ago

Just look at Wikipedia Current Events [1] or WikiTribune [2] if you want news that's relatively unbiased and current. Google has long since been biased/personalized.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

[2] https://www.wikitribune.com

dragonwriter3• 8 years ago

Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then

I still get international sources (sometimes as the first source on a story , as on the Iran deal right now) on both the Google News & Weather app and the Google News desktop page. Strangely, the new Google News mobile page doesn't as much (and doesn't seem to expand to provide multiple sources for the same story the way it used and the other interfaces still do), and there's little consistency in sources, or even stories selected, between the three interfaces.

adrianmonk• 8 years ago

Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories.

What? This is certainly not my experience.

I just went to news.google.com in my desktop browser, and I clicked on the World section. On the Iran sanctions/deal story, there are several sources grouped together in one card. The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"), Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press.

If I click on "View full coverage", I get more sources, of course.

touristtam• 8 years ago

This is exactly how I feel but I am located in the UK and sources can be really biased on how and what they report. I usually end up consulting several foreign news outlet including what our national media would qualify as not so reputable.

Varcht• 8 years ago

I like(d) the raw news feeds from AP etc. I say liked because they all seem to be disappearing. Just give me a long list of the incoming headlines, I'll filter by scanning, thanks.

3steve4• 8 years ago

I am hesitant about raw news, I think context is at a minimum important. I would much rather read an article published 12-36 hours after the fact that is rich with context and detail. I have blocked CNN from my feeds for this reason, they place a high value on immediacy and I think this heavily degrades their content.

metasaval• 8 years ago

1. I haven't used Google news until today, but I believe that's what the "Headlines" tab at the bottom bar is for. It seems to just show you the major headlines from everywhere, no personalization or AI involved.

2. Every news story has a "Full Coverage" button on the bottom-right that pulls up that same story from a variety of stories, so you can get different perspectives.

I agree that injecting AI and personalization into news is an easy way to put yourself in a bubble, but it seems that Google has at least tried to give users the tools to minimize that.

ehsankia2• 8 years ago

Personalisation isn't inherently bad. For example, I have zero interests in sports, and I don't think I'm putting myself in a "bubble" for not wanting any sport related articles in my feed. I also may have niche interests, such as puzzle games, which a generic feed would never surface.

Where AI gets dangerous is focusing on either a single source, or providing one side of the story, but that's exactly what "Full coverage" attempts to solve as you mention.

jacksmith21006• 8 years ago

Same like Google news does not take sides. But assume it will continue with these changes?

Jyaif• 8 years ago

They address this: some stuff are personalized, but not everything.

"content in Full Coverage is the same for everyone—it’s an unpersonalized view of events from a range of trusted news sources."

Steel_Phoenix• 8 years ago

I agree completely, though I'd be happy for both styles to exist. For semi-random news from a wide variety of sources, I like https://www.memeorandum.com/

forapurpose• 8 years ago

And if you want to support your favorite news sources, we’ve made it simple to subscribe with your Google account. This means no more forms, credit card numbers, or new passwords. And soon, thanks to the new Subscribe with Google platform (launched as a part of the Google News Initiative), you’ll get access to your paid content everywhere—on all platforms and devices, on Google News, Google Search, and on publishers’ own websites.

The upside is that it's a desperately needed solution to funding journalism. Hopefully people can pay per article, making quality journalism better funded and far more available (many people who can afford one article can't afford a year subscription, I assume).

But the cost is far too high: Google knows everything you read, and becomes the gatekeeper for journalism. Yikes. For those not worried, imagine the day when Google ownership/management shifts from the current well-intentioned people to someone else. That day will come.

crazygringo• 8 years ago

All I want is an option to pay $10/mo for news to all sources, and let each publisher receive the proportion of that that my clicks determine.

imh• 8 years ago

Wouldn't that exacerbate clickbait?

gowld7• 8 years ago

That's less than the price of any single news source. Why would they offer that price to you?

MikeGale• 8 years ago

Great for those who want their appreciation of the world micromanaged by an advertising agency. Way to go homo sapiens(?).

LifeLiverTransp• 8 years ago

German here: Recommend the magazine review of the perlentaucher- which is a manual weekly worldwide magazine best-of. Unfortunatly for international readers its in german.

https://www.perlentaucher.de/magazinrundschau/2018-05-08.htm...

The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence

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