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by mtgx
3364 days ago
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He took the "best case scenario" there, or the scenario in which it may be most difficult to screw-up the fact-checking. What I'm more worried about is what happens when CNN, NBC, and WashPost agree on a story narrative that is is actually false. I mean, how many media entities said Iraq had WMD before the war? Most of them? In that scenario, will Google be able to figure out who is actually telling the truth? And would "reputable" sites such as those have their articles flagged for falseness if Google does come to a different conclusion? Or will Google only target lesser known sites for flagging because "nobody cares if they disappear from the internet or are flagged the wrong way anyway" (which is actually the pro-censorship argument). Let's not forget China has used the "We want to stop false rumors" argument since the creation of the Great Firewall. And surprise, surprise - it wasn't used just to stop "false rumors". |
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You're conflating two different categories of error. In the case of Iraq WMD, the claims were attributed to the government agencies making them and most stories noted when experts (e.g. the UN inspectors, French intelligence, etc.) either disagreed or simply pointed out the lack of corroborating evidence. Additionally, all of the credible media published followups and corrections over time.
What we've been seeing a lot more lately are National Enquirer-style complete fabrications where no detail in the story is backed up by a verifiable source and nothing will be retracted, no matter how flagrantly wrong.
Google could stop the latter by flagging sites which don't cite real sources or retract known fabrications. That doesn't mean that they need to be the content police – a site which wants to say policy X is terrible could still run op-eds or simply quote real people (“Sen. X says other party's plan will …”).