[DerfNet]

It's weird that people are blaming a search engine for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a search engine first and foremost, not a media outlet. It indexes media outlets.

It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.

[AgentME]

>It indexes media outlets.

Anyone including "4chan" in a list of media outlets is an idiot. (Or whoever enacts a system that automatically includes 4chan in a list of media outlets ... it's not important to users how they got to that result.)

[ceejayoz]

Google shouldn't be vetting articles, but they are picking what outlets are considered "news" for inclusion in the news.google.com "Google News" aggregator.

Does anyone think 4chan articles belong there?

[52-6F-62]

I think some societal context is extremely important in understanding the situation.

Yes, Google is a search engine. Everybody who's become accustomed to modern computing technology over the past ~20 years is very familiar with what it is and what it does. At least the more technically-inclined and aware do. To you, it's a cold, logical machine that provides best-efforts based upon their heavily researched proprietary algorithms. That's absolutely correct. To others, however, it's become something else.

To illustrate:

For many people, especially the most vulnerable to being persuaded by search engine results, Google as become a word as ubiquitous as Kleenex.

When your nose is running, you need a "Kleenex", even if you mean "tissue". You probably don't care ultimately if the tissue is Kleenex brand as long as it solves your problem.

When somebody says they want to "Google" something, they mean "google". They aren't concerned, necessarily (though bias lives even in pop culture over Bing), whether you use Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, or Lycos (it apparently still exists, at least in spirit).

To that second category of people I'm using to illustrate, the problem they want solved is that they want an answer. They've become accustomed to "googling" something delivering them an answer they can generally rely upon. It's a learned habit/behaviour and, I'd argue, hardly their fault.

Yes, North American culture could do well with become more critical in its thinking and that would probably solve this issue. Sorrily, getting there isn't so simple. In fact, it's probably a compound problem in light of who is aptly taking advantage of that system of habit and trust.

Funny enough, those exploiting this problem are the same who would prefer to remove even further the ability to think critically in US society (and others), by means of cutting back on public services like healthcare and education so that bare survival becomes the mode.

I'm starting to get off topic now, so I'll leave it there.

I don't have a direct solution. I'm not sure there is one. Google is as Google does, and yes people need to improve at thinking things through, especially what they read. But if you just resign the problem to that last point, I really don't think we'll get anywhere at all.

[fauigerzigerk]

Google should rank by relevance. That is their goal. Whether or not truth is more relevant than lies depends on the context.

In the context of news truth is more relevant than lies, because news is an account of recent events, not fiction.

So if I go to Google News and it displays fiction as if it was news then something has clearly gone wrong, and I don't think Google denies that for a second.

[mc32]

Exactly, what happens when a credible news source has to _retract_ a need story?

Do we crucify Google for surfacing an expost facto false story?

It's not Google's job to verify sources of news. Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.

[ominous]

> Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.

Then why bother with other sources? Just generate a random summary based on the search terms, rank it, and present it to the user if it is credible enough. Repeat as necessary.

[jayd16]

And if Google did start vetting articles in a more opinionated way, ie, making value judgments on content beyond popularity, they would most likely get hit with an antitrust lawsuit after someone didn't like Google's assessment.