Google isn't doing very well on "socialist". One of the "Top Stories" is WorldNet Daily: <i>"Chilling! Left on brink of socialist victory in U.S.
'We have to have the courage to say something is wrong. This is insanity'
Published: 6 days ago"</i> That's not even fake news. That's like news from an alternate universe in which Bernie Sanders won.
By no means do I agree with much of what is on the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). However, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, their website has content that should rank very highly:<p>1) Much of their content is original (i.e. not copy-pasted from other sites)<p>2) A majority of the page is composed of text, rather than images or ads<p>3) Where there are ads, they are minimal and largely hidden from view.<p>4) Their website is well organized, with clear and descriptive links.<p>5) Their website is updated frequently and new content is posted regularly.<p>So, assuming that WSWS is linked by other sites on the same topic, it seems that it should rank highly in Google search queries. Maybe there is something else that would reduce their ranking, but it doesn't seem obvious to me at first glance.
Imo these filter blocks are problematic. Maybe google can flag the content with a visual cue instead of participating in censorship. I remember in high school we had a class 'critical thinking', wonder if it is still is taught and whether it is so in other places of education. People should filter content or at least be helped to instead of hering people away from 'harmful' topic. Behind fake news idea there is an elephant in the room - feeble minds, perhaps this is the real problem.<p>this goes without saying google should promote higher quality content regardless and spammy content should be rated as such.
> "Google said it had added more detailed examples of problematic pages into the guidelines"<p>'Problematic'. There's that word, again. The news need not even be 'fake' anymore. Simply 'problematic' will do.<p>Here's Mark Zuckerberg not long ago:<p>> While the amount of <i>problematic</i> content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue.<p>Problematic to whom, one wonders? The loser? Those who feel most aggrieved? This is little more than an attempt to sanitize information so that all that remains is the pre-approved 'least problematic' truth (fact-checked, of course).<p>Hillary Clinton, with much irony and little self-awareness, summed up the intent behind this move in her latest book:<p>> “Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism....This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. “The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly <i>the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves</i>”.<p>So the message is clear: Trust us, you dolts. We know best.
I seems to me that Google are 'damned if they do, and damned if they don't'.<p>They get loads of stick for linking to fake news, but if they try to do something about it they get loads of stick for 'trying to control what we see'.<p>The biggest culprit in the spreading of fake news is ourselves. The number of times I see friends spreading stories on Facebook that smell false on first viewing, and can be shown to be false with a 20 second Google search is amazing.<p>Nobody can be arsed to spend a tiny bit of time fact checking and when you call them out on it they just shrug and give the feeble 'just in case' excuse.
Fake news isnt done to convince you about a poltical opinion its mostly done to get you to click the link or share it and through that make money on advertising. Judging it on some truth parameter is absurd instead it should be judged on its advertising strategy IMO.
Remember when the right wing groups were up in arms about the
censoring of non-liberal news by the news moderators and FB had to reorganise the whole team.<p>Now we know the so-called liberal bias was that they were censoring all the (mostly) right wing fake news stories coming from the Russian backed troll teams.
IMO, I think that there's a more troubling problem brewing behind the scenes.<p>I believe Google increasingly doesn't understand their own outputs. This is also true of products other than search like youtube related content and ads.<p>They have put so many eggs in the AI basket they're not really sure if the eggs are being made into omelet or boiled or pidan.<p>It's a kind of Algorithmic Dissociative Disorder.
I recall Eric Schmidts remark in a meeting with Charlie Rose back in 2005:<p>"When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do, well, that is a bug. We should be able to give you the right answer. We should know what you meant."<p>What is "right" or "wrong" (or problematic) today will more than likely later be proved the opposite.<p>This is censorship. It doesn't matter what the meaning of problematic is.<p>We are headed into a digital dark age.
<i>Google has often said that it cannot reveal too much or people would use that information to try to game the rankings</i><p>Isn't this the same "security by obscurity" argument?