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Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

theatlantic.com

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Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#131

Post by revmoo »

jimmytidey wrote: post #61
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…

It's not cognitively possible for a user to simultaneously view every piece of content. Someone has to make a decision about what goes at the top. Of course, users aren't passive, they could get their news elsewhere or change the filtering. But we know that defaults matter a lot. For many people, the order in which platforms present news is going to be profoundly influential. The inescapability of choosing defaults s…

> Someone has to make a decision about what goes at the top.

What happened to just ranking based on backlinks?

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#132

Post by [deleted] »

rdiddly wrote: post #49
Spivak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The unfiltered results ARE the truth. 4chan is the truth. In the sense that "Someone posted this thing on 4chan." And that's the only truth there is in internet-land: Someone posted something. Is it real? Is it true, what they posted? Or is it "fake news?" You will never know, and you probably shouldn't try to take it that far. Or if you do, at least be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of believing it and not-…

[deleted]

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#133

Post by rayalez »

folksinger wrote: post #5

The reason why those of us on this forum can tell the difference between good and bad information is because we received a good education and learned critical analysis skills. Facebook, Google and the internet in general are an objectively bad source of knowledge. They are subjectively good sources of knowledge. The vast majority of people do not have the skills to use the internet as a source for good knowledge. The…

Yes, it takes skill to obtain information from the internet, just like it takes skill to obtain information from reading books in the library(you have to know how to read).

If you lack these skills, you are limited to the comicbook section in the library, and to cat videos on the internet.

Internet is a much superior tool of obtaining information, obviously. Just because it takes skill to use it, doesn't mean that it's worse.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#134

Post by eropple »

pjc50 wrote: post #70
rdiddly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfiltered results ARE the truth. 4chan is the truth. In the sense that "Someone posted this thing on 4chan." And that's the only truth there is in internet-land: Someone posted something. Is it real? Is it true, what they posted? Or is it "fake news?" You will never know, and you probably shouldn't try to take it that far. Or if you do, at least be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of believing it and not-…

> The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person. > The good news is, that which you can't witness with your own eyes, rarely has any real effect on your life Not only anti-rationalist and anti-Enlightenment, but you're even disagreeing with object permanence!

That seems to be the inevitable result of an uncritical embrace of nihilism.

If nothing matters, 4chan is great.

If things actually matter, 4chan is an existential threat.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#135

Post by losteverything »

I dont know if i could disagree with the author more.

They didn't fail me. I don't want or need to know about shootings, crashes, floods, etc. Not instantly, anyway. I did not seek news in las vegas: I avoid it.

If anything the previous news gatekeepers got us used to believing that if we dont stop everything we are somehow uncaring. So plane crashes, shootings etc hold a "insta-pass" to news. All hands on deck approach.

To me, the authors premise of FB and G as bad gatekeepers is wrong. Information is hardly ever right right away. Nobody i know expects that. Even with that, i believe people know the difference between a photo sharing site, a email and search/map site and a news organization.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#136

Post by sdca »

ben_w wrote: post #75
mythrwy wrote: post #2

Google and Facebook have failed the Atlantic which is seizing on tragedy to imply only sanctioned media (them of course) should be available through Internet searches. However most of the rest of us are not failed as we already know results from 4-Chan probably aren't accurate. Please stop failing all of us with this desperate bid to get back in control of information dispersal there The Atlantic. I'd much rather see…

Has the average person heard of 4-chan? If they had, would they understand it as anything different to Facebook, which they seem to trust, or the comments section under a news story, ditto? People don’t know what accurate and trustworthy looks like. Even when things are labeled as fiction, they can have an effect - Scotish Independence became more popular when the film “Braveheart” was released, while Islamophobia we…

Speculation on motive begins immediately when we learn what the target was and the weapons that were used. You can't censor that without censoring the entire incident.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#137

Post by richk449 »

rdiddly wrote: post #49
Spivak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The unfiltered results ARE the truth. 4chan is the truth. In the sense that "Someone posted this thing on 4chan." And that's the only truth there is in internet-land: Someone posted something. Is it real? Is it true, what they posted? Or is it "fake news?" You will never know, and you probably shouldn't try to take it that far. Or if you do, at least be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of believing it and not-…

> The only thing you can truly know is what you witness in person.

Why do you trust your eyes? Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate.

Why trust your brain? How do you even know that the world you think exists is real? Maybe you are just dreaming right now.

You went part-way down the rabbit hole, then stopped. Better to go all the way, then decide on a rational basis for belief (which is probably more complicated than only trusting things you see firsthand), and build from there.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#138

Post by azangru »

losteverything wrote: post #135

I dont know if i could disagree with the author more. They didn't fail me. I don't want or need to know about shootings, crashes, floods, etc. Not instantly, anyway. I did not seek news in las vegas: I avoid it. If anything the previous news gatekeepers got us used to believing that if we dont stop everything we are somehow uncaring. So plane crashes, shootings etc hold a "insta-pass" to news. All hands on deck appro…

Came here to say pretty much this :-)

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#139

Post by dasil003 »

losteverything wrote: post #135

I dont know if i could disagree with the author more. They didn't fail me. I don't want or need to know about shootings, crashes, floods, etc. Not instantly, anyway. I did not seek news in las vegas: I avoid it. If anything the previous news gatekeepers got us used to believing that if we dont stop everything we are somehow uncaring. So plane crashes, shootings etc hold a "insta-pass" to news. All hands on deck appro…

Well Google has a top-level subdomain news.google.com that serves a similar function to a collection of newspaper section front pages. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they have some responsibility for what they post. As engineers we are too quick to give them a pass because it's algorithmic, and human intervention wouldn't scale. However it's worth remembering that Google is not a startup, it's one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world, we shouldn't treat them like an engineering org on a shoestring budget. You might not care personally or have any expectations, but that doesn't mean we are out of line demanding solutions to difficult problems from companies that make such profit off of our information.
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