Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

>The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human.

So it's obvious to any human, yet people aren't good enough to differentiate fake from real news.

>Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks

I mean, the author is picking and choosing anecdotes to make a point in order to further their agendum.

On the other hand I agree with you but it's irrelevant to the authors' point. The author, I would posit, is not really interested in sourcing better news (it's not impossible, for example, for 4chan to have the best info on a particular issue (via a contributor) while The Atlantic may have none. But they are arguing a 4chan should not be surfaced at all --not that 4chan should be better scrutinized and only surface accurate information.

It's an underhanded and opportunistic attempt to delegitimize non professional journos and build a moat around the "profession".

now who does he sound like?

Society as a whole is becoming increasingly arrogant. If an individual does not agree with "us" that they must be somehow wrong, misinformed, or illogical. The reason for this is easy to understand. We all hold the beliefs we do because we hold them to be the most logical and justified. So somebody who doesn't hold such beliefs must be wrong, and we need to "fix" them. Yet of course the exact same is true of people who hold differing beliefs.

And this is in no way to suggest that both sides can be right on issues where there is indeed a clear answer. On many issues one side will be wrong, and one side will be right. And this is perfectly fine. It is critical in society that people are at liberty to make decisions that we may not consider logical, or even appropriate. Elon Musk deciding to spend all of his fortune attempting to start up an aerospace company and an electric car company is certainly something that very few would call a logical endeavor. It is missing the gravity of such risk to suggest it's only money. He gets emotional to this day when speaking of his time then - one can only speculate what would have happened had everything collapsed; there was certainly much more than money at risk there. But he succeeded. So we regard him as brilliant instead of a misguided fool, illustrating the absurdity of our labeling.

If you want something other than money, consider the history of penicillin. Now considered one of the most important medical discoveries of all time - the whole concept of injecting mold into one's body to inhibit bacteria is not exactly what most would call logical. And for years his discovery was completely disregarded by the public and by medical science. And that's fine - but it's also fine that people are free to pursue outlandish avenues and ideas without condemnation and judgement other than "Well, that's not what I'd think given the body of evidence available."

Calling this a "top news spot" ... I have no words. Perhaps we should say that this complaint is "fake news" ? I get that newspapers and even journalists have their existence threatened by Facebook and Google, but ... this is a low and very thin argument.

I don't understand what they want either. Censorship seems to be the real issue. The article is not so much taking offence at the information available, they're just angry that the information wasn't filtered through the "normal" channels. They were very unhappy various things didn't get suppressed. That Google had the gall to surface "unauthorized" information.

Never mind that if I was said falsely accused person, I would definitely have wanted that information surfaced. Including to a lawyer, and later to a judge. At issue are the person starting this rumour, and the publisher (ie. 4chan).

Their point is that in this case, things should have gotten suppressed, like naming a person as a culprit that had nothing to do with the incident. Now keep in mind that this is hyperbole: any searches related to the Las Vegas shooting never named anyone, but if you searched for that person's exact name it would surface a "fresh" result ... from 4chan, claiming he had something to do with the shooting.

I would argue that newspapers have done much worse than this. Much worse. Often repeatedly and in cases where there was an obvious financial or political motive for them to spread misinformation. I'd rather have all information, knowing that some may be wrong.

And the newspapers' "right" to filter all information I may see ? Screw that, if I want to see your filtered info, I'll go to your site. I may want to do that, for verification and because I think your filter is useful, but I do not want you or anyone filtering everything I see.

In that case, the search should be done on the NYT site (or similar).

Or perhaps Google should add a "Use Edited Sites only" preference as a category of SafeSearch.