Thursday, April 27, 2017

Google reveals new tools for avoiding fake news.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

Google announced its first attempt to combat the circulation of “fake news” on its search engine with new tools allowing users to report misleading or offensive content, and a pledge to improve results generated by its algorithm. 

The technology company said it would allow people to complain about misleading, inaccurate or hateful content in its autocomplete function, which pops up to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed. 

It also said it would refine its search engine to “surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content” – and acknowledged for the first time that it had taken the measures to combat the threat of fake news.

Well I for one welcome the assistance of Google in filtering through the misinformation and fake news.

However it can never take the place of a vigilant internet surfer utilizing their critical thinking skills and common sense.


22 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:57 AM

    Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are often viewed as a "moderating influence" on her father. But as their power in the White House grows and Donald Trump tightens his inner circle, this is looking more and more like a ruling dynasty. And this dynasty is no fairy tale.

    The tale of the dictator’s daughter and her prince

    Once upon a time, there was a dictator who had a daughter. The dictator, who came to power vowing to make his country great, enacted a series of repressive policies under the guise of nationalism. He persecuted the media and the opposition, used “war on terror” rhetoric to justify a clampdown on civil rights, maintained a close but complicated relationship with Russia, and built a kleptocracy that ensured the country’s riches lined his pockets.

    The daughter seemed different – or at least, she wanted to be seen that way. She was an Ivy League-educated cosmopolitan socialite who married into a powerful business family before making her mark as a fashion designer and businesswoman. Like her father, she encouraged an avid personality cult; and like her father, she hid her own brutal practices under the pretext of a soft “feminism”, claiming to represent the ideal modern woman of her country.

    I’m talking, of course, about Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov and his daughter Gulnara Karimova. That this description evokes the burgeoning Trump political dynasty should concern you.

    For Americans, the elevation of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, into the upper echelons of the administration is an unfamiliar violation of basic tenets of American governance. The United States was founded, after all, in rebellion to a monarchy. And while there have been numerous political dynasties – Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons – there has never been such a blatant insertion of relatives with no qualifications for political office into such high positions of power.

    https://thecorrespondent.com/6591/the-tale-of-the-dictators-daughter-and-her-prince

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:59 AM


    Jake Tapper Rips ‘Cavalier’ Donald Trump Over Fake News

    “In a thriving democracy, truth matters. Facts matter.”

    CNN host Jake Tapper sounded the alarm over the dangers of fake news on Wednesday night.

    After a new poll showed that a “shockingly high percentange” of Americans believed President Donald Trump’s wild claims on Twitter in March that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered a wiretap on Trump Tower before the 2016 election, Tapper pointed out that the allegations had not been substantiated.

    Even the White House, FBI Director James Comey and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have acknowledged there’s no evidence to support Trump’s comments.

    That didn’t stop Trump and his team from “pushing ways to try to make this evidence-free claim somewhere sort of possibly in the neighborhood of almost not entirely false,” Tapper said. “Now they failed, but they muddied the waters quite a bit.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jake-tapper-donald-trump-fake-news_us_590191dfe4b0af6d718b79e4?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:19 AM

      https://www.yahoo.com/news/watergate-journalist-carl-bernstein-trump-202100915.html

      Delete
  3. Anonymous7:18 AM

    "critical thinking skills and common sense"
    Are you sure you are not asking too much of some people? I mean we can hope for them to wake the F up and grow some but really... when the prez of the MFing United States thinks it is too much to read and think then...
    I personally think this should be taught in school with reinforcement of several kinds [don't get me started on teaching methodologies] but the religious F*CKS and rethugs can't have that now can they.
    Keep 'em stoopid.
    Bread n circuses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:10 AM

      READ THIS>
      http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215462/dark-money-by-jane-mayer/9780307947901/

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:39 AM

      https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/20/fed-dysfunction-and-deadlock-former-fec-chair-will-resign

      http://www.fec.gov/members/ravel/ravelreport_feb2017.pdf

      Delete
  4. Anonymous7:36 AM

    How much does a, Contributing Writer at Sarah Palin, pay these days?

    https://m.facebook.com/mkateknorr

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:57 AM

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-wall-street-speech-400k_us_5900bf16e4b0af6d718ab7b9?72&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

      Delete
  5. Anonymous7:53 AM

    Democrats Release 3 Bombshell Documents Showing That Trump WH Committed Crimes

    Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released three documents that show that Mike Flynn committed crimes while serving in the Trump administration and that the White House is engaging in a cover-up of those crimes.

    ...While meeting with reporters, Rep. Cummings said, “I watched Sean Spicer make all kinds of excuses about how hard it would be to comply with our requests. Come on man. General Flynn served in his position for twenty-four days, so that excuse from the White House will not fly. I honestly don’t understand why the White House is covering up for Michael Flynn. I don’t get it. After the president fired him for lying. So the president fired him for lying about having communications with the Russian ambassador. They should be bending over backwards to help us. It does not make any sense, and it makes the American people think that the White House has something to hide.”

    Sen. Blumenthal said, “The evidence that Rep. Cummings just outlined is powerful, mounting, incontrovertible evidence that there has been a violation of criminal law.”

    http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/27/democrats-release-3-bombshell-documents-showing-trump-wh-committed-crimes.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous8:06 AM

    OT?
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/27/theres-no-speech-planned-but-protesters-are-converging-on-berkeley-today/?utm_term=.3475f76f7ee7

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous8:14 AM

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-apos-administration-aims-234400938.html

    "'Urgent threat' of North Korea"

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:21 AM

    hopefully that will shut down Masterclickbater Palin

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous9:08 AM

    Just need to arrest a few useless idiots here and there and it should stop. Pooty and his spy school grads, trump deranged morons, briefarts, and a couple more and that should take care of the fake news problem.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous9:12 AM

    The ticollege republicans poison and drug professors that they don't like and then create fake news. Gee Golly Missy you should not do that. Karma is a haunting bitch.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous9:21 AM

    Oh, Google! This is not at all a useful tool. It simply allows the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' machine to complain about legitimate news sites that they disagree with. With depending on an algorithm in stead of a human mind, it could make a bad situation even worse.

    And since Google results start to pop up "to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed," this new function makes no allowance whatsoever for fake news site whose names or URLs try to imitate legitimate news sites by including things like abc, cbs, nbc, etc, in their wording. Come on, Google, you can do better than that. Hire a bunch of people who can devote themselves for at least a year to ferreting out the phony news sites. I know you can afford it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. Librarians and some teachers know the more notorious copycat sites but most people don't and can be easily fooled.

      martinlutherking.org is notorious.

      whitehouse.com used to be a porn site.

      Whitehouse.net is till spoofing G.W. Bush. Looks like Whitehouse.org might be giving Trump the same treatment.

      Delete
  12. Anonymous9:50 AM

    Not Fake "The physical, chemical, and biological environments of the Arctic are undergoing fundamental changes, with important consequences for Arctic ecosystems and people living and working in the Arctic. The Arctic plays an important role in global climate and weather, sea level rise, and world commerce, meaning that impacts in the Arctic will resonate far south of the Arctic Circle."
    "Studies have linked the loss of land and sea ice in the Arctic, along with changes in snow cover, to changes in Northern Hemisphere storm tracks, floods, and winter weather patterns—even finding evidence that Arctic changes influence the onset and rainfall amounts of Southeast Asian monsoons. This evidence suggests that future changes in the Arctic will affect weather elsewhere in the world even more than they do today."

    https://climatecrocks.com/2017/04/25/5-year-study-what-happens-in-the-arctic-does-not-stay-in-the-arctic/

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous10:33 AM

    http://www.npr.org/2017/04/27/525877157/trumps-tweet-and-switch-on-shutdown-and-flynn?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170427

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous11:13 AM

    OT? Some BULLSHIT>
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUrZOZRnbME

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous3:05 PM

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/27/inside-russia-s-fake-news-playbook

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous5:49 PM

    Heaven forbid, this will block all the news coming out of the W.H.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Well, you know how that is going to be abused.

    All of the 'baggers, nazis and fascists are going to report all of the liberal sites and all the liberals are going to report Alex Jones, Breitbart and all of the hate sites.

    It's going to be a reporting war, trying to get the other shut down or labeled as fake news.

    Google better have a googol of employees vetting all these reports before they start slapping labels on stuff or banning it from their search engines.

    " Google will give you 100,000 answers. A librarian will show you how to find the correct one."

    ReplyDelete

Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.