Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/
89 comments
You are understating and giving a pass for the real issue at hand - a lack of ability to think critically by a large portion of our population. Let's assume for argument's sake that Google News and Facebook shut down their feeds tomorrow - can you tell me with confidence that another one won't mushroom up and take its place or that people won't switch to "dark" networks - Whatsapp, Messenger, Email and what not?
I'm not absolving Google and Facebook. There are more trustworthy places to get your news and information. Why do you think people flock to less reliable sources? Unless that's solved, democracy and with it culture and progress as we know it is destined to be doomed.
I'm not absolving Google and Facebook. There are more trustworthy places to get your news and information. Why do you think people flock to less reliable sources? Unless that's solved, democracy and with it culture and progress as we know it is destined to be doomed.
Lesson to be learned:
Wisdom and knowledge do not come from technology. They come from wise and experienced educators working one-on-one with their students, not to tell them the truth, but to help them experience the truth. Nullius in verba!
Ed-tech is confidence game.
What technology offers is the productive capacity to support a world filled with actual human educators and actual human intelligence.
Wisdom and knowledge do not come from technology. They come from wise and experienced educators working one-on-one with their students, not to tell them the truth, but to help them experience the truth. Nullius in verba!
Ed-tech is confidence game.
What technology offers is the productive capacity to support a world filled with actual human educators and actual human intelligence.
Neither of them would be considered "Media Outlets" since they don't employ reporters or an editorial board. You are overreacting because it's not Google or Facebook pushing bad content on you - it's you choosing to believe it at face value. And by "you" I mean "the collective you" - everyone has a responsibility to determine if the information they've received is correct or not. If you cannot verify it - don't believe it. If there aren't multiple sources claiming the same thing, it's probably an opinion.
To "fix" this, we either need to reduce the allowed error rate, or enforce a disclaimer which states something like "This information is collected automatically by a program. No human reviews this, so please do your own research."
To "fix" this, we either need to reduce the allowed error rate, or enforce a disclaimer which states something like "This information is collected automatically by a program. No human reviews this, so please do your own research."
It's a multi-faceted problem to be sure, people need to take responsibility for themselves, and I think the trend over time is for people to become more sophisticated about truthiness. The problem is that we are right in the thick of a publishing revolution where the traditional signals about the quality of information are out the window, and the flow of information is so much broader and more diversified, leading to an explosion of confirmation bias and worldview silos. Google and Facebook are right at the center of this, and making the problem worse with AMP and video-jacking, and personalizing feeds to optimize purely for engagement.
Using old terminology like "media outlet" does nothing to address the problem, all it does is frame the issue in a way that supports the narrative that these companies are mere aggregators that can bear no responsibility for the information they are disseminating.
Well, frankly, that's bullshit. You have to look at the actual effects in order to make any kind of reasonable judgement on the situation. Google and Facebook are a huge contributor to the fake news problem, and despite how difficult and maybe intractable the problem is, they are also uniquely positioned to be able to make a difference. They deserve to be held to a higher standard, and regardless of their protests, they at least have the resources to try harder.
Using old terminology like "media outlet" does nothing to address the problem, all it does is frame the issue in a way that supports the narrative that these companies are mere aggregators that can bear no responsibility for the information they are disseminating.
Well, frankly, that's bullshit. You have to look at the actual effects in order to make any kind of reasonable judgement on the situation. Google and Facebook are a huge contributor to the fake news problem, and despite how difficult and maybe intractable the problem is, they are also uniquely positioned to be able to make a difference. They deserve to be held to a higher standard, and regardless of their protests, they at least have the resources to try harder.
The kinds of systems picking up these stories isn't "AI". PageRank I wouldn't classify as AI.
The real issue is that any system which attempts to organize or curate untrusted information is subject to adversarial attacks.
AI up until this point, has been mostly trained on labeled, human curated data sets. But as it starts to get trained on real user input, it'll be subject to attacks by people trying to game it. AI needs to address this robustly, but it's in it's infancy as you say.
I mean, we're still working on bias issues like machines learning that "doctor" is "male" because you trained on a corpus of English text, and therefore, most of the input text referenced a doctor as male, and that's the AI getting poisoned by cultural biases, which wasn't even an organized attack.
The real issue is that any system which attempts to organize or curate untrusted information is subject to adversarial attacks.
AI up until this point, has been mostly trained on labeled, human curated data sets. But as it starts to get trained on real user input, it'll be subject to attacks by people trying to game it. AI needs to address this robustly, but it's in it's infancy as you say.
I mean, we're still working on bias issues like machines learning that "doctor" is "male" because you trained on a corpus of English text, and therefore, most of the input text referenced a doctor as male, and that's the AI getting poisoned by cultural biases, which wasn't even an organized attack.
This is advertising platforms being given a free pass on liability for the content they get paid to distribute, nothing less and nothing more.
I have little problem with the reality that automation is taking away jobs machines are better at. We know machines build cars on an assembly line better than humans.
But generally, old jobs going away make room for new jobs coming in. And it seems to me like we have a whole mountain of new potential jobs in the content curation and moderation area. We see time and time again that this is something machines are not better at, but unfortunately, companies are very resistant to realizing their approach is inadequate.
I feel this is largely because they have no reason to. Due to a couple of laws, Internet platforms are largely not liable for these sorts of things, so they have no incentive to hire people and/or do a better job.
But generally, old jobs going away make room for new jobs coming in. And it seems to me like we have a whole mountain of new potential jobs in the content curation and moderation area. We see time and time again that this is something machines are not better at, but unfortunately, companies are very resistant to realizing their approach is inadequate.
I feel this is largely because they have no reason to. Due to a couple of laws, Internet platforms are largely not liable for these sorts of things, so they have no incentive to hire people and/or do a better job.
I think you're way off base here.
Based on the story linked, this event was the result of a situation occurring that google engineers did not anticipate. It's just an edge case that was not handled properly.
There's nothing "AI specific" about that. Clearly google is going to continue using algorithms to rank pages, and clearly this will sometimes return bad results.
Based on the story linked, this event was the result of a situation occurring that google engineers did not anticipate. It's just an edge case that was not handled properly.
There's nothing "AI specific" about that. Clearly google is going to continue using algorithms to rank pages, and clearly this will sometimes return bad results.
The people who expect the top stories on the internet returned by Google to be unfailingly factual and true are the ones ceding a human’s job to a machine.
> This is about AI in its continued infancy that’s now being actively and maliciously targeted.
Indeed. If we do end up with some sort of "malicious AI apocalypse", then it will be because some humans wanted it to happen.
Indeed. If we do end up with some sort of "malicious AI apocalypse", then it will be because some humans wanted it to happen.
I am amazed at how bad this situation is.
> Something happens.
> /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day
> some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting
> google indexes /pol/
Given that:
> Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_
> Searches for a name yield content related to a name
> Searches for "Geary Danley" yield content related to "Geary Danley"
This ensues:
> Media shitstorm because google is "citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news"
This only happens because:
1) We are expecting google to feed us only the truth? Otherwise we would say "someone took google seriously and arrived to the wrong conclusions"
2) We don't care the slightest what URL we follow from google? Otherwise we would say "someone who doesn't know what /pol/ is is taking it seriously"
3) We find it easier to blame some conspiracy than to take a step back and think? We ascribe blame to google.
4) All of the above?
I feel I am living in some bizarro world where everyone's feelings and expectations must be met, and any deviation from this will result in riots and name calling[0].
Few things exist to serve your purposes. Think before using any tool. You wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim your nails.
[0] https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intellige...
> Something happens.
> /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day
> some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting
> google indexes /pol/
Given that:
> Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_
> Searches for a name yield content related to a name
> Searches for "Geary Danley" yield content related to "Geary Danley"
This ensues:
> Media shitstorm because google is "citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news"
This only happens because:
1) We are expecting google to feed us only the truth? Otherwise we would say "someone took google seriously and arrived to the wrong conclusions"
2) We don't care the slightest what URL we follow from google? Otherwise we would say "someone who doesn't know what /pol/ is is taking it seriously"
3) We find it easier to blame some conspiracy than to take a step back and think? We ascribe blame to google.
4) All of the above?
I feel I am living in some bizarro world where everyone's feelings and expectations must be met, and any deviation from this will result in riots and name calling[0].
Few things exist to serve your purposes. Think before using any tool. You wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim your nails.
[0] https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intellige...
>We are expecting google to feed us only the truth?
To be fair, that is how Google presents things like the snippets. There's no disclaimer for the answers.
Normal non tech users wouldn't know if these were automated and highly fallible, or manually curated and somewhat reliable.
Here's my go-to example, where Google says a quarter is worth 50 cents. https://imgur.com/a/oibA7
No disclaimer or indication that this is at best, a bad guess. Also, it's been this way for months and months, even though I post it everywhere as an example. I also clicked the feedback button quite some time ago and reported it.
I understand this case wasn't a snippet. But it was labelled "Top Stories" and probably carousel featured. That sort of thing, like rich snippets, implies Google is presenting it as something more than just a search result.
To be fair, that is how Google presents things like the snippets. There's no disclaimer for the answers.
Normal non tech users wouldn't know if these were automated and highly fallible, or manually curated and somewhat reliable.
Here's my go-to example, where Google says a quarter is worth 50 cents. https://imgur.com/a/oibA7
No disclaimer or indication that this is at best, a bad guess. Also, it's been this way for months and months, even though I post it everywhere as an example. I also clicked the feedback button quite some time ago and reported it.
I understand this case wasn't a snippet. But it was labelled "Top Stories" and probably carousel featured. That sort of thing, like rich snippets, implies Google is presenting it as something more than just a search result.
I think you're entirely misrepresenting the problem.
The issue was that the data was being used in Google News, not Google Search. This doesn't just impact "what URL we follow", but how other pages get pulled in as "relevant". So we can be presented with "something terrible happened" from a news site, and "here's what we know about john smith" as relevant to the topic - without being told that the leap from 'something terrible' and 'john smith' was made by /pol/.
The issue was that the data was being used in Google News, not Google Search. This doesn't just impact "what URL we follow", but how other pages get pulled in as "relevant". So we can be presented with "something terrible happened" from a news site, and "here's what we know about john smith" as relevant to the topic - without being told that the leap from 'something terrible' and 'john smith' was made by /pol/.
It's weird that people are blaming a search engine for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a search engine first and foremost, not a media outlet. It indexes media outlets.
It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.
It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.
>It indexes media outlets.
Anyone including "4chan" in a list of media outlets is an idiot. (Or whoever enacts a system that automatically includes 4chan in a list of media outlets ... it's not important to users how they got to that result.)
Anyone including "4chan" in a list of media outlets is an idiot. (Or whoever enacts a system that automatically includes 4chan in a list of media outlets ... it's not important to users how they got to that result.)
Google shouldn't be vetting articles, but they are picking what outlets are considered "news" for inclusion in the news.google.com "Google News" aggregator.
Does anyone think 4chan articles belong there?
Does anyone think 4chan articles belong there?
I think some societal context is extremely important in understanding the situation.
Yes, Google is a search engine. Everybody who's become accustomed to modern computing technology over the past ~20 years is very familiar with what it is and what it does. At least the more technically-inclined and aware do. To you, it's a cold, logical machine that provides best-efforts based upon their heavily researched proprietary algorithms. That's absolutely correct. To others, however, it's become something else.
To illustrate:
For many people, especially the most vulnerable to being persuaded by search engine results, Google as become a word as ubiquitous as Kleenex.
When your nose is running, you need a "Kleenex", even if you mean "tissue". You probably don't care ultimately if the tissue is Kleenex brand as long as it solves your problem.
When somebody says they want to "Google" something, they mean "google". They aren't concerned, necessarily (though bias lives even in pop culture over Bing), whether you use Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, or Lycos (it apparently still exists, at least in spirit).
To that second category of people I'm using to illustrate, the problem they want solved is that they want an answer. They've become accustomed to "googling" something delivering them an answer they can generally rely upon. It's a learned habit/behaviour and, I'd argue, hardly their fault.
Yes, North American culture could do well with become more critical in its thinking and that would probably solve this issue. Sorrily, getting there isn't so simple. In fact, it's probably a compound problem in light of who is aptly taking advantage of that system of habit and trust.
Funny enough, those exploiting this problem are the same who would prefer to remove even further the ability to think critically in US society (and others), by means of cutting back on public services like healthcare and education so that bare survival becomes the mode.
I'm starting to get off topic now, so I'll leave it there.
I don't have a direct solution. I'm not sure there is one. Google is as Google does, and yes people need to improve at thinking things through, especially what they read. But if you just resign the problem to that last point, I really don't think we'll get anywhere at all.
Yes, Google is a search engine. Everybody who's become accustomed to modern computing technology over the past ~20 years is very familiar with what it is and what it does. At least the more technically-inclined and aware do. To you, it's a cold, logical machine that provides best-efforts based upon their heavily researched proprietary algorithms. That's absolutely correct. To others, however, it's become something else.
To illustrate:
For many people, especially the most vulnerable to being persuaded by search engine results, Google as become a word as ubiquitous as Kleenex.
When your nose is running, you need a "Kleenex", even if you mean "tissue". You probably don't care ultimately if the tissue is Kleenex brand as long as it solves your problem.
When somebody says they want to "Google" something, they mean "google". They aren't concerned, necessarily (though bias lives even in pop culture over Bing), whether you use Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, or Lycos (it apparently still exists, at least in spirit).
To that second category of people I'm using to illustrate, the problem they want solved is that they want an answer. They've become accustomed to "googling" something delivering them an answer they can generally rely upon. It's a learned habit/behaviour and, I'd argue, hardly their fault.
Yes, North American culture could do well with become more critical in its thinking and that would probably solve this issue. Sorrily, getting there isn't so simple. In fact, it's probably a compound problem in light of who is aptly taking advantage of that system of habit and trust.
Funny enough, those exploiting this problem are the same who would prefer to remove even further the ability to think critically in US society (and others), by means of cutting back on public services like healthcare and education so that bare survival becomes the mode.
I'm starting to get off topic now, so I'll leave it there.
I don't have a direct solution. I'm not sure there is one. Google is as Google does, and yes people need to improve at thinking things through, especially what they read. But if you just resign the problem to that last point, I really don't think we'll get anywhere at all.
Google should rank by relevance. That is their goal. Whether or not truth is more relevant than lies depends on the context.
In the context of news truth is more relevant than lies, because news is an account of recent events, not fiction.
So if I go to Google News and it displays fiction as if it was news then something has clearly gone wrong, and I don't think Google denies that for a second.
In the context of news truth is more relevant than lies, because news is an account of recent events, not fiction.
So if I go to Google News and it displays fiction as if it was news then something has clearly gone wrong, and I don't think Google denies that for a second.
Exactly, what happens when a credible news source has to _retract_ a need story?
Do we crucify Google for surfacing an expost facto false story?
It's not Google's job to verify sources of news. Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.
Do we crucify Google for surfacing an expost facto false story?
It's not Google's job to verify sources of news. Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.
> Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.
Then why bother with other sources? Just generate a random summary based on the search terms, rank it, and present it to the user if it is credible enough. Repeat as necessary.
Then why bother with other sources? Just generate a random summary based on the search terms, rank it, and present it to the user if it is credible enough. Repeat as necessary.
And if Google did start vetting articles in a more opinionated way, ie, making value judgments on content beyond popularity, they would most likely get hit with an antitrust lawsuit after someone didn't like Google's assessment.
Google became a $600bn conglomerate largely off the strength of search quality.
Yes, people should be capable of determining that 4chan isn't actually a news source, but that doesn't mean it's defensible for a Google feature intended to surface news stories to be so poor that it's trivially easy to bomb it into highlighting posts on the world's most infamous bulletin board as "top stories", even if the search term is really specific.
I wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim my nails. I would use Google with the expectation that an internet search company capable of writing software that drives cars and performs real time translation is also capable of not labelling a website which is both extremely well known and trivially identifiable as NSFW user-generated content as a source for a "top story"
Yes, people should be capable of determining that 4chan isn't actually a news source, but that doesn't mean it's defensible for a Google feature intended to surface news stories to be so poor that it's trivially easy to bomb it into highlighting posts on the world's most infamous bulletin board as "top stories", even if the search term is really specific.
I wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim my nails. I would use Google with the expectation that an internet search company capable of writing software that drives cars and performs real time translation is also capable of not labelling a website which is both extremely well known and trivially identifiable as NSFW user-generated content as a source for a "top story"
When I awoke the morning after and started searching, I had multiple, often generic searches ("las vegas shooting") that returned 4chan threads in the first page or two. I think the issue is a little more unique and involved than you describe.
4chan was discussing the issue. People were clicking said results (I can be wrong).
Should google not index 4chan?
Should google not index 4chan?
Situations like these make me really question democracies. If the voting public is so poorly educated that they don't even question the source, that doesnt bode well for the complex problems facing our society.
The whole "fake news" phenomenon is even more disheartening. That the public is getting news from their Facebook or Twitter feed and think that is sufficient speaks to a major failure of our educational system and a lack of development of critical thinking and analysis.
The whole "fake news" phenomenon is even more disheartening. That the public is getting news from their Facebook or Twitter feed and think that is sufficient speaks to a major failure of our educational system and a lack of development of critical thinking and analysis.
I don't know whether these automated news aggregators rely on machine learning per se, but this kind of reminds me of recent ML fails like Microsoft's Tay bot turning into a Nazi, or Google Photos labeling black people as gorillas.
Andrew Ng interviewed Ian Goodfellow in the first course of his deep learning specialization on Coursera. Ian said that he's really interested in machine learning security, in part guarding against untrusted or adversarial inputs.
Whether they're poisoning your network in the first place, or your network is misclassifying them because they're too weird, it seems like you need to treat random inputs as potentially adversarial.
Andrew Ng interviewed Ian Goodfellow in the first course of his deep learning specialization on Coursera. Ian said that he's really interested in machine learning security, in part guarding against untrusted or adversarial inputs.
Whether they're poisoning your network in the first place, or your network is misclassifying them because they're too weird, it seems like you need to treat random inputs as potentially adversarial.
Part of the problem is that there's no quality control in AI or ML. "Good enough to show the investors" is the benchmark.
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.
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.
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.
You're misrepresenting what the person you're replying to said.
You can check facts the exact same way we've been doing for many years - find corroborating sources, view first hand evidence (and no, you don't need to do this in person), look for analysis from trusted sources etc etc.
Even if a newspaper claims to do fact-checking or is somehow legally obligated to do fact-checking, that's absolutely no guarantee that it's facts are accurate or free from bias.
You can check facts the exact same way we've been doing for many years - find corroborating sources, view first hand evidence (and no, you don't need to do this in person), look for analysis from trusted sources etc etc.
Even if a newspaper claims to do fact-checking or is somehow legally obligated to do fact-checking, that's absolutely no guarantee that it's facts are accurate or free from bias.
> I live in Sweden. How do I fact check what happens in a neighborhood in the USA?
I question the utility of you having any opinion on US politics, especially at the local level. You are certainly entitled to one but I don't know what it gets you without a vote.
I question the utility of you having any opinion on US politics, especially at the local level. You are certainly entitled to one but I don't know what it gets you without a vote.
Well you've assumed they don't have a vote. US citizens are entitled to a vote while living abroad.
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...
[deleted]
Did we read the same comment? Being interested in world events and/or the results of clinical trials conducted overseas is in no way "having [an] opinion on US politics."
(Not to mention that a Swede can have a very legitimate, personal, vested interest in what's going on in the US, maybe the GP had family vacationing in Vegas. - I had family vacationing in France during the Paris bombings, my mother-in-law called me up frantically that day.)
(Not to mention that a Swede can have a very legitimate, personal, vested interest in what's going on in the US, maybe the GP had family vacationing in Vegas. - I had family vacationing in France during the Paris bombings, my mother-in-law called me up frantically that day.)
How is anyone sure of the results of a clinical trial, and how would proximity increase the level of certainty? In regards to world politics when could you ever be certain a report is accurate? Didn't you always have to use critical thinking?
Maybe I am moving to the town in question.
Maybe I have friends and family there.
Maybe I used to live and work there.
Maybe I have a long distance relationship with someone there.
There are millions of reasons why someone would be interesting in knowing what is happening in a place other than which they current live.
Maybe I have friends and family there.
Maybe I used to live and work there.
Maybe I have a long distance relationship with someone there.
There are millions of reasons why someone would be interesting in knowing what is happening in a place other than which they current live.
[deleted]
Snopes most definitely is NOT one of the more reputable fact-checking sites FYI.
On any issue not directly related to the divorce of the founders, it absolutely is.
There's been two stories on Snopes that haven't been able to be verified by anyone else online. They ignore many, many inquiries on the matter.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9423/did-charli...
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-write...
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9423/did-charli...
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-write...
Erhm, you click on the link? Every page on 4chan contains the following disclaimer at the top: "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact".
If you want real fake news, Google any semi-obscure health issue. You'll be lucky to find one or two .gov's among sketchy sites peddling homeopoathic cures.
If you want real fake news, Google any semi-obscure health issue. You'll be lucky to find one or two .gov's among sketchy sites peddling homeopoathic cures.
> "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact".
I believe that's only on /b/.
I believe that's only on /b/.
Look for correlations that come from disparate sources. That's how I verify stuff that happens in Sweden.
I couldn't disagree with you more.
To make this statement is akin to saying that the opinion of experts is useless. This is exactly what has lead to the flood of conspiracy theories, malicious mis-statements, and general degradation of the media commons that has put us in our present state.
I do not have the infinite amount of time necessary to fact check the flood of bullshit in social media, much less deliberate BS in politically motivated media. I rely on curators and fact checkers, experts and analysts to winnow the very narrow set of confirmable facts and conclusions from the vast sewer that you would prefer.
To make this statement is akin to saying that the opinion of experts is useless. This is exactly what has lead to the flood of conspiracy theories, malicious mis-statements, and general degradation of the media commons that has put us in our present state.
I do not have the infinite amount of time necessary to fact check the flood of bullshit in social media, much less deliberate BS in politically motivated media. I rely on curators and fact checkers, experts and analysts to winnow the very narrow set of confirmable facts and conclusions from the vast sewer that you would prefer.
> To make this statement is akin to saying that the opinion of experts is useless.
That's not at all what I'm saying - absolutely, look at the opinions of experts, just don't expect a news service to present all the ideal experts to you in one place. Go out and seek those experts on your own and verify who you think is credible and where their existing biases are.
That's not at all what I'm saying - absolutely, look at the opinions of experts, just don't expect a news service to present all the ideal experts to you in one place. Go out and seek those experts on your own and verify who you think is credible and where their existing biases are.
And how do you determine who are the experts? There are many trolls actively seeking to represent themselves as such, some more credibly than others. Once you push past those--if you can, since they grow like Topsy--then you get the actual experts with their own biases.
This very quickly becomes more than a full-time job, much more even than a single full-time person can handle. Asking every person interested in world events to spend more than eight hours a day determining the veracity of everything they read, well, it's not a reasonably proposition.
This very quickly becomes more than a full-time job, much more even than a single full-time person can handle. Asking every person interested in world events to spend more than eight hours a day determining the veracity of everything they read, well, it's not a reasonably proposition.
It's really not that hard to Google something and find reputable sources. Established names, links to well-known institutions, past history, etc.
If you expect some single organization or worse, crappy AI to put together the perfect list of experts for you, I'd be deeply concerned about your susceptibility to this kind of thing in general.
If you expect some single organization or worse, crappy AI to put together the perfect list of experts for you, I'd be deeply concerned about your susceptibility to this kind of thing in general.
> It's really not that hard to Google something and find reputable sources
You simply cannot take this position in the comments section about a story in which Google very, very specifically fails quite badly to represent factual information.
You simply cannot take this position in the comments section about a story in which Google very, very specifically fails quite badly to represent factual information.
This article is about their news aggregator failing to represent a fact check correctly, not about their search engine failing to deliver a wide variety of sources with various levels of reputability. Which it does do quite reliably. Their fact checking AI on the other hand... not so reliable clearly.
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 whatever they want and the responsibility of information accuracy and quality must fall on the layuser, that's just poppycock. That's just a way for the giants to save money while we all get questionable data with which to live our lives. Unacceptable.
To say that the information distributors can publish whatever they want and the responsibility of information accuracy and quality must fall on the layuser, that's just poppycock. That's just a way for the giants to save money while we all get questionable data with which to live our lives. Unacceptable.
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.
I am not suggesting a democratic end-user process, I am suggesting making the investment of a fact-checking department that any credible news source would be delighted to fund and create. The end-user process is the sharing, the veracity metric must be up-stream, or something that is triggered once a threshold number of users start sharing/approving something. To know the veracity of something that "goes viral" would be valuable, and the veracity metric is not something that end-users would be able to edit directly.
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.
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.
That idea is also vulnerable. Conservatives will just flag off stories from MSNBC, liberals will just flag off stories from Brietbart, the truth of the actual article notwithstanding.
They are just media commentary. Should newspapers do movie reviews or should they stick to baseball box scores?
I sort of think the radical idea is that a "news aggregator" is some new thing that can operate without editorial standards. People should be mocking Google for the shit job they do highlighting content.
I sort of think the radical idea is that a "news aggregator" is some new thing that can operate without editorial standards. People should be mocking Google for the shit job they do highlighting content.
I'm not sure about your first claim but I have found a number of Snopes articles making binary (or qubit) assertions that were very obviously full of grey area or were simply wrong depending on context.
The worst offenders were typically politically slanted (as would be expected in any human run system or ideological subject) but not only that as many academic subjects are full of internal debates with varying priorities depending on context, which made me question the utility of relying on 'trusted' 3rd-parties like Snopes for fact-checking.
If the fact-checking sources are as editorialized or based on the author's worldview on what is 'true' then it's just as bad as the root source. What then is the point?
The utility is that they offer a bit of extended research on specific claims, which larger articles or speeches often can't go into for the sake of brevity, lack of research, or occasionally (and likely less so) intentional deception. Their utility should not be fact-checking in any absolute terms.
4chan has had useful research on a number of occasions, that have gone beyond other journalistic sources, but more often the motivation is not the truth but entertainment and like any open forum has it's share of conspiracies. It should neither be entirely dismissed or given some inherent 'authoritative' credibility. This is why context matters, a context currently beyond the scope of machines, and too dangerous for a few 'trusted' humans. There's no absolute authorities on a general internet-wide scale.
The worst offenders were typically politically slanted (as would be expected in any human run system or ideological subject) but not only that as many academic subjects are full of internal debates with varying priorities depending on context, which made me question the utility of relying on 'trusted' 3rd-parties like Snopes for fact-checking.
If the fact-checking sources are as editorialized or based on the author's worldview on what is 'true' then it's just as bad as the root source. What then is the point?
The utility is that they offer a bit of extended research on specific claims, which larger articles or speeches often can't go into for the sake of brevity, lack of research, or occasionally (and likely less so) intentional deception. Their utility should not be fact-checking in any absolute terms.
4chan has had useful research on a number of occasions, that have gone beyond other journalistic sources, but more often the motivation is not the truth but entertainment and like any open forum has it's share of conspiracies. It should neither be entirely dismissed or given some inherent 'authoritative' credibility. This is why context matters, a context currently beyond the scope of machines, and too dangerous for a few 'trusted' humans. There's no absolute authorities on a general internet-wide scale.
> 4chan has had useful research on a number of occasions.
Like what?
Like what?
I believe one antifa member who broke the head of some protester with a bike was identified by 4chan using various interesting and crazy methods. These threads are archived. Police actually admitted using that information and arrested a university teacher (!!!) thanks to that info.
They found a isis training camp: https://imgur.com/gallery/NpC7k
> They found a isis training camp
From the text : "These guys weren't ISIS, just opposing Assad and Russia."
From the text : "These guys weren't ISIS, just opposing Assad and Russia."
Fact checking everything you read on the individual level is not scalable[1], or feasible. It's why we have the general expectation that journalists and Google won't feed us blatant untruths - and why we should have a conversation about it whenever it happens.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertar...
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertar...
So you prefer to be able to absorb the endless stream of lies without any refutation?
"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 introduce legislation to bring Google, Facebook, and other tech companies under US government oversight with legislation. They will not do this willingly, except possibly under the threat of regulation.
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 introduce legislation to bring Google, Facebook, and other tech companies under US government oversight with legislation. They will not do this willingly, except possibly under the threat of regulation.
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 Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".
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 Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".
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).
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).
> 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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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".
That's silly. I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".
Observationally, our society seems to have forgotten that liberties come with responsibilities. It seems that we are unaware that freedom comes with a price, and that price is not a one-time payment, but an ever-present obligation.
We have the right to a free press. Our responsibilities include vetting our information sources, responding to bad press, and providing better press should the existing press fail in its duties.
We have the right of free speech. Our responsibilities include countering dishonest speech, being mindful of our own speech, and defending the right to free speech.
We have the right to bear arms. Our responsibilities include keeping our arms reasonably repaired and secured, being educated in their safe use, and encouraging safe use from others.
The list goes on. To paraphrase a certain superhero, with great rights come great responsibilities. The system appears to fail when people ignore their responsibilities. It seems to fail when we rely on others to fulfill our duties. Every member of that society is obligated to those responsibilities, though shirking their duty has become the norm.
I don't have a solution and I am not a skilled writer, but hopefully this gibberish makes sense.
We have the right to a free press. Our responsibilities include vetting our information sources, responding to bad press, and providing better press should the existing press fail in its duties.
We have the right of free speech. Our responsibilities include countering dishonest speech, being mindful of our own speech, and defending the right to free speech.
We have the right to bear arms. Our responsibilities include keeping our arms reasonably repaired and secured, being educated in their safe use, and encouraging safe use from others.
The list goes on. To paraphrase a certain superhero, with great rights come great responsibilities. The system appears to fail when people ignore their responsibilities. It seems to fail when we rely on others to fulfill our duties. Every member of that society is obligated to those responsibilities, though shirking their duty has become the norm.
I don't have a solution and I am not a skilled writer, but hopefully this gibberish makes sense.
This doesn't scale. There's too much information out there for even the most critical of voters to verify.
The critical difference is that even if this statement is (mostly) true that doesn't mean we have adequate solutions available to solve it...
"Think of the children", etc.
A centrally controlled whitelist has as many (or more) risk than a pagerank algorithm. Moral panics about the gatekeeper's blacklist not being all-encompassing is also of questionable value... especially in regards to an event in the very early hours of a high-traffic news story which are generally full of incomplete information.
"Think of the children", etc.
A centrally controlled whitelist has as many (or more) risk than a pagerank algorithm. Moral panics about the gatekeeper's blacklist not being all-encompassing is also of questionable value... especially in regards to an event in the very early hours of a high-traffic news story which are generally full of incomplete information.
Then we've already lost. Is there any way forward, or do we just give up?
There's a recurring theme in this thread :
> [insert internet company here] did nothing wrong! It's the reader's responsibility to think critically!
Obviously, there's a lot of truth to that. I'm sure everyone here broadly agrees with the concept of personal responsibility. I just don't see how making this blatantly obvious point gets us anywhere. It's like working with a bad colleague who management won't fire. Of course they're failing at their duties, but so what? You're stuck with them. It seems weirdly nihilistic to just accept the situation, instead of trying to improve it by making the colleague suck less.
Personally, I think it's OK to trust experts. We broadly trust doctors, engineers, researchers and lawyers to inform us about their specific fields. Journalism is different, in part because of the 1st amendment : the government can regulate who's qualified to give you legal advice, but not who's qualified to inform you about geopolitics. That's a feature, with some undesirable side effects. My contention is that curated fact checking is an acceptable, if imperfect, way to mitigate those side effects. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but not every opinion is entitled to the front page of Google.
> [insert internet company here] did nothing wrong! It's the reader's responsibility to think critically!
Obviously, there's a lot of truth to that. I'm sure everyone here broadly agrees with the concept of personal responsibility. I just don't see how making this blatantly obvious point gets us anywhere. It's like working with a bad colleague who management won't fire. Of course they're failing at their duties, but so what? You're stuck with them. It seems weirdly nihilistic to just accept the situation, instead of trying to improve it by making the colleague suck less.
Personally, I think it's OK to trust experts. We broadly trust doctors, engineers, researchers and lawyers to inform us about their specific fields. Journalism is different, in part because of the 1st amendment : the government can regulate who's qualified to give you legal advice, but not who's qualified to inform you about geopolitics. That's a feature, with some undesirable side effects. My contention is that curated fact checking is an acceptable, if imperfect, way to mitigate those side effects. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but not every opinion is entitled to the front page of Google.
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).
Yes, this this this.
If they can't just rule out an image board famous for trolling, why should I buy all these stories about ai, machine learning and all the buzzwords.
If they can't just rule out an image board famous for trolling, why should I buy all these stories about ai, machine learning and all the buzzwords.
Ultimately, the issue is whether we allow freedom of speech or not (or suppressing it severely). Tech is becoming political now, it's going to end up regulated and meaningful advancements will be rare, as they will risk "rocking the boat". That is going to be the most likely result when all major tech companies bow down to "filtering", "censoring", "suppressing" unpopular opinion. Automation would in infinite limit allow perfect control; now the question is are we going to build a society for automatons, i.e. allow only predefined human interactions, or for actual humans? Freedom always brings horrible things with it, but also greatness not possible in restrictive societies.
A distinction needs to be made between the Googles and Facebooks of the world, and "tech". In practice, huge corporations love it when they can serve as a proxy for a human rights issue like freedom of speech. But there is no reason that mega-corporations with unimaginable power and increasingly control of the world's information should have the same freedoms that we allow individuals or even smaller companies. To the contrary, they need government checks and balances because there is no other counter-balancing force to their power. Over the last 100 years or so American culture has been totally subverted to this idea that any restrictions on corporate activity are inherently fascist and will destroy our economy, and the only solution to overwhelming market dominance is deregulation and magical thinking about the efficacy of the free market.
I think the distinction here is not about limiting corporations but about basic human issue of freedom (more specifically of "feeling of freedom"; unlimited freedom is out of reach even for the richest/most powerful humans). As official media are losing their raison d'être, i.e. medial control of population due to alternatives provided by self-inhibited freedom on the Internet, allowing all kinds of ridiculous information to pop up, the usual approach is to inhibit access to unapproved information sources, reinforcing the feeling of having one's freedom attacked via censorship. Word of mouth was always ridiculous, a sewer with a few pearls here and there, it was always there though... Obviously, corporations in favor of "feeling of freedom" would lose a lot where it matters, in popularity. To me it seems like the quality of "story tellers", conjuring believable lies as was the case in the past, went dramatically down and population overcame that paradigm and can't be fooled with them anymore. Trying to shove population back to ancient approaches won't work; new, smarter stories need to be invented for people to believe in. Anyone up to the task?
One thing I was thinking about was how to leverage Open Graph share details for less than reputable sites. If scammy sites lost the ability to have an image/description attached to share, wouldn't that be a powerful way to show maybe a link isn't reputable?
So many fake news sites are using high quality stock images fo OG share, and we are more or less conditioned to believe a headline with a high quality image attached, right?
So many fake news sites are using high quality stock images fo OG share, and we are more or less conditioned to believe a headline with a high quality image attached, right?
This is a problem as old as time. Just because you can find the Enquirer on the same rack as the New York Times doesn't mean they're equally valid news sources. Just read the material and decide for yourself. It's especially easy for sites like 4chan which publicly avow that all posts are "artistic works of fiction and falsehood".
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In an unrelated note, Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan began working for Google in 2016.
Google do not suprise me anymore.. its sad that we have greedy companies like google existing..
This is not some issue that you can fix. This is not some color being off, or some chat message appearing out of order. This is about AI in its continued infancy that’s now being actively and maliciously targeted.
It’s also about a huge responsibility of the worlds two greatest media outlets that both think they can have machines do a humans job and miserably failing at it.
Some users unable to log in? That’s an “issue” you “fix”.
Bringing the world closest it has been to the brink of a world war in the last 30 years, that’s the point where you step back and f'ing take responsibility for your actions and start rethinking your approach.
Sorry for the harsh words. I’m probably overreacting.