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Google News Initiative

newsinitiative.withgoogle.com

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Re: Google News Initiative

#81

Post by dleslie »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #17
inetknght wrote: post #6

I used Google News for a long time. I have since blackholed it on all of my machines. By tailoring the news articles presented to be based on the interests that Google data mined from my Google profile, it became an echo chamber even worse than Facebook. It became a very bad source of news: all of the articles were self-reinforcing each other with very very little actual diversity of sources.

Could not disagree more. I am generally pretty liberal but get news stories from Breitbart, Fox news, etc all the time in my feed. I like to read all sides so love this aspect of Google news. Heck I get negative Google stories from Google. Can't ask for more neutral.

What about the South Asian Times, The Hindu, South China Morning Post, Russia Today, AL Jazeera, et Al?

They cover world news, in English, and yet I rarely find them on Google News, and I suspect it's location-based filtering that's to blame.

Re: Google News Initiative

#82

Post by kolpa »

Moto7451 wrote: post #33
Bartweiss wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some feedback feature or something you use to get a helpful range of stories? My experience with Google News isn't so much bias or a bubble as uselessness . Source quality, comprehensiveness, and coverage depth seem totally irrelevant, like I'm just getting a feed of every news site a bunch of people clicked on recently. It's the same stuff as Facebook's trending bar, at about the same level of shallow and u…

You can weigh your news sources. I intentionally give a little more weight to sources I don’t always agree with but aren’t obviously biased. Things like fake news spreaders, conspiracy theorist, government propaganda machines, or fair topical sites that simply don’t interest me (mostly Celebrity News and Gossip) get black holed. You can find those sliders in your settings. Also they ask you periodically on the deskto…

This helps if you love/hate a few sources; not if you want a wide range of non-garbage sources; and especially not if you want the non-garbage stories from one source like CNN or WaPo or FoxNews that has some very good news and a lot of hot-button middlebrow-opinion-masquerading-as-news trash that bubbles to the top of the dungheap.

Re: Google News Initiative

#83

Post by richjdsmith »

inetknght wrote: post #6

I used Google News for a long time. I have since blackholed it on all of my machines. By tailoring the news articles presented to be based on the interests that Google data mined from my Google profile, it became an echo chamber even worse than Facebook. It became a very bad source of news: all of the articles were self-reinforcing each other with very very little actual diversity of sources.

I know there are many people disagreeing with you, but I found the same as you. The news I was seeing was so hyper targeted that I was missing major events just because they were unrelated to the echo chamber that had been created around my past reads.

Re: Google News Initiative

#84

Post by nugi »

daodedickinson wrote: post #54

The SPLC is part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program, yet Google News supports Farrakhan's The Final Call, even though the SPLC lists Nation of Islam as a hate group. I won't link the rant about the Jews controlling the FBI, but check out this "news" brought to me courtesy of Google: "Did the Honorable Elijah Muhammad know of the mathematics in the writings of the scriptures before Doctor Khalifa, and others, did…

Slpc still thinks Pepe is a hate symbol and juggalos are gangsters. You don't have to dig down into scripture interpretation to see they have bias issues. Remove refrences to islam, jews, and religion, and focus on why the group is unreliable if you want to engage with most people.

Re: Google News Initiative

#85

Post by wuliwong »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #22
mojuba wrote: post #7

Why is Google putting $300 million of their own money into this? Does anyone have greater than zero trust in what Google is trying to do in this space?

Can't think of anyone I would trust more. Can you? Who? Google allowing video on YouTube they can't monetize kind of saids it all about Google and free speech.

I trust duckduckgo more. :)

Re: Google News Initiative

#86

Post by mudil »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #64
mudil wrote: post #19

The real problem that Google doesn't want to talk about is its monopoly (with FB) of the digital ad market, to the tune of something like 85% of the total market. As a result, from big to small publishers, specialty publishers, regional publications, etc are all struggling. Here's a read: https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing-...

How exactly can two competing companies share a monopoly?

Duopoly, to be precise

Re: Google News Initiative

#87

Post by bootlooped »

Part of this is a method to make subscribing easier. I would prefer if there were a ubiquitous and easy way to make micro-payments for news articles. I consume news from way more sources than I am willing to subscribe to.

Re: Google News Initiative

#88

Post by WalterGR »

fortythirteen wrote: post #62
freehunter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Snopes and Politifact If these are your enemies, your political views might be a little further than "slightly" right of center.

Don't be hyperbolic and put the word "enemies" in my mouth. They are biased sources, though. Those who align with the left typically don't see it, because the organizations align with their biases... and because people rarely read beyond the "truth gauge" at the top of their articles. Politifact will regularly find a small technicality with a right wing politician and use it to label something "untrue", but give a pa…

Could you cite some neutral sources to support your claims?

Re: Google News Initiative

#89

Post by mitko »

Google and traditional media as well are in the business of selling advertisement. I feel that when your money comes from selling your readers attention to the highest ad bidder, one incentive becomes to sensationalize and do other tricks to increase viewership. This incentive can be at odds with the incentive to inform truthfully and completely, as some of the important information would invariably be boring, resulting in less sales. I've experienced this at Twitter as we optimized the product for engagement.

I hypothesize that this incentive to lock-in reader groups, has led to fragmentation of media and creating a lot of "info bubbles", or "interest based magazines". I think this is exacerbated by the dropping cost of information ( I have some thoughts on the process at http://dimitarsimeonov.com/2017/10/27/the-shifting-sweet-spo... )

I don't believe it is in Google's _strongest_ interest to provide truthful media, as Google doesn't make it's money from telling you truth.

I am optimist though.. and think in the future we'll have journalist's job be to aggregate a lot of that narrative and collect some micro-payments. And we'll have a lot fewer journalists, as there is less money in making these narratives.

Re: Google News Initiative

#90

Post by scottybowl »

sterban wrote: post #28

I got fed up with Google News a year or so ago, over the echo chamber that the news site has become. It motivated me to create https://statesreport.com , with no ads and no tracking.

Are you open to creating an API for us to query for https://www.chooseholly.com? We currently pull data from Bings API for our Discover feature.

Happy to pay for usage :)

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