Fake news is created and shared by people. Tech is just one of the vehicles through which we share it.
The problem isn't tech, it's people. Fix the root cause with education and the tech will reflect it.
The 10,000ft overview is that they show you whatever keeps you coming back or staying on-site longer. This gives them more ad impressions and makes them more money.
Therefore, if their algorithms determine that showing you fake news, lies, and other socially-destructive and false propaganda is more profitable... they can and will do that.
So the question is, how do we regulate what the tech-utilities get to filter from your view? Should we regulate? It's not the regulation of speech, but rather the regulation of the willful filtration of speech for profit.
i.e., "dont show this guy dissenting views to his position or he'll stop coming back", where does that fit into our needs as a society and how should our laws tackle it, if at all?
Ultimately I really don't think you can say that Google/FB's dominance is a net positive for humanity. Sure we get to enjoy a lot of "free" goods, but those goods are merely a vector through which advertisements can learn more about us. Google/FB wouldn't be rolling in it if advertisers weren't making money off from advertising through them.
I see it almost as a maladaptive coping mechanism adopted by our society at large. We have a completely self-destructive reliance on perpetual inflation-beating growth, and at this point some of the most important mechanisms driving this growth are highly sophisticated advertisements designed to squeeze every last bit of consumer spending out of the economy as is possible. Not only that, but they've collectively convinced almost all of humanity to whore out all of their own personal information just so they can browse meme pages or check up on old high school acquaintances. It's absolutely disgusting behavior that to me resembles the informed preying on the ignorant.
And video games and TV and radio and phone and books and writing. I do think the most interesting and satisfying way to do things are in person. Human physical and cultural evolution is having a hard time keeping up with technological changes.
"May you live in interesting times." Ancient Chinese curse.
Search is as bad as social, even if we give up social, it'll be hard to replace search (I read Wikimedia is working on something... a nonprofit search would be a fantastic asset to the world.)
Advertising generates a lot more than waste, in fact it may advertise to you a tool that you didn't know existed that prevents waste. Maybe rechargeable batteries or a water filter so you don't buy water bottles or who knows what, that sword cuts both ways. The ethics of advertisers and the lack of regulation in advertising though is easy to attack. That stuff is a mess.
As for Google being a net negative, I lean to your side of the argument but I think it'd be difficult and both sides would have a lot of merit; other search engines are just less efficient; think of all the man-hours of wasted research Google has saved by giving you the right result the first time, it must be billions of hours annually, maybe more. A lot of time and money has been spent competing, and the competition hasn't gotten much closer in terms of actual search results, so, if Google didn't exist, we may just be at a loss for that stuff.
As long as you realize that Hacker News is also social media.
Regulation is easy. When you wield editorial control over what people see, you should also gain some liability for any problems your decisions cause. If you don't to have that responsibility, then you need to act like a common carrier.
So you think that Google should not be attempting to filter out fake news at all? Or just, should not be ranking search results at all? I don't know how else to interpret "act like a common carrier", but I don't see how either of those would be beneficial... to anyone.
Decline to host any content from governmental agencies. Ie ban propaganda.
Instill some kind of fact checking. Maybe only post news from whitelisted domains. Make a digital equivalent of a press pass.
This sounds remarkably like an argument I've heard before, but there will always be destructive people and people seeking to profit from events like this.
In this case certain features created by tech companies perpetuate and amplify the destructiveness of those people, and that's a problem tech needs to solve quickly. Education could definitely help people filter information better, and in turn tech companies can leverage that curation to deliver better products.
The short term fix? Perhaps Google should just disable their tweet carousel (at least during certain events) until it works reliably and doesn't contribute to misinformation on this scale.
And abortion kills 2x as many as obesity.
That's not surprising since they're essentially scraping Twitter. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have a voice, but perhaps leave it to Twitter to rank tweets until Google's SNR ratio is better. Twitter just have a lot more signals to rank their users' tweets by (and for instance better assess whether tweets are being promoted by a botnet/voting ring).
If it can't discern fact from fake, it's hard to see how it wouldn't.
We are going through that all over again now. Social media -- and yes, this includes important parts of Google search now, since they've decided to include social-media platforms prominently in results -- can be gamed the same way SERPs got gamed. And instead of just being gamed by people who want to sell you things (as in the bad old days of SEO), now they're also being gamed by political entities for the express purpose of swaying the course of nations.
These platforms wield enormous influence; it's not out of the question that, say, Twitter could literally be in a position to prevent or allow a major war. But the people who own and run these platforms are absolutely convinced of their own brilliance, and absolutely convinced that they could only be beaten by someone who has better tech skills than they do, when they're currently being played like a fiddle by people who have old-fashioned media and PR skills.
Try watching a few breitbart or fox news videos on youtube in incognito mode and see what happens to the main feed. You'll end up with recommendations for info wars, roger stone and a bunch of conspiracy theories. You'll even start getting targeted ads for fake educational content like PragerU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1jdBmQcwnw)
Facebook / Twitter / Google are happy to keep feeding you this crap because it leads to more clicks, engagement and ad views. With recommenders and social graphs shaping most of what we see on the web a lot of less tech savvy people end up being exposed to a more radical looking side of the internet.
Can you imagine if, circa 1900, we had taken this attitude toward workers getting injured in factories? Blame the worker for allowing their arm to be crushed, rather than the machine for having no safe guards? If we'd gone that route, then industrial accidents would still be one of the leading causes of death, rather than the minor cause of death that it is now.
Of course, some business leaders did blame the workers, but leading companies, prodded by the government, looked to make safer procedures as well as safer machines. And so the accident rate came down dramatically.
What's happening right now with the tech companies is similar, though it is social in nature. Over the last 20 years people have allowed tech to play a central role in their lives, and they've learned this can have costs and benefits, and now they are looking for ways to reduce those costs. And the costs are social in nature, and the tech can be altered to reduce those costs.
There's a huge difference between making a machine safer and filtering news, however. The only downside to safeguarding the machine is the economic cost. With filtering news, it could end up rather dystopian and filter to fit a more complex agenda.
We're very cautious in America of any power we designate to a company or especially the government, as every power we assign is only beneficial situationally. When the situation changes, that power will likely stay with that entity, however. Our avoidance of giving away power could be classified as a bend-but-don't-break strategy, in regards to everything from news censorship to constitutional limitations (i.e. gun control).
Rather than relying on Average Joe to simply not spread fake news, we need to shame these companies for actively profiting off of spreading fake information solely because of its huge impact on people on a psychological level. You wouldn't be ok with your local newspaper publishing an entire page on why "black on black crime is the only reason people advocate for gun control" so why are you ok with a global publisher publishing this information to millions of people across the planet?
It's the fastest, most powerful, and most virulent vehicle we've found for it yet. This seems to be worthy of independent consideration, as we may have unknowingly crossed some sort of threshold.
When involved in a debate, if someone says the wrong thing, the audience does not interrupt and say "Moderator, you let the wrong thing be said. The debate must cease and you are fired." The correct thing is simply allowed to be said afterward.
There is a subtle draconian undertone to this anti-fake news rhetoric. We want tech to be responsible for our own actions, to such an extent that we are willing to sacrifice the natural flow of point/cointer-point of human discussion. Something about it just smells.
In the end, I suppose the human condition is to blame. After all, the "algorithm" is based on the collective actions of its users. But the tech companies facilitating this race to the bottom share some responsibility as well. Profiting (intentionally or otherwise) on the darker aspects of human psychology isn't unproblematic.
Also, debate moderators have increasingly been calling out falsehoods during debates. There's a difference between being "wrong" and intentionally lying. I think it's great if the audience and moderators shut down verifiable lies, but of course wouldn't want them to shut down people I just disagree with.
There are plenty of credible studies showing how people have a bias to believe things which confirm their beliefs.
That means it takes more information to convince someone something they believe is wrong.
So base fears of “the other” are always going to be easy targets for fake news purveyors.
In one way, it's a good thing news can come from anywhere and reporting is more "democratic", but clearly we also need to find solutions to filter misinformation while at the same time safeguarding freedom of information in general. And that means cooperation of those companies that enable (any) news to spread without reality checks.
Note that it is also in (particulary) Google's best interest to provide facts and not to rapidly propagate misinformation. Who is interested in using a search engine that provides false or fake information?
Its the same thing as why people are upset with Fox News. ITs because they call themselves a news organization and are supposed to be fair and balanced. So obviously people are going to try to hold them to their own words. If they had just called their channel Fox's "made up crazy shit", I don't think there would be as big of a backlash against them.
This is happening now in everything from misinformation on the causes of the civil war, to global warming misinformation, to evolution etc etc.
What’s more, the people promoting these misinformation campaigns are getting better organised and more effective at it.
Even if Google was perfect, the problem is that behavior is desirable sometimes for users. Most people searching about bigfoot probably want a bunch of bigfoot sightings or conspiracy theory stuff, not "no, there probably isn't a bigfoot".
This expectation that search results equal truth seems like a very recent assumption closely linked to this fake news development. I've never personally had that assumption myself and I am surprised to suddenly hear that it is apparently so common.