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Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

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Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#131

Post by ronack »

dmboyd wrote: post #127
ronack wrote: post #120

I've also wondered why Google isn't held responsible for publishing libelous claims and hoaxes as facts. Examples: Is Hillary Clinton a pedophile? https://www.google.com/search?q=is+hillary+clinton+a+pedophi... Is John Travolta gay? https://www.google.com/search?q=is+john+travolta+gay Does Lil Wayne have HIV? https://www.google.com/search?q=does+lil+wayne+have+hiv Perhaps worse, this is what drives Google Home's ques…

Wow, I've mostly converted to DuckDuckGo for the past two or so years, so are these "google assistant" style placements now part of their core product? or is this a setting that you've enabled? If it's part of the core... Wow, what a useless cess pool google has become.

Yes, those are default search results and the same content that drives Google Home's voice responses when you ask it a question. Originally Google stuck to Wikipedia/Knowledge Graph types of answers but have expanded this in recent months to try to answer just about any question you search, however dubious the answer's source.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#132

Post by fixermark »

cdubzzz wrote: post #66
ccozan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually google has become ( for me, at least) lately some kind of proxy to stackoverflow and wikipedia, since both this two services have atrocious own search solutions and I have to rely on google to get interpret my keywords the right way.

This really does seem like a big problem. What are some sites that do site search well? Is there currently a good way to implement something even half as good as Google locally without a major lift?

Why bother when Google will index your site for you?

It's one fewer engineering task for a busy content provider to take on.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#133

Post by benmcnelly »

Google is a search engine for finding webpages, not facts. Thats where this "fake" news story should end. This is not a political problem, its a societal one, and you are barking up the wrong tree.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world. It is not authoritative, and anyone who treats it as such, should be educated to the facts of what it is, and is not. Just because its moderated to be supported by links to facts, doesn't mean that every bit of content is free of bias and the whole truth. Its generally accepted that this is the case. Same thing goes for Snopes, and some other fact checking sites. They are generally looked to for a reasonable amount of truthfulness based on reputation. Same could be said for various media outlets, based on your preference and bias.

Social media sites and search engines are not responsible to tailor their content to fit your expectations of what truth or reality are. Stop being a child.

"but, people expect to be able to Google something and results and snippets be the truth!"

Well, thats a problem for sure.

How about we try and fix that expectation instead? Feel free to teach your children and anyone you know who uses the internet, that (surprisingly) anyone from anywhere can still get online and post anything at any time, and you should fact check multiple places and resources instead of trusting the first result from your favorite search engine.

"but by offering snippets of results from programmatically generated search results (which is super handy 99% of the time) Google is publishing false truths!"

Right, and you can probably still Google bomb the image search to show an image you want based on a certain search term, its the internet not your personal fact butler, no matter how its advertised. Its 2017 and common sense and intelligence are still recommended for most tasks.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#134

Post by fixermark »

cdubzzz wrote: post #78
ccozan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was senior engineer with Autonomy ( before being bought by HP ) and we did really good projects for some big companies, it worked well. Lucene comes a long way, with enough time, some cool stuff would emerge. But if you need to replicate google, you need bootloads of user data and in generally data to operate on ( i.e. to be able to extract the equivalence of certain terms and expressions, and so on ). And generall…

Pardon my ignorance, but would such a service need to be specific to a site? I'm wondering if there is a business (or perhaps better yet, non-profit) opportunity to provide data to drive something that can be tacked on to individual sites. Would an organization like Mozilla have an opportunity here?

You've just described Google search.

If your business pitch is "Like Google search, but Google doesn't control it," good luck getting investors.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#135

Post by TylerH »

dmboyd wrote: post #127
ronack wrote: post #120

I've also wondered why Google isn't held responsible for publishing libelous claims and hoaxes as facts. Examples: Is Hillary Clinton a pedophile? https://www.google.com/search?q=is+hillary+clinton+a+pedophi... Is John Travolta gay? https://www.google.com/search?q=is+john+travolta+gay Does Lil Wayne have HIV? https://www.google.com/search?q=does+lil+wayne+have+hiv Perhaps worse, this is what drives Google Home's ques…

Wow, I've mostly converted to DuckDuckGo for the past two or so years, so are these "google assistant" style placements now part of their core product? or is this a setting that you've enabled? If it's part of the core... Wow, what a useless cess pool google has become.

I think it's part of the core, but I haven't tried to disable it before; that may be possible.

However, it is dependent upon the search query: https://www.google.com/search?q=flat+earth doesn't show it, for example.

Perhaps only queries in the form of a question show it.

But yes, it is a piece of shit and they should get rid of it if they aren't going to curate the kind of content that can get put in those boxes.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#136

Post by [deleted] »

benmcnelly wrote: post #133

Google is a search engine for finding webpages, not facts. Thats where this "fake" news story should end. This is not a political problem, its a societal one, and you are barking up the wrong tree. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world. It is not authoritative, and anyone who treats it as such, should be educated to the facts of what it is, and is not. Just because…

[deleted]

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#137

Post by rdlecler1 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #118
deong wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even limited to this kind of question for which there's no simple answer to give. Last week, my wife was joking around with our 9-year-old, leading to him trying to convince her that mermaids aren't real. Cue, "OK Google, do mermaids exist?" To which our Google Home announces, "According to Weekly World News... ". If "do mermaids exist" can't be classified as a thing you know, I'm not even sure you're at the…

A common complaint that pg and many of us have about popular forums is that you always end up in some kind of semantics game. That's true, and that's frustrating, but that's also the basis of shared human understanding, the dialectic. I wish I could just say "There are no mermaids", but the definition of "is" and "being" here is complex. In many other cases this definition is not complex. We programmers get dissed a…

There are ways to address this. If you ask for the diameter of the earth there will be an abundance of authoritative and information information. If you ask for something like is Obama imposing martial law and you return a passage from some conspiracy blog then maybe you shouldn't be highlighting this as a OTA. At the very least they could put some kind of confidence bar and a link to a directory of competing sources.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#138

Post by rdlecler1 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #118
deong wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even limited to this kind of question for which there's no simple answer to give. Last week, my wife was joking around with our 9-year-old, leading to him trying to convince her that mermaids aren't real. Cue, "OK Google, do mermaids exist?" To which our Google Home announces, "According to Weekly World News... ". If "do mermaids exist" can't be classified as a thing you know, I'm not even sure you're at the…

A common complaint that pg and many of us have about popular forums is that you always end up in some kind of semantics game. That's true, and that's frustrating, but that's also the basis of shared human understanding, the dialectic. I wish I could just say "There are no mermaids", but the definition of "is" and "being" here is complex. In many other cases this definition is not complex. We programmers get dissed a…

There are ways to address this. If you ask for the diameter of the earth there will be an abundance of authoritative and information information. If you ask for something like is Obama imposing martial law and you return a passage from some conspiracy blog then maybe you shouldn't be highlighting this as a OTA. At the very least they could put some kind of confidence bar and a link to a directory of competing sources.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#139

Post by rdlecler1 »

maxerickson wrote: post #82
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #76

Yikes. More of this "People only want to be told what to do" stuff. I can easily think of a dozen political questions for which no simple answer would be correct -- the language is simply too fuzzy. For many, many things, this is a good idea. The date of Easter is the date of Easter. But the glaring danger here is that for many things this is a freaking evil dystopian nightmare. Why? Because Google will keep tweaking…

The date of Easter depends on which calendar you use. The second largest christian church uses a different calendar than the largest one.

Yes, but Wikipedia recognizes this fact.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#140

Post by pm24601 »

benmcnelly wrote: post #133

Google is a search engine for finding webpages, not facts. Thats where this "fake" news story should end. This is not a political problem, its a societal one, and you are barking up the wrong tree. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world. It is not authoritative, and anyone who treats it as such, should be educated to the facts of what it is, and is not. Just because…

Google is presenting the fake content as factual. Google is asserting the truth and putting its own brand behind the "truthiness" of the fake page.

That is the line that has been crossed.

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