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Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

theatlantic.com

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Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#111

Post by creaghpatr »

AlexC04 wrote: post #103
trgv wrote: post #11

I think there's already too much filtering. People need to make up their own minds regarding what is true and what isn't, what's worth their time and what's bullshit, which links to click on and which to avoid. If people can't handle this then we need to spend more money on education, or just accept that some people disagree with us. I don't think aggressively filtering "untrustworthy" content will lead to a net bene…

You can't just decide what is true. Think back to the US election you can't just "decide" that the story of thousands of Ohio ballots pre-marked for Hillary Clinton was true. http://www.snopes.com/clinton-votes-found-in-warehouse/ You can't just decide that the story of a protester with a rape Melania was true http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/14/melania-sign-at-anti-trump-... You can't just decide for yourself that clim…

...so you outsource your Truth to Snopes, got it. I hope Snopes never lets you down.

people will always draw conclusions based on their own observations, good thing Einstein didn't have snopes to say "Actually, the Theory of Relativity is a myth: Pants on Fire rating!

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#112

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a journalist outlet that would not care about story. Just facts. Preferably in bullet points (narratives are misleading). I'd be a paying subscriber to that.

Which facts? The very selection of relevance itself tells a story. However, you can sort of get this if you limit yourself to "agency" news, ie AP or Reuters. If you have a big chunk of money and news is important in your work, you'll have a Bloomberg terminal.

All of them? Maybe I'm naïve, but I don't buy the inherent importance of doing selection. If I could trust that the news source includes all relevant facts they encounter, it'll be enough; I can reach my own conclusions.

> However, you can sort of get this if you limit yourself to "agency" news, ie AP or Reuters.

I've heard something about "wire services" before, but I'm not sure if there are any accessible to individuals at prices a regular person like me could afford. Do you know of any?

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#113

Post by crag »

I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process.

I mean, com'on, promoting 4chan to the top spot in a news channel? Too many people in this country don't bother to check, they figure if it's the top article it must be true.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#114

Post by ascagnel_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112
pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which facts? The very selection of relevance itself tells a story. However, you can sort of get this if you limit yourself to "agency" news, ie AP or Reuters. If you have a big chunk of money and news is important in your work, you'll have a Bloomberg terminal.

All of them? Maybe I'm naïve, but I don't buy the inherent importance of doing selection. If I could trust that the news source includes all relevant facts they encounter, it'll be enough; I can reach my own conclusions. > However, you can sort of get this if you limit yourself to "agency" news, ie AP or Reuters. I've heard something about "wire services" before, but I'm not sure if there are any accessible to indivi…

Wire services typically sell their feeds to newspapers; nowadays, though, the bigger services make their feeds available on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AP

https://twitter.com/Reuters

https://twitter.com/AFP

(Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse are three of the bigger ones)

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#115

Post by ForRealsies »

crag wrote: post #113

I agree with the article. I think more humans do need to be added to the "decision-making" process. I mean, com'on, promoting 4chan to the top spot in a news channel? Too many people in this country don't bother to check, they figure if it's the top article it must be true.

Still needs the ron paul gif

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#117

Post by saimiam »

bo1024 wrote: post #101
saimiam wrote: post #80

If we all such smart people/techies, can we spitball a better breaking news feed algorithm into existence? I'll kick it off - 1. Focus all news on Who? What? When? Where? Omit the "Why?". 2. When in doubt cite the primary news sources (police feeds/courtrooms/local authorities/opposition leaders/pictures/geo tagged and timestamped audio&video feeds with geo tags) 3. Secondary news sources like news orgs and journalis…

Just a comment: Reputation is key. Having studied game theory for systems of agents producing results and content, I feel fairly confident in this conclusion: the only reliable long-term design to incentivize beneficient, truthful behavior involves assigning good reputation in return for good behavior, and assigning future rewards/attention based on past reputation. Based on this, I postulate that any good news feed…

When it comes to sourcing information from discussion boards, each top thread is effectively the one and only time the algorithm will interact with that thread for that topic.

Unless each thread is monitored and updated by a small subset of power users when weighting for reputation matters, it is likely that the persons managing a thread are volunteers at the scene of breaking news or have been (self-)coopted into that role by circumstances. Such self selected thread managers can safely be treated as a one-time participant in the prisoner's dilemma game.

If this is true, the algorithm can safely assume that the other prisoner (the "thread") is going to betray them and so, betray them first by low-weighting them.

Of course, you use some sort of reputation for the source of the threads - for breaking tech news, a GitHub issue tracker is probably going to be a better tracker than an HN thread than a general purpose Reddit thread than a 4chan thread.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#118

Post by Joeri »

Spivak wrote: post #35
llamataboot wrote: post #20

Zeynep Tufekci had a couple great columns about this recently regarding FB and the US elections this year. While I recognize that there's always a concern about who the gatekeepers get to be in the marketplace of ideas, I think this is a considerably more complex issues than "let all the information go wherever it wants and let the people sort it out" Putting 4Chan in a top news slot is not "allowing unedited and unf…

> into a spot that many users believe is fairly authoritative I mean that's the real issue. You can't be unbiased while trying to be a source of truth. You can be impartial and return results based on relevancy or you can intervene in an attempt to return the truth. Google has ventured into dangerous territory by mixing the two -- especially with their automatic snippets that answer questions. > There is only figurin…

Even if you manage to put the control of filtering in people's hands, it doesn't solve the problem. Social science convincingly shows people don't want to be told the truth if it runs counter to prior beliefs, and will use all the tools at their disposal to avoid or discredit it. In fact, forcing the truth on them will convince them even more of their false beliefs (see: the backfire effect). Give people more control over their filters, and they will create even tighter filter bubbles.

Maybe the solution to what news to let through the filter bubble is to apply a very simple answer: none at all. Google shouldn't show anything that's more recent than a few weeks.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#119

Post by Dirlewanger »

ubik wrote: post #98
timmytwotime wrote: post #95

The real crime is that there is an assumption of companies with their own self-interests at the forefront are somehow benevolent arbiters of information on the Internet. This shows more the naive crassness of the media.

Nailed it. Exactly on what timeline do these people think these megacorp clickfarms were constitutionally/divinely designated as arbiters of truth? They have always been run by trash-purveying ad companies and have always been corrosive [1]. [1] https://www.anxiety.org/social-media-causes-anxiety

It's companies fighting other companies for the mindshare of the public and profits. Your modern day "journalist" has no convictions anymore, they weave whatever tale their editors want to tell, whether it's true or not. This is our dire future, and I don't see a way out of it.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#120

Post by justin66 »

mc32 wrote: post #24

Google is more a conduit of news rather than a gatekeeper. FB is both a gatekeeper and a conduit to news as well as a news producer (since it pays or underwrites some orgs to produce news for it). That said, I think The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves engage in questionable journalism (clickbait as well as often biased news-source). There is no way we're going to come up with somethi…

> That said, I think The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves engage in questionable journalism (clickbait as well as often biased news-source).

They're hypocritical but they're not wrong.

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