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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

#161

Post by rspeer »

superasn wrote: post #37
rspeer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that "advanced NLP algorithms" can distinguish true statements from false ones? They're not even close. You'd have to dramatically simplify the scope of the problem to make it not require artificial general intelligence. The "Fake News Challenge" [1] is the first attempt I know of to seriously evaluate NLP that could eventually be able to fact-check real-world statements, and the current task is…

They were building a knowledge graph for this purpose[1] [1] http://searchengineland.com/demystifying-knowledge-graph-201...

I'm pretty sure these horrible snippets come from the Google Knowledge Graph.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#162

Post by TuringTest »

Karunamon wrote: post #153
jasonthevillain wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for example, "According to The Vaccine Research Institution..." Now I just made up that organization. But how can an algorithm tell if it's a legitimate medical institute that develops vaccines or anti-vaxxer propaganda? If the algorithm actually had a way to distinguish the two, it could blacklist bullshit just as easily as it could disclose it.

The problem there is that, at the end of the day, it's a fallible human putting stuff in the "bullshit blacklist". It also means that you're evaluating a statement based on its source rather than its merits, which is.. bad. When you're the #1 source of information on stuff in the world, that's an awful lot of power that can be trivially abused (e.g. "let's just blacklist unfavorable coverage of this lawsuit against u…

> you're evaluating a statement based on its source rather than its merits, which is.. bad.

If you don't know the source, you have no way of knowing its merits, as you won't be aware of how the people came up with that knowledge.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#163

Post by fudged71 »

peeters wrote: post #146
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 a search engine for finding webpages, not facts. How can you justify that claim? It seems pretty obvious to me that it's trying to be both. Search for "current time utc" and tell me Google is just a search engine for finding webpages.

Right, google created what they call the "Knowledge Graph", which is explicitly meant for facts.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#164

Post by benmcnelly »

varjag wrote: post #61
bigbugbag wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to your very own filter bubble.

I'm not sure what to make of your comment. It it some new clothes of middle ground fallacy? Should I give equal consideration to every opinion, no matter how outlandish? Do I have to read from Moon hoax people just because I watched a SpaceX launch or flatearthers since I clicked on NatGeo piece last week?

Oh look another "the moon landing was real" guy.

^ See what I did there? I made a comment on the Internet, and called into question the legitimacy of your comments.

Anyone can do it! So what we really need is HN to moderate our comments to filter out comments like yours so that we can just read the truth without having to filter out the garbage. I don't want to hear about how you think the the earth is round just because I'm on a NASA thread. One thing for sure is this is HN's fault.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#165

Post by patmcguire »

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, those are bad.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#166

Post by lostphilosopher »

Google offers sources with its claims. I'd like the ability to Pandora style thumbs up / thumbs down these sources so that Google won't keep giving me answers from them. I'm tempted to think that if enough people did that Google could start making generalizations, but that has its own set of pitfalls... (Even if it only generalized for me.) Still, as an individual user of Google I would like the ability to tell it not to give me answers sourced from Weekly World News.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#168

Post by benmcnelly »

voxic11 wrote: post #160
benmcnelly wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me?! We need to get this law changed ASAP. Look at this search result. This fake news stuff cannot be allowed to continue. https://www.google.com/search?q=best+taco+place+in+San+Fansi...

It's a pretty essential law for maintaining the internet as we know it. If providers could be sued for the content, provided by others, that passes through their services then we can't really have an open internet. ISPs would be afraid to allow anyone to connect because they could be sued for what their costumers do. Search engines would be afraid to index sites because they could be sued for any misinformation on th…

You are right, and I was agreeing with it.

One downside to being sarcastic on a comment thread to make a point is I can't tell if people are down-voting me because they clicked the link, or because they didn't.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#169

Post by pavel_lishin »

benmcnelly wrote: post #168
voxic11 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty essential law for maintaining the internet as we know it. If providers could be sued for the content, provided by others, that passes through their services then we can't really have an open internet. ISPs would be afraid to allow anyone to connect because they could be sued for what their costumers do. Search engines would be afraid to index sites because they could be sued for any misinformation on th…

You are right, and I was agreeing with it. One downside to being sarcastic on a comment thread to make a point is I can't tell if people are down-voting me because they clicked the link, or because they didn't.

Another downside is that it doesn't add much to the discussion.

Re: Google featured snippets are worse than fake news

#170

Post by imh »

peeters wrote: post #146
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 a search engine for finding webpages, not facts. How can you justify that claim? It seems pretty obvious to me that it's trying to be both. Search for "current time utc" and tell me Google is just a search engine for finding webpages.

it's not just "current time" you can ask "(12+431)/42" or "how tall is a poodle" or "when does san francisco city hall close today" or "directions to nearest gas station." These are each totally different kinds of facts (compute something for me; answer a general question; tell me something specific and context/time dependent; give me directions to something context dependent). Google is way beyond just providing a list of web pages and can't have it both ways. The general question-answer factual stuff is leaking in to user expectations in the rest of their search business.
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