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Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

theatlantic.com

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Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#171

Post by eighthnate »

"In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet."

It's the nature of the internet and social media. People rant, rave and gossip. It's not google or facebook's job to curate what people say, think or do.

I wish google and facebook and the social media companies would unite to fight back against traditional media. They've been attacked for the past couple of years relentlessly.

> their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public.

With all due respect. If google/fb/social media wanted to filter out quality of information, they would ban theatlantic and the rest of the traditional media.

At the end of the day, this guy is just complaining that people are being people. Eventually things get sorted out.

Looking at the guy's stories list, it seems like all he does is whine about facebook and social media.

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/alexis-madrigal/

Who is alexis madrigal that we should even pay attention to him?

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#172

Post by eighthnate »

abrahamepton wrote: post #158
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…

I worked at Google News for 5 years, and completely agree w/Alexis. Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas; that's a fail, period. It is a fail. It should not have happened; it should not happen again; it should never happen. Great, maybe you personally weren't fooled. That's entirely and totally irrelevant since there are 7 billion people on the planet and Google (and FB…

> that's a fail, period.

I disagree. If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that.

If 4chan was the only source google was pushing then fine. But as long as google is posting a wide variety of "news", then anything, including 4chan should be allowed.

Edit: People forget that the TMZ and even the inquirer used to be attacked also but they have produced fine journalism from time to time. And establishment organizations like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, NYTimes, etc have produced terrible journalism from time to time.

No entity has a complete monopoly on facts and news. We should have diverse set of news/opinions/etc.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#173

Post by cirgue »

Fricken wrote: post #105
gldalmaso wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we simply leave it up to people, we already know the outcome. Some, maybe even a lot of people will take fabricated lies as facts and proceed to engage other people with these facts, sometimes violently. By doing that we are empowering the people who fabricate lies to move an agenda. It's ridiculously cheap to make fake news and the value gained is immense because people are having a hard time filtering it themsel…

We've always lived in a world where the best liar wins. The best liar is in the Whitehouse, we still live in that world today. The preoccupation with objective truth is a relatively recent notion, and only of interest to what appears to be a minority of the population. The rest are happy to have their biases confirmed, it doesn't much matter whether it's true. The difference between now and 30 years ago, is that now…

> We've always lived in a world where the best liar wins.

True, but we also seem to have collectively become a lot more skittish about excoriating bullshit because "everyone does it". That's definitely not the optimal solution.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#174

Post by musage »

hsod wrote: post #156
musage wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why people use Google. Wait, what? I use it despite that. Since 2000. Everybody seeing the same search results was never a problem, and sometimes even useful. There is a wide area between "just show random pages" (which probably not even the first prototype of any search engine ever did) and a "personal" filter you can't configure at all.

I don't mean the filter is personalized to you, I just mean that there is a filter! That is, Google doesn't believe every website is equally "good", they Rank Pages based on subjective criteria. I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is…

> I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is a place to take a principled stand.

What does this have to do with personal filters? Yes, there are filters, Google has to "make decisions", and parse language. That's a given. But that doesn't require showing different things to different people.

With a personalized algorithm behind the curtain, googling for "Pizza" might show you where to get Pizza near where you are, and let's say "Pizza in general" would give the results that just typing "Pizza" without a personal filter would give. So you have "Pizza / Pizza in general" vs. "Pizza shop in $city / Pizza". Big deal? What was gained here? You trade some convenience for the impossibility to get the search results everybody else is getting.

When I ask someone what they think is the X-est Y, and they first have a list of questions for me to answer first so they can tailor their response to me -- not to clarify the question, mind you, but so they can tell me something I might like to hear -- I won't be asking that person for their opinion again.

> they Rank Pages based on subjective criteria.

That's not how it works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#175

Post by eighthnate »

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).

The atlantic and the rest of traditional media just wants google to link their clickbait stories. It's ultimately all about money.

> using an obvious outlier to promote their pov.

As per usual. I wonder how the atlantic would like google to us the outlier ( rolling stones UVA story ) to ban all traditional media.

At the end of the day, this guy has to write something so that the atlantic would pay him. So he just went to his normal story. The guy is no more informed than the rest of us. He just gets paid to write silly stories.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#176

Post by morsmodr »

The value of the systems built by Google and Facebook and the quality/legitimacy of news from these systems is pretty much dependent on the users. The feeds are built by what users share. A platform is only as good as the people contributing to it.

When it is known that insanity in individuals is rare but in groups, nations, epochs (and also internet) it is the rule - do not look at google/facebook news feeds to be sources of valid information. If we all are smart and intelligent enough to use these systems wisely, the benefits are enormous. But it also allows trolls and people who want to create confusion to operate with freedom.

For no or 0 money you will obviously get poor quality news. You need editors to verify sources and then put them in print or online. Go and pay an online newspaper so their editors will have jobs to do what you expect and they do not need to publish click-bait articles just for ad money so that their firm can make money.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#177

Post by tethys »

eighthnate wrote: post #172
abrahamepton wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google News for 5 years, and completely agree w/Alexis. Google promoted 4Chan as a top result for people who wanted to know about Las Vegas; that's a fail, period. It is a fail. It should not have happened; it should not happen again; it should never happen. Great, maybe you personally weren't fooled. That's entirely and totally irrelevant since there are 7 billion people on the planet and Google (and FB…

> that's a fail, period. I disagree. If that's what people are viewing and if that's where the discussion of the news was happening then google should reflect that. If 4chan was the only source google was pushing then fine. But as long as google is posting a wide variety of "news", then anything, including 4chan should be allowed. Edit: People forget that the TMZ and even the inquirer used to be attacked also but the…

> discussion of the news

That's the problem. If I get the article right, Google listed results from 4chan in their news boxes that appear above search results –– and that's a problem because in this place you'd expect trustworthy information and not just some speculation.

Listing a discussion (even if it's on 4chan) within the regular search results is not a problem and not what the author is criticizing.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#178

Post by bo1024 »

saimiam wrote: post #117
bo1024 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> Of course, you use some sort of reputation for the source of the threads

Yes, this is what I mean. A news source should have a history of correctness before being trusted to report future news. The issues you're discussing are exactly the reason we need reputation -- otherwise some false news can arrive once, get a ton of attention, and do a lot of damage before going away forever (and we see this on e.g. reddit).

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#179

Post by bo1024 »

makomk wrote: post #144
bo1024 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reputation can be gamed and manipulated in much the same way that any other information can be. Case in point: which information sources get high-profile stories like this one accusing them of failing us and spreading dangerous rumours is almost entirely a function of the current preferred media narrative. I've seen so many reputable journalists start and spread viral bullshit on social media that becomes widely beli…

> Reputation can be gamed and manipulated in much the same way that any other information can be.

Yes, it's not foolproof, but it's still a vital piece of the puzzle. With a good reputation system (and I'm not saying such a thing is easy, or perhaps even doable) "reputable" journalists won't stay reputable for long if they behave as you mention.

For example, here's a very crude reputation system: politifact (to pick an example). Imagine if Google just cut from "News" results any site with a certain number of bad ratings from politifact in the past year. This is is gameable and not sustainable, but it would be a decent start.

Re: Google and Facebook Have Failed Us

#180

Post by hsod »

musage wrote: post #174
hsod wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean the filter is personalized to you, I just mean that there is a filter! That is, Google doesn't believe every website is equally "good", they Rank Pages based on subjective criteria. I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is…

> I just don't get why no one has a problem with Google trying to filter out spam (even though it can't be detected with 100% accuracy) but trying to prevent 4chan/GatewayPundit's blatant and obvious lies from being elevated is a place to take a principled stand. What does this have to do with personal filters? Yes, there are filters, Google has to "make decisions", and parse language. That's a given. But that doesn'…

I feel like we're talking past each other. Personalization of search results is orthogonal to this article and discussion so I'm going to pass on responding to your points there.

As for PageRank, I really appreciate the Wikipedia link. Super helpful. If you're arguing that PR is not subjective because it uses an algorithm, my response is: the algorithm encodes subjective judgements about how to evaluate "quality" in a web page. For example, the subjective judgement that a web page is likely to be of higher quality if there are a lot of other high quality web pages that link to it.

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