Hacker News Reader

Comment by ronack | Hacker News Reader

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 question answering. Yes, they say "according to so-and-so" first, but if Google is responsible for "organizing the world's information", they are essentially endorsing that answer as the best response. They've gone too far in favor of recall over precision/reliability and need to dial it back. Otherwise you end up with crap like this:

Is Earth flat? https://www.google.com/search?q=is+earth+flat

View on HN

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.

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.

Because they can't be under US law.

> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica...

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 them. Github would be afraid to host projects because they could be sued if any of them violates copyright. It would be a very different internet.

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.

Sure it does, one of the most effective forms of provoking thought is satire.

People just don't like it when you don't think the way everyone else is thinking.

Did Google publish that? It didn't, it "answered with what it found" You asked Google, and it replied with data. There was no person at Google who decide that any of the following is true and hit a publish button.

For Google to be held liable, Google must know what is true and false for all it's knowledge base.

It is being represented as the answer to my question - visually on google.com and explicitly from Google Home. This is different than a forum, Reddit, etc. hosting a variety of content for which it is not responsible. Google is effectively endorsing a specific piece of content in response to my question. This will either need to be refined or I suspect it will be challenged in court eventually.

Try searching: Which presidents are rapists?

On mobile at least, it really does look like Google is presenting a fact: http://imgur.com/a/DZP1H

Attribution at the top, and maybe more context would help.

Note that the article Google scraped this from is NOT calling those presidents rapists. It mentions one of them was accused, but not prosecuted.

Wow, those are bad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com