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Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

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Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is a fundamental requirement of an educated electorate. Google and Facebook are culpable, but the news consumer is the problem. If you believe any information put in front of you, we've already lost. EDIT: @mikeash: We don't give up. I just don't know what the solution is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @projekti: If "it doesn't scale", your only option is to meet with your representatives with a lobbying group, and intr…

That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. 29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo... It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurrica…

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills.

The problem is beyond repair then.

> It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".

The first amendment has no such exceptions.

EDIT: (hn throttling limits kicked in)

> I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".

If your policy doesn't exist in law, it doesn't exist; it's an unfunded mandate with no teeth. We might as well wish for unicorns that bring us gold.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#12

Post by ceejayoz »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
ceejayoz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. 29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo... It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurrica…

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. The problem is beyond repair then. > It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y". Th…

> The first amendment has no such exceptions.

That's silly. I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#13

Post by Karunamon »

notahacker wrote: post #4

I mean, I'm all for Google deciding that in the interests of pluralism and avoiding partisanship in its filtering it can't rule out Breitbart, political blogs or even Infowars as news sources, but including a web forum which - quite apart from being an infamous cesspool - doesn't even pretend to be a news source in Google News results?!

Indeed, this is the problem. If their algorithm is so naive that it accepts frickin' 4chan, it's probably going to end up making the wrong decision in the other direction (that a reliable thing is not).

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#14

Post by Karunamon »

sova wrote: post #7
rightos wrote: post #3

I really don't like the "fact checks" being done by news sites these days - that's your responsibility as a reader, tech can't do it for you. Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.

I disagree and maintain that news organizations and information organizations like Facespace, Google News, Twitter, etc, should have a "reliability value" beside links or stories that a large number of users are sharing or reposting. Even if it's just a simple "2% of users found this unreliable information" or "97% of 104 users find this source to be reliable." To say that the information distributors can publish wha…

That hypothetical score will just trend towards 50% as people who disagree with the slant of the story (or more realistically, the source, since people even here make knee-jerk judgments based on source without even reading the meat of the story) will vote it down and those who agree vote it up.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#15

Post by DarronWyke »

ceejayoz wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is a fundamental requirement of an educated electorate. Google and Facebook are culpable, but the news consumer is the problem. If you believe any information put in front of you, we've already lost. EDIT: @mikeash: We don't give up. I just don't know what the solution is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @projekti: If "it doesn't scale", your only option is to meet with your representatives with a lobbying group, and intr…

That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. 29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo... It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurrica…

The problem is the average adult has a miniscule attention span. Giving a bunch of data and a path to a conclusion, or even contrasting viewpoints, isn't going to solve the problem.

One of two things will happen: 1) They want a summary, and denied that, will lose interest. 2) They will look for the summary that reaffirms their viewpoint and discard the rest (echo chamber/bias).

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#16

Post by ryb73 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is a fundamental requirement of an educated electorate. Google and Facebook are culpable, but the news consumer is the problem. If you believe any information put in front of you, we've already lost. EDIT: @mikeash: We don't give up. I just don't know what the solution is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @projekti: If "it doesn't scale", your only option is to meet with your representatives with a lobbying group, and intr…

That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. 29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo... It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurrica…

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills.

I mean, sounds to me like you're both saying roughly the same thing. The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#17

Post by mikeash »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
ceejayoz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do your own research!" is precisely how we wind up with conspiracy theories in the first place.

Critical thinking is a fundamental requirement of an educated electorate. Google and Facebook are culpable, but the news consumer is the problem. If you believe any information put in front of you, we've already lost. EDIT: @mikeash: We don't give up. I just don't know what the solution is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @projekti: If "it doesn't scale", your only option is to meet with your representatives with a lobbying group, and intr…

Then we've already lost. Is there any way forward, or do we just give up?

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#18

Post by ceejayoz »

ryb73 wrote: post #16
ceejayoz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. 29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo... It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurrica…

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills. I mean, sounds to me like you're both saying roughly the same thing. The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?

> The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?

I'm of the opinion that fact checks from reputable sources are beneficial when tackling moderate/undecided voters. No, hard-core "Sandy Hook was a false flag" folks are never going to be convinced, but they're not the audience for sane coverage anyways.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#19

Post by devrelm »

Karunamon wrote: post #14
sova wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and maintain that news organizations and information organizations like Facespace, Google News, Twitter, etc, should have a "reliability value" beside links or stories that a large number of users are sharing or reposting. Even if it's just a simple "2% of users found this unreliable information" or "97% of 104 users find this source to be reliable." To say that the information distributors can publish wha…

That hypothetical score will just trend towards 50% as people who disagree with the slant of the story (or more realistically, the source, since people even here make knee-jerk judgments based on source without even reading the meat of the story) will vote it down and those who agree vote it up.

My thought would be that it would be at the source level. "98% of people find this source reliable", though that's certainly subject to the same biases.

Better systems might require more work to mark a story as false (such as how reporting a story as false currently works in Facebook.) Over time, Facebook can see on their end which domains are pushing fake news and choose not to surface unreliable sources on people's news feeds.

Re: Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

#20

Post by kartan »

rightos wrote: post #3

I really don't like the "fact checks" being done by news sites these days - that's your responsibility as a reader, tech can't do it for you. Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.

> that's your responsibility as a reader

I live in Sweden. How do I fact check what happens in a neighborhood in the USA? How do I know that a result of a clinical test is reliable?

Do I check it on another on-line source? Do I spend millions on R&D and do my own analysis? Or just few thousands going to Las Vegas and gathering my own data? Or do I need to wait for a Newspaper that actually has fact-checking?

> Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.

Billions of citizens fact-checking every single news is not cost effective. It will be good to have a minimum of quality, and then you can apply any correction to the inherent bias of that medium. There is a difference between someway biased information and bullshit.

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