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Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

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Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#81

Post by tomjen3 »

DaUR wrote: post #77

Google wants to avoid editorializing, and be able to throw their hands up and say "not our fault!" due to the plausible deniability of "algorithms". They can't pull that off anymore. There needs to be a shift towards a Web-of-Trust-like system, where some sources are recognized as authoritative. Government websites, like the CDC, for example. Big media outlets. Scientific associations (IPCC, APA, etc). Not all inform…

That wouldn't work when somebody leaks something that is true but the cia denies (as an example).

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#82

Post by maxerickson »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #76

Yikes. More of this "People only want to be told what to do" stuff. I can easily think of a dozen political questions for which no simple answer would be correct -- the language is simply too fuzzy. For many, many things, this is a good idea. The date of Easter is the date of Easter. But the glaring danger here is that for many things this is a freaking evil dystopian nightmare. Why? Because Google will keep tweaking…

The date of Easter depends on which calendar you use. The second largest christian church uses a different calendar than the largest one.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#83

Post by DaUR »

tomjen3 wrote: post #81
DaUR wrote: post #77

Google wants to avoid editorializing, and be able to throw their hands up and say "not our fault!" due to the plausible deniability of "algorithms". They can't pull that off anymore. There needs to be a shift towards a Web-of-Trust-like system, where some sources are recognized as authoritative. Government websites, like the CDC, for example. Big media outlets. Scientific associations (IPCC, APA, etc). Not all inform…

That wouldn't work when somebody leaks something that is true but the cia denies (as an example).

There's a difference between "government sources" for hard facts (CDC), facts about the world (e.g. DoJ travel warnings, CIA factbook, DoE energy savings tips), for facts about the government (e.g. for Trump's EO, the suggested snippet would be to the text of the EO), and claims from the government. These are easily distinguished.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#85

Post by scandox »

maxerickson wrote: post #82
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #76

Yikes. More of this "People only want to be told what to do" stuff. I can easily think of a dozen political questions for which no simple answer would be correct -- the language is simply too fuzzy. For many, many things, this is a good idea. The date of Easter is the date of Easter. But the glaring danger here is that for many things this is a freaking evil dystopian nightmare. Why? Because Google will keep tweaking…

The date of Easter depends on which calendar you use. The second largest christian church uses a different calendar than the largest one.

Yes he stumbled into a particularly thorny theological matter there. The Quartodecimans are going to hunt him down.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#86

Post by DanielBMarkham »

maxerickson wrote: post #82
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #76

Yikes. More of this "People only want to be told what to do" stuff. I can easily think of a dozen political questions for which no simple answer would be correct -- the language is simply too fuzzy. For many, many things, this is a good idea. The date of Easter is the date of Easter. But the glaring danger here is that for many things this is a freaking evil dystopian nightmare. Why? Because Google will keep tweaking…

The date of Easter depends on which calendar you use. The second largest christian church uses a different calendar than the largest one.

It's a great point. It shows how easy it is for somebody to think wow, that question obviously has a clear answer when the opposite is true.

Take the lead example: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK?

We know the KKK said he was. We know he vigorously denied it. We know that biographers of him and experts in his history do not think he was.

But how could you ever prove that somebody was not the member of a secret society? The entire purpose of secret societies is that the outside world will never know if you're a member or not.

Look, I'm happy to assume he wasn't, and at some point only kooks continue to chase things down past all reason, but just assume for a second that he was, and that somehow that fact could be determined but the research has not been done yet. So history student X starts wondering about it one day and types the question into Google. Never fear! Google has the answer: he wasn't. And this is Google's answer because this answer has the benefit of looking the most plausible to the greatest number of people. Student X has an answer, gives it no more thought, and wanders off to think about other matters.

Student X is now more stupid. The world as a whole is now less productive. And some preponderance of data that academics have assembled somewhere around the year 2015 has become truth for all time. That's amazingly fucked up, Google. Please stop.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#87

Post by nommm-nommm »

elcapitan wrote: post #67
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #50

Calorie counts are another that google often gets wrong. Try "Calories in corn" or "calories in black beans."

Strange. Would imagine that's something that could be obtained from the wikidata api or a similar resource. Is it usually to high or low? I regularly use those info boxes for quick calories information.

Calorie information varies wildly between different sites, I have no idea who to believe.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#88

Post by interpol_p »

TuringTest wrote: post #51

Why is it that hard for engineers to rely on good old attribution? If every Google's featured snippet started its reply with "Breitbart says..." or "Trent Online, the leading Internet Newspaper in Nigeria said...", it wouldn't matter so much for those inevitable cases when the reply is taken straight from a white-supremacist or radical anarchist forum. The problem comes when the same reply is provided as "Google's tr…

Prepending the source won't stop people from giving weight to the answer. Because it's the first and only one.

You would probably risk giving more credibility to sites like Breitbart by crediting them with the top result, as people will come to associate those site names with answers given "by Google."

If Google gives you a top search result, it means Google trusts that result to be a good one. There's no getting around the fact that people trust Google to give them good information, and Google's algorithms are failing to provide trustworthy information.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#89

Post by driverdan »

varjag wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #4

This 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.

I don't see any of that garbage.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#90

Post by amarant »

TuringTest wrote: post #75
askmike wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because prepending that doesn't solve the problem Google wants to solve: once Google figures out that you typed in a question, they want to give you the answer to your question. Not tell you what other people think the answer is. (I agree that it is broken in a lot of cases now, but prepending that is a very bad workaround).

> once Google figures out that you typed in a question, they want to give you the answer to your question And that's the problem that the article rightfully denounces. Having the answer to every question is not something that you can automate, not without strong AI. > Prepending that is a very bad workaround I strongly disagree; for me it's a very sensible thing to do - and in fact is how we do it in a social context…

They do always append a link below their answer to the site where they got it. Personally I find this to be the exact same solution as yours (not literally). The problem is some people don't clicks links anymore. It's a problem people are stupid, but its not googles problem, even if idiots uses google (like everyone else).
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