Another one, courtesy of marcan: https://www.google.com/search?q=what%27s+my+user+agent
Well, sometimes that's my user agent so I guess broken clocks...
Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
41–50 of 192 posts
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#42While hiring a ton of people to fact-check would be one solution, that obviously wouldn't be very scalable. I think the problem lies in google's algorithm. They seem to be pulling answers from well-visited sites that may purport to have an answer to these questions. Quantity of visits does not equate to truthfulness. What Google should at the very least do is whitelist certain publications for answers to pretty simpl…
> will hinder their ability to be a source for gaining knowledge
CAUTION: subjective experience ahead
I feel like in the last few years Google's utility for knowledge discovery has decreased. Instead it seems to be geard more and more to drive you towards purchase and shallow content sites. I think the growing popularity of "awesome" lists and other forms of curated content discovery is also driven in part by Google's lack of "good content" discovery.
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#43This is all mostly because google went from search engine indexing other people's stuff to site that you go to to get answers (whether those answers are based on copyright infringement or not is another matter). A similar thing happens in Google news where stuff from sites like breitbart.com are mixed in with reputable news sources making it look as though they are of a similar degree of quality.
On Google Now, "news" sites like infowars, globalresearch.ca and on reign supreme, unless you manually filter them out. This hoax about "staged" MH17 crash is on my newsfeed why.. oh right "because you displayed interest in Ukrainian conflict". Fair enough then! It is scary how much the default app on Android serves to legitimize the fringe.
It's also on Google Home, and having a voice say the lies makes it even scarier:
https://twitter.com/ruskin147/status/838445095410106368/vide...
edit: I saw now this video lower on the article, I thought it ended on "SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER"
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Google Now, "news" sites like infowars, globalresearch.ca and on reign supreme, unless you manually filter them out. This hoax about "staged" MH17 crash is on my newsfeed why.. oh right "because you displayed interest in Ukrainian conflict". Fair enough then! It is scary how much the default app on Android serves to legitimize the fringe.
It's also on Google Home, and having a voice say the lies makes it even scarier: https://twitter.com/ruskin147/status/838445095410106368/vide... edit: I saw now this video lower on the article, I thought it ended on "SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER"
Yikes.
Google held onto releasing their Chaffeur because of the "uncanny valley" problem, where they thought the tech would do more harm than good in its "sort of working" stage. Perhaps they should have done the same with this.
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is, can you algorithmically determine that breitbart.com and the likes can't be trusted , if they get tons of links, mentions, etc. just like the reputable news sources?
Indeed, and that's the heart of the problem. Something like Google news needs more than just algorithms.
OTOH, that's also a problem, because any editorial choice is politically debatable... I'm afraid there is no easy solution.
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no wizard, but in writing blog articles I've found ways to fool Google into believing me. The problem with their algorithms.... is that all that statistics in the world can't help you when you're listening to a guy telling the truth vs an equally good liar. I can tell you what Google doesn't have, a strong AI. It thinks it knows "facts" but these are merely patterns, and these can be gamed. Because Google still l…
> The problem with their algorithms.... is that all that statistics in the world can't help you when you're listening to a guy telling the truth vs an equally good liar. While that's true for sites in isolation, Google published a paper a few years ago[0] that describes how you could estimate the trustworthiness of a website. The basic idea is you assign a trustworthiness score to each website. Then, you determine ho…
What we seem to be running into, is that any strategy based on trusting some sites and not others breaks when very large groups of sites have opposite opinions. Depending on your starting set you will end up with wildly diverging trust scores
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#47While hiring a ton of people to fact-check would be one solution, that obviously wouldn't be very scalable. I think the problem lies in google's algorithm. They seem to be pulling answers from well-visited sites that may purport to have an answer to these questions. Quantity of visits does not equate to truthfulness. What Google should at the very least do is whitelist certain publications for answers to pretty simpl…
I'm no wizard, but in writing blog articles I've found ways to fool Google into believing me. The problem with their algorithms.... is that all that statistics in the world can't help you when you're listening to a guy telling the truth vs an equally good liar. I can tell you what Google doesn't have, a strong AI. It thinks it knows "facts" but these are merely patterns, and these can be gamed. Because Google still l…
Gaming Googles image search is a popular activity on some subreddits. Basically telling people to upvote a picture of something with a misleading title. Like if you search for images of "gaming console", a picture of a potato will appear. It is very clear that their "AI" is not that clever yet.
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#48This is all mostly because google went from search engine indexing other people's stuff to site that you go to to get answers (whether those answers are based on copyright infringement or not is another matter). A similar thing happens in Google news where stuff from sites like breitbart.com are mixed in with reputable news sources making it look as though they are of a similar degree of quality.
Problem is, can you algorithmically determine that breitbart.com and the likes can't be trusted , if they get tons of links, mentions, etc. just like the reputable news sources?
Maybe all linkers shouldn't be treated as equal. Random FB/Twitter posts reveal interest in the topic, but not accuracy of the article. But I assumed Google was accounting for this already.
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#49While hiring a ton of people to fact-check would be one solution, that obviously wouldn't be very scalable. I think the problem lies in google's algorithm. They seem to be pulling answers from well-visited sites that may purport to have an answer to these questions. Quantity of visits does not equate to truthfulness. What Google should at the very least do is whitelist certain publications for answers to pretty simpl…
Metrics are destroying the web. Once upon a time it was possible to identify "good" pages by how often they were linked - effectively crowd-sourcing the problem. Natural selection: sites have learned to manipulate the game and the crowd. Under pressure to optimize metrics that lead to SEO and better valuations, the internet is getting less useful from a user perspective. I don't want to watch a video/slideshow, downl…
Metrics are destroying lots of departments in lots of companies. Everyone seems to fixate on the analytics for this week or maybe this quarter, there is little or no attempt to understand the why or think long term. So many companies have cut back severely on the sorts of risky investments they used to make regularly, because the data is being conflated with reality
Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
#50Calorie counts are another that google often gets wrong. Try "Calories in corn" or "calories in black beans."