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> Thank god we are finally focusing on this issue. I can not believe we allowed right wing propaganda sites to publish so much false information for so long.

This goes way beyond right wing propaganda, or left wing propaganda, or any other political position.

I'm finding it increasingly hard to get reasonable information from the web on a variety of non-political topics, too. Diet, nutrition, fitness, health...a cesspool of questionable advice on sites that look like they should know what they are talking about. Do-it-yourself home improvement projects...plenty of sites with contradictory advice, and no apparent way for the non-expert to tell which are giving good advice.

What you said is very true. I also been extremely frustrated with a lot of the sites in that category, i.e. "eHow".

I get a little uncomfortable that a private company with as much power as Google is in the position to try to determine what is a legitimate news source and what is a fake news site.

This issue goes well beyond left vs. right. Leftist fake news may not currently be as prevalent, but the number of anti-vaxxers and vehemently anti-science screeds against "chemicals" shows that there's more than enough fake news blame to go around.

You are right that it is rotting our democracy. Information has become disinformation. People are moving to a "gut" only method of deciding what information to believe.

I don't know if Google is the one to determine this by withdrawing funding from fake-news. I don't know if anyone trusts government enough anymore for them to take on the problem. How do you determine a legitimate journalist?

Thank you for making a more balanced statement than I made. I only mentioned "right wing" because I didn't want to be coy about who I thought was the main offender. Obviously you are correct that it happens else where as well. And your thing about the anti-science folks is spot on. I can't research anything for my baby without hitting some ridiculous "voodoo" type sites.

I was not clear in my OP, but I am not suggesting Google filters that information, because I too think that's wrong.

I am suggesting "certification", which is like labeling what has been approved. You are still free to visit what you want, but you can choose to trust a certification if you want.

Google is not a private company...

I wish there were a way to do this, but even as (what sometimes seems to be) the last defender of traditional newspapers, your proposal makes me uneasy. It just sounds a bit to centralized & authoritarian.

I'm also starting to be skeptical if it could have any impact: all these fact-checking projects have exposed lies for years now, mostly quite competency and convincing. But people just don't care.

Here's an idea I was thinking about: I want to use an ad-blocker for certain really annoying ads, but I do not want to cut off the lifeblood of quality journalism. I'd wish for a blocker that's more permissive, considering both the quality of the ad and the website. (similar to adblock plus, but without the blackmailing).

Your thing about fact-checkers being ignored is very true and something I had not thought about.

It is kinda hopeless when things are constantly debunked and people still believe it.

I guess I don't really know what a solution would look like then. But I definitely think there has to be a solution.

Thank goodness we can hide away and silence dissenting and right wing voices. It's not like that was a big part of what caused Trump to be elected.

I really am glad that google, facebook & co curate what political things we get shown, that fixes democracy once and for all by making us better informed citizens. /s

EDIT: To those who do not get free speech at all: By silencing people who spread conspiracy theories, you provide them with the first fact that they might be on to something. Because if they weren't on to something, why couldn't you just provide simple facts to contradict and embarrass the conspiracy theorist?

You're being sarcastic, but I'm not sure if people weren't better informed in times where just a few organizations were gatekeepers to information.

It's undemocratic, I know. They still did a better job. Now, people support parties as if they were sports teams. Politics has become mass entertainment and the relationship between quality and success is so low, I'm unsure if we wouldn't be better of selecting congress in a lottery.

Even though I do believe that insane right wing propaganda going unchallenged is an actual problem, I agree with you that it's difficult not to view this with worried skepticism and the expectation of further backlash.

I tend to think there is no real solution to that sort of thing except being regularly exposed to opposing viewpoints. I definitely don't think a government or a private organization should take it upon themselves to decide what is crazy and what is okay.

> silence ... right wing voices

If the only right-wing voices are lies, maybe they deserve to be silenced?

That's obviously not the case though. There are legitimate right-wing viewpoints, and more people should hear them, but let's not pretend outright lies deserve that same respect.

And as for dissenting voices, that's really not what this is about (at least in theory). I could buy the argument that it's a slippery slope, and that's absolutely something we need to be vigilant about, but Google has reason to value the continued legitimacy of their search results.

It's a complicated issue, but I shed no tears for suppressed lies.

There's plenty of propaganda on both sides. Quite a bit more on the right wing side most likely because it was, until recently, coming from a losing position.

Parent shouldn't have been focusing on "right wing" but neither should you. It's an overarching problem.

Conservatives are entitled to their own opinions, just not their own facts.

Everyone should be held to that, not just conservatives.

>to signal that they are a legitimate news source.

Oh good, we can kill off all of the cable news companies. Journalism could do with some of that 2007 disruptive energy from tech companies.

I, at least, can trust Google not to auto-play video/audio and for that, they can be my single source of news from the outside world. Hail Google (and The Intercept).

But seriously, this is going to take time before whatever authority on this subject becomes trusted enough to not abuse these powers. It is "Google" but someone inside of Google is going to decide it, and we deserve to know who unless they are just going to snipe one or two sites per year.

> I can not believe we allowed right wing propaganda sites to publish so much false information for so long.

Isn't it their right to publish whatever they want? I have certainly been led to believe that's their right. And I support it.

> I am at the point where I feel like technologists and journalists have to work together to establish some sort of browser based credentialing system that we give to content creators to signal that they are a legitimate news source.

We can get permission to write "the news". That'll work well.

How about we worry less about guaranteeing that the source has the right signal, and instead teach our friends and neighbors (IRL, mayhaps?) how to correctly tune in to the sophisticated, cosmopolitan collective consciousness by sifting through the bullshit. I'd imagine that'd be good for anybody participating in such a discussion.

I fully agree with your last paragraph. In "sensible" online communities, we flag, we hellban and we hide too much nowadays, creating filter bubbles for ourselves, and, more dangerously for those who fall for nonsense, and we allow falsehood to fester. Sure, many claims are absurd, but they need to be debunked, decisively and effectively.

I don't hold a candle for Hillary, but when a person I was speaking to insisted that Trump didn't release his tax returns, and neither did Hillary, I knew he was wrong (she had, in fact released her tax returns) but I didn't have the energy to debunk it.

Henceforth, although I won't engage with trolls, I will try to refute blatant falsehoods gleaned from the internet, especially when perpetuated by people I know IRL. People, especially those who are naive and don't understand how easy it is to publish and perpetuate fake stuff online, have the right to make decisions based on facts, and to understand how much junk there is on the internet.

Perhaps the Chinese model would be instructive. The government tirelessly scrubs the Internet clean of false or misleading information, all in the interests of their citizens, who honestly cannot be relied on to distinguish truth and falsehood by themselves. Surely with the American system of government such diligence is even more necessary, yes?

> I can not believe we allowed right wing propaganda sites to publish so much false information for so long.

Who is "we"?

The largest skew of our information within the US is state narrated pro-state skew - not 'left-wing' or 'right-wing' news.

And honestly it's sickening to see such an increase in what's truly rotting our democracy: people stating, in an uncontroversial tone, how we need to shut down free speech for the security of our country.

This tacit allowance on the affront to free speech was and is seen in the rise of authoritarian states around the world.

It's scary to hear such views even on Hacker News.

It has also become obvious to us that the average internet user, has no idea how to vet anything on the web.

As someone who's basically grown up with the Internet, from the early pre-web days, this turns out to have been a real surprise. I realized early on that my exposure to the early Internet played a huge role in my developing a nose for falsehoods, bullshit, fallacies, etc. I had thus naively assumed that as it became more common for young people to have this kind of exposure, that this "sense" would become more common. Sadly, this appears to have not been the case even a little bit, at-scale anyways.

This is my exact sentiment as well. I was very surprised.

Oh, right, just right wing sources. You're not biased at all. As if HuffPo isn't just as bad.

> There is no way you can defend the journalist integrity of the 'breitbart' of the web.

So far, Breitbart is the only one US big news website which published information that a Guardian columnist called for the assassination of Trump.

https://archive.is/iJYaJ#78%

https://www.google.pl/search?q=Rajesh+guardian+assassinate+t...

You won't find that info in NYT, WaPo or CNN. You won't find there information about 'Rape Melania' being one of the most trending topics on Twitter in the US either.

https://twitter.com/BobbyDellBSC/status/797865706897313792/p...

So it can be said exactly the same about them what you said about Breitbart: There is no way you can defend the journalist integrity of the MSM.

Your comment history is filled with nonsense such as "germany doesn't have free speech", "CO2 is not a real pollutant", "coal is safe", "climate science isn't real" and my favourite: There's a conspiracy on HN to downvote you specifically.

I'm not sure how qualified you are in journalistic integrity. You might well be the most qualified on this site to talk about fake news sites though.

Seriously.

For the record, I read through his comments to see what you were talking about.

You have misquoted him: "CO2 is not a real pollutant" --> "[...]It's high time to start fighting with real pollutants instead CO2"

here's the one about Coal safety... i guess? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12927586

but whatever it is, you're not arguing your point. you're attacking the person who's trying to share their views with you.

please take your responsibility to maintain an open dialogue seriously.

I did not misquote anything:

"The only thing which can't be controlled is CO2. But this is not a pollutant." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12927586

"Maybe this will help to shift the focus to real pollutants, which actually harm human health, instead of CO2." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12915575

And the sentence you yourself quoted is quite obviously missing an "of", given the poster's consistent view points on the issue.

FWIW, I have had (and still have) an open dialogue with any trump supporter that wants it; one of them I even met up with directly from here. Reasonable discussion is fun and productive.

But for similar reasons as why you don't negotiate with terrorists, I'm not going to bother arguing climate science with someone who believes it was designed as a conspiracy to make you vote Hillary or something.

Edit: Besides, inopinatus already expressed what my thoughts were on the "assassination" issue.

from my perspective arguing with climate-science terrorists looks pretty similar to shouting down climate-scientist terrorists with ad hominem.

> germany doesn't have free speech

Those who replied in that thread provided plenty enough examples confirming that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12953645

It's a shame that you didn't acquaint with them before calling my words 'nonsense'.

> CO2 is not a real pollutant

From Wikipedia: "CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful in accordance with Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals standards."

> coal is safe

If burned in modern plants, it is safe.

https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_BurningQue...

> climate science isn't real

Now it is more a religion than science. Just look on your own emotional reaction to someone who questioned it: you have compared 'an infidel' to a terrorist...

> and my favourite: There's a conspiracy on HN to downvote you specifically.

I most cases I was complaining about submissions of other users which I noticed were disappearing from lists, despite being highly upvoted. So where did you get this 'downvote you specifically' from?

>"germany doesn't have free speech", "CO2 is not a real pollutant"

How can you possibly argue against these two?

You're likely being downvoted for crude misattribution and faux outrage. That travel columnist - she writes mostly about train journeys - is a freelancer that is equally syndicated in the Daily Telegraph, which is Britain's most conservative broadsheet, as she is in the left-leaning Guardian.

It took me less than sixty seconds to establish this.

HN's reader population has a pretty good BS radar, and fake outrage based on manipulated facts ranks sky-high on that scale.

You are right, she is a travel columnist and freelancer, who works for other media as well.

But what difference does it make?

Does it make her tweet fake?

It makes it trivial remark from a British national of no apparent affiliation, and therefore entirely uninteresting, except for the faux outrage being displayed as a result.

Is calling for an assassination of President a 'trivial remark'? Your excuses of the whole situation are pathetic.

Similar situations happened against Obama and they were reported by MSM: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-demonizing-of-ba...

Do you really not see the lack of symmetry in media attitude?

I'm afraid the article you linked to contains substantial remarks from significant people. As a result it merely reinforces just how inconsequential the tweet is that was originally referenced.

In practice there is both conservative and liberal biased media available. This is why using the term "MSM" pejoratively has become (rather like that ugly acronym "SJW", or ugly nicknames like "drumpf"), the marker of someone who has decided to take sides and now wishes to complain bitterly about the other one.