Google To Prohibit Fake News Websites From Using Its Ad-Selling Software (reuters.com) 294
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is working on a policy update that will prohibit fake news websites from using its ad-selling software. The move would ultimately make it more challenging for those fake news sites to earn revenue. Reuters reports: The policy change is imminent, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told Reuters. "Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," she said in a statement. The policy change comes amid an intensifying debate over how much responsibility technology companies bear for monitoring the accuracy of content as more and more people access news through sites such as Facebook rather than traditional media companies. Facebook, in particular, has been criticized over the spread of inaccurate articles promoting U.S. president-elect Donald Trump on the site. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has denied that the site influenced the outcome of the election. Google's AdSense advertising network is a key financial driver for many publishers. The company places various restrictions on where its ads may be placed, including bans on pornographic and violent content. Work on the policy update began before the election, Faville said.
How many fucking stories do we need about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's been a shit ton of these stories on the front page already. Isn't there anything better to talk about? This is a big part of why Slashdot sucks now. It used to be a mix of lots of stories that would appeal to nerds, but now we get a barrage of stories about topics like this. Slashdot used to be a site where nerds and people working in IT could get practical ideas and keep up date on trends in hardware and software. Those days are long gone, and Slashdot pretty much sucks now. And no, I'm not saying this isn't relevant, just that we don't need more stories about it.
Re:Trump didn't win (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the alt-right and the alt-left are both a pack of delusional morons. This is the source of fake news; if you write it, no matter how absurd, there's some fucking retard partisan who will lap it up.
Re:Trump didn't win (Score:5, Insightful)
You've hit on an important point, but not carried it far enough. The reason we're inundated by fake news is that the more blatantly extreme and fake you make your story the more people will feel compelled to share it.
Every obscure website dreams of the riches that will result from one of their stories going viral. They've now caught on to the fact that making up political lies to get a fake "scoop" on something that will really outrage hyperpartisans into thinking that the future of civilization depends on forcing everyone they know to read your story is the most effective shortcut to do that. I'm sure some of these stories are manipulation for political reasons, but some of them are just in the interests of profit. And their profit is what google is hoping to make a dent in.
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I'm the guy that doesn't suffered paranoid delusions and imagines every dark corner contains someone trying to fuck me over.
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The reality is there is only one way to test the 'News' and that is in a court of law. So realistically if they want better 'News', they need to turns 'News', into a protected word. Use it in the title and by law you should be required to be truthful and accurate. Should be you subject to a legal challenge and proven to be inaccurate, then dependent upon the damage of the inaccuracy and whether intentional or accidental, there should be a penalty applied, either custodial and or a major fine and or being ba
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Can you explain exactly what is problematic about deciding that a story about, say, "X said Y" with multiple sources agreeing and Twitter retaining the tweet in question?
This idea that nothing is true (even if tested in court people will just claim the system is rigged/broken) has to die. Just really wanting it to be untrue doesn't make it so, or vice versa.
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If you do that, "News" wil quickly mean the same as "propaganda".
Is this the end for the Onion? (Score:2)
Re:Is this the end for the Onion? (Score:5, Insightful)
there are a lot of people who visit the onion on purpose looking for satire/humor. plus the onion's biggest 'marketing' strategy (IIRC from a report I read) was actually social media sharing and the like.
The onion also doesn't "misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," It readily admits that it is satire. so it shouldn't be affected by this.
Re:Is this the end for the Onion? (Score:5, Funny)
It readily admits that it is satire...
Which turns out to be more truthful than the "serious" sites...
Oh great.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just what we need... Google deciding what is and isn't real news. What could possibly go wrong?
This is a backdoor way to kill free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
The goal is to eliminate "fake" news, but the problem isn't even who defines what is real, what is opinion, and what is factually untrue. The real problem is google has stated its intention is to starve sites they dislike into nonexistance.
Are sites with news about "Ancient Aliens" banned? Easy to show as fake news, but as history channel shows - hugely popular and what many in the public enjoy. Real? Fake? Who cares, the public wants it.
News stories about Clinton Foundation "pay to play" corruption. "Someone" will decide if this is misleading fake news. No convictions yet, must be fake. Ban them and bury the story.
News story about Trump being racist? No proof he isn't, must be legit. Pay the website.
This is how the internet will die, in a flood of corporate decided and approved facts and filters.
Why buy the politicians anymore, when they can own and control what is considered worthy of being "legit"
Re:This is a backdoor way to kill free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus H Christ, are we on such a low point that "sites will starve" unless Google gives your money?
PS: What's with this shit about "no proof" on Trump being racist? He's on record making racists remarks during his own campaing, for fucks sake.
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Many of us have been asking (for close to a year and a half now!) for a verbatim racist quote and a video of the words coming out of his mouth. No takers so far.
Are you up to the challenge? Should be easy, since you claim that he is "on record making racists [sic] remarks".
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Oh, the ones about all Mexicans being rapists and murderers
Provide a full quote.
You've failed again to do that simple thing.
He was talking about illegal aliens of the Mexican variety, which is not "all mexicans." The ones breaking our laws are criminals you know. Every single mexican here illegally is a criminal. 100% of them.
Apparently google would demote everything you say, since what you say is fake.
The facts are that the cries of racism about trump have always been of the special-snowflake social-justice-warrior variety. In this version of racism its "
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“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
–Presidential announcement speech, June 16, 2015
“I can never apologize for the truth. I don’t mind apologizing for things.
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I don't see any racism in any of those quotes. Even if I pretend that "Mexican" or "Mexican Government" is a race, I still don't see it. Many illegals are criminals. Is that even controversial? Are people claiming that only angels are crossing our southern border?
Please explain.
I've seen it said that the most racist thing that Donald Trump ever said was:
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Sure. Let me transcribe his full speeches until i hit something that doesn't make you uncomfortable.
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No, i'm of the school of though where calling every single illegal Mexican immigrant drug dealers and rapists is racist, you dickwad.
The scary thing is how effectively this cheap rhetoric seems to work on people like you.
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I see. Well, i think all Anonymous Cowards are drug dealers and rapists. But hey, some - i assume - are good people!
Re: This is a backdoor way to kill free speech (Score:2)
What's wrong with being deportable? To coin a phrase, half of Hillary Clinton's supporters are what I would call a basket of deportables.
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Ah, so you were only being racist towards illegal mexicans.
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Ah, so you were only being racist towards illegal mexicans.
See what you did there? You just transfered Trumps alleged racism to me. You couldn't provide proof of his racism, so now I gotta be racist too?
I didnt even vote for Trump you dumb fucking triggered liberal liar.
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Damn right i am. I quoted the guy verbatim being a racist and you argued he is "talking about illegal aliens of the Mexican variety" (sic). Rationalize that however you like.
But hey. I'm sure you assume some are good people.
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You just transfered Trumps alleged racism to me.
Well, yeah. Racism is transitive. If you vote for the racist guy, that means you are supporting racism. That makes you racist.
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Not when done under duress.
Well, i'm sorry, but that comes in the package.
What's really scary is how flat out open racism and xenophobia aren't electoral deal breakers anymore. People just don't give a shit. Hasan Minhaj made a very poignant statement on the matter a couple days ago: you might not support Trump statements, but you don't really care either. Honestly, it is just as bad.
How is "Mexican" a race? (Score:2)
How is Mexican a race? In terms of genetically heritable appearance, Mexicans vary from light-skinned Caucasians indistinguishable from European Spaniards to dark-skinned Mestizos to those more similar to indigenous peoples of North America.
I see a huge variety here in Minnesota with no dominant characteristic beyond shorter than most of the Scandahoovians, a height difference I'd ascribe to something between genetics and poor neo/postnatal nutrition.
Trump's broad brush might best be described as xenophobi
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Absolutely goddamn right.
Well said.
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Complaining that muslims are not liked by a non-muslim is like complaining that blacks don't like KKK members. You generally don't like those who are opposed to your way of life.
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This goes beyond "not liking". The guy flat out called to close the borders to people based on their religious beliefs. Is that even legal under US constitution?
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Is that even legal under US constitution?
Yes. The President has the authority to ban any group of people from coming here at any time for any reason. This is rather important because if you wind up in a war, it's nice to be able to say "we're banning all Germans from coming to the US" without getting sued for being racist against Germans.
The free exercise clause only applies to people within the jurisdiction of the US. If you're a muslim in Saudi Arabia and you apply for a visa, you're still sitting in Riyadh when the immigration official stamps i
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What about citizens? There're close to 4,000,000 Islamic US citizens; it is in fact the third largest religion in the country.
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No, not citizens. But he wasn't talking about citizens, he was talking about foreign travelers. Which makes sense when US-backed forces have wrecked the middle east over the past 15 years...maybe it's not the best idea to let them into the US right now in case they want some revenge. Also, many US presidents have done similar things. Obama banned travel from Iraq for awhile, Carter banned travel from Iran, etc.
The purpose of the government of the United States is to protect the people of the United States a
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The term "racism" has been so misused that a lot of people now think "so I'm a racist whatever I do because I'm white, fine then I'll be a racist. Now fuck those niiggers".
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It's actually fairly easy to determine with a very high degree of probability if news is fake or not. If it's some random blog site or Breitbart publishing it, and none of the other mainstream news outlets pick it up, it's probably fake. If it's not fake, other journalists will look at it and pick the story up.
For example, story about Trump being racist. Did many web sites with a reputation for at least basic fact checking use the same quote? Does his Twitter feed contain that quote? Then yes, opinion of if
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It's just alt-right fantasies that have been proven to be bullshit,
It's #7 (obsession with plot) on Umberto Eco's tests of ur-facism [nybooks.com]. Trump actually fits all 14 tests remarkably well.
The list of tests was written in 1995 when Trump was an unsuccessful business man, burning through daddy's money with a succession of bankruptcies.
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It's hard to know how dangerous he really is, because he acts like a child but does actually have all that power. When things aren't going his way it's all rigged and a giant conspiracy against him, when he wins it's all fine.
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It's hard to know how dangerous he really is, because he acts like a child but does actually have all that power.
Indeed. One cause for concern is how easily goaded he is, for example the whole "small hands" thing and getting into 3am twitter fights with former models. Who knows what he'll be goaded into by experienced politicians.
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I think the goal is more to prevent wasting investments, like the investment they did in Hillary which is now worthless.
Tough times ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
For NBC then. Now we need Google to ban:
- sites that intentionally withhold news stories from the public for partisan reasons
- news sites that feed pre-selected questions to a candidate before a debate
- sites that frame Hillary getting investigated by the FBI as "Republicans pounce on Hillary allegations"
- Upworthy
- IPCC predictions
- political polling
- Twitter
- and the rest of everyone trying to troll and clickbait and hyperbolize current events
Re:Tough times ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is drawing the line at fake news, there is nothing wrong with that. You are drawing the line at news not made in the best spirit, that is fine too. Just not where google chose the line.
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Google is drawing the line at fake news, there is nothing wrong with that. You are drawing the line at news not made in the best spirit, that is fine too. Just not where google chose the line.
I think you need to sit down in a darkened room for a while and work out why that is incredibly stupid. Neither you, nor Google or anyone else, are capable of judging 'fake news'. One person's opinion is another person's fake news. The world just cannot work like that.
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Do polling results that give Clinton an 86% chance of winning the election just one day beforehand count as fake news?
https://imgur.com/a/ZIt8h [imgur.com]
Will the NY Times be on the list of publications prohibited from running Google ads?
It's either manipulated data, or it's grossly flawed and incompetent. Pick one. I would think either fulfills the criteria for "fake".
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As HuffPo said, Nate Silver was obviously putting his thumb on the scales [huffingtonpost.com] when he forecast a 35% chance of a Trump win. "It’s not easy to sit here and tell you that Clinton has a 98 percent chance of winning", Ryan Grim wrote. (He still hasn't owned up to how badly he bungled the statistics.)
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You do understand that even 86% isn't a dead cert, right?
If I tell you you're unlikely to roll double 6 and you do doea that mean I'm lying or that you're an idiot for not understanding statistics?
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Actually, the geologists weren't predicting the earthquake, they were DENYING the earthquake. The region was undergoing a fair bit
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sites that frame Hillary getting investigated by the FBI as "Republicans pounce on Hillary allegations"
It's sad that people can't even tell the difference between news, i.e. reporting of the facts, and opinion/editorial these days.
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The main difference is that "news" stories in the US are almost all editorializing. For facts, we need to learn to pick through the subtext. Or read foreign news sources.
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Try Reuters or AP, they do simple factual statement style releases that the other news outlets then pick up and editorialize. The BBC has a more readable style and makes a genuine effort to stay neutral, if those two are too dry for you.
Is anyone even reading these days? (Score:5, Informative)
"Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property".
This is straightforward. Why is everyone acting like Google is trying to control news?
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People are no longer able to distinguish between biased news and fake news, conflate the two, and consider their favored made up stories to be morally equal to any bias in the opposing ideology's mainstream media. It's sick. Personally, as a liberal, I have no problem with the existence of the likes of FOX News -- they're biased, but they're just putting their slant on stories that are at least connected to reality and open to evidence. All news sources do that because everyone has some bias as a result of
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But the announcement has nothing to do with news. Why is everyone acting like it does?!
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The first "media" to point this out is anything but conservative. It was SourceFed [youtube.com]
"Google has been actively altering search recommendations in factor of Hillary's campaign."
Of course, if you lean Democrat then thats not a problem... funny how bias works.
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The irony of you providing a YouTube link to prove Google biases news was delicious. Thanks.
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You really need to read that sentence up there again.
Re:Is anyone even reading these days? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, Google is saying you can't advertise a website that purports to be ABC News if you are not ABC News. I'm still trying to figure out your problem with this.
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You and me both. I don't know what bothers me most, that Slashdot is running so many misleading headlines lately or the fact that people can't seem to bother to think about what they read anymore.
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No, they are saying that you can't run ads through Google's ad network on a website that purports to be ABC News if it isn't actually run by ABC News.
It might have an effect if all the other ad networks out there adopt similar policies, in which case there's probably an antitrust argument to be made against the ad networks.
Finally... I hope (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean I can stop getting stories on my Google News page from 'Ecumenical News' and 'Christian Daily', two religious news web sites that apparently went belly-up some years ago, had their domains purchased by scammers, and now serve clickbait bullshit constantly? All they ever do is somehow zero in on some search term I used recently and then feed me fake headlines about that thing.
Like, for months now, I've constantly had a story on my news page about Rick and Morty (which I searched for one day in July, and these stories started the next day) from one or the other of those sites. Today, it's "'Rick and Morty' season 3 update: Release date revealed and other spoilers" from Ecumenical News. I don't click them; they're just a gibberish mishmash of rumors from elsewhere on the web. I 'Personalized' my Google News feed and set both of these news sources to the lowest they'll go, but unfortunately, it seems impossible to exclude them completely.
Before that, it was a constant stream of rumor-mill bullshit about The Arrow and the drama between cast members. These sites are NOT NEWS, they're just algorithmicly generated clickbait. Preferably, they would both die a fiery death, but in the meantime, if I could just get them off of my news feed, I'd be mollified.
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Try installing Privacy Badger and maybe turning off your search history on your Google account. That should get rid of that crap.
Define "fake"... (Score:2)
... and why is Google doing the defining...?
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Google doesn't have a monopoly, for the record.
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Google doesn't have a monopoly
it sure as fuck does in online advertising.
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I binged "google monopoly" and it turned up loads of sites about how Google is a monopoly, so I think you might be wrong about that.
Fire BeauHD (Score:4, Informative)
F**king BeauHD cannot get over the butt hurt of the election. His twitter feed, "Trump is a saggy sack of shit. If any one of you is even remotely considering voting for him this November, please unfollow me. "
"That sack of shit next to Hillary is attracting flies! #debate"
"Clinton wiped the floor with Trump tonight. Say hello to your next president, America!"
" It's only a story because it has the 'Trump' buzzword. Stupid media is stupid."
"I bet Trump hired the climber for publicity."
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Where are all the Free Speech Warriors? Masahki? Come on, you defended Eich's "right" to say offensive stuff in public and keep his job, why aren't you leaping to the support of BeauHD now?
Re:Fire BeauHD (Score:4, Insightful)
No one gives a fuck what viewpoint he is "having". Lots of us care very much about what viewpoint he is abusing his position as editor to spread.
Do you remember the 2 or 3 days last week when every 3rd or 4th story here was about how we were all going to die because Trump won? Guess who posted a big chunk of that...
"Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic To Lead EPA Transition"
"How President Trump Could Destroy Net Neutrality"
"Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook"
"Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College?"
"Silicon Valley Investors Call For California To Secede From the US After Trump Win "
Is this what you want? Yet another site posting Democrat propaganda 24/7 with a sprinkling of technology news on slow politics-news days?
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Is this what you want? Yet another site posting Democrat propaganda 24/7 with a sprinkling of technology news on slow politics-news days?
Judging by the numbers of comments on the articles like this versus the number of comments on articles actually about software and hardware topics, yes, that's precisely what the vast majority of /. wants.
And yes that sucks... join me in the puppy and coloring book filled safe space?
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Interesting that you complain about all the articles putting Trump in a bad light but not about any of the ones putting Hillary in a bad light.
Seeing that mainstream media is mostly (Score:2)
Seeing that mainstream media is mostly fake nowadays, news sites should worry. Especially liberal lapdogs like HuffPo, WaPo, CNN and so on.
No more jury duty! (Score:2)
Just have the prosecution put up a web site claiming that the accused is guilty and the defense put up one saying innocent, then the judge can check to see which Google accepts or rejects.
Likewise good for hiring decisions, investment decisions, policy decisions etc. Kind of like a boolean Ouija board.
Let's test it on whether we should go see the new Star Wars movie, which doesn't seem to be generating the usual hype.
Who Becomes Executioner? (Score:2)
TW3 (TWTWTW) (Score:2)
That Was The Week That Was (UK)
That Was The Week That Was (US)
The Daily Show with *
The Onion
Fox News
As long as we all can see the difference between satirical news coverage
(which tends to bend the facts a bit (left/right it doesn't matter)) for the laugh
and bs stories passed off as "hard news". We can't as a platform. We all just
gotta pay more attention.
Fake News Site (Score:2)
Are you for this but not against deceptive ads? (Score:2)
So many sites have ads that look like news items or download links.
Let's do something about those, too!
Parody and satire (Score:2)
fake articles on just Donald Trump? (Score:2)
Fake articles seems to be a new "approach" in Internet media that is becoming increasingly common. A title that is either favorable or unfavorable to a particular party with an article that says whose contents are the exact opposite with facts that are based on celebrity quotes or opinions rather than facts. This approach may have been used during the political process in 2016, but I have seen this style of writing growing. It seems to be turning Internet media into a supermarket tabloid across the board
Re:Washington Post Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
What about CNN, that was lying about it being illegal to read Wikileaks [youtube.com]? And yes, that was a lie, read this: https://popehat.com/2016/10/17... [popehat.com]
Why didn't they want us to know about it? Oh, because we have emails between CNN and the DNC, they leaked the debate questions. Then they brought Donna Brazille on there to tell us they were somehow modified. Except, not so fast, Donna: they have DKIM authentication, which provides non-repudiation. And make sure you actually read the damned DKIM headers, because they include the b and bh parameters. So if you try and tell me they only protect the headers, you're going to get a lecture on the DKIM specification [slashdot.org], because you're not just wrong, you can be mathematically proven wrong.
Anyhow, there's no great loss to the clickbait sites. Good riddance to such. However, inasmuch as they believe they can use this to control what people say and believe, I can only remind them of the Streisand Effect [wikipedia.org] and laugh. Google took down the video from this story quite a few times before they started allowing it once it hit the news: http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
In case you're wondering what Snopes says about it, they say it's "mixed." You see, there was a fender bender and the guy wanted to exchange insurance info before they brutally beat him and dragged him from the back of his own car, which they stole while nearly killing him.
Re:Washington Post Amazon (Score:4, Funny)
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or a hard worker for Putin
Really? We're scared of Russia now? The Cold War ended because the Russian economy completely collapsed and still hasn't recovered to anything like the previous levels. Their GDP is under a tenth that of the USA or EU and has been declining steadily for years. Their GDP is slightly above that of Spain and well below that of Italy (two of the 'failing' economies in the EU, which are both a fraction of the size of Russia).
Mexico has an economy that is only about 20% smaller than that of Russia. Should
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I got logged out somehow, the parent was me.
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> Unlike PKI, DKIM has no revocation list mechanism natively. If one were to steal the keys, the best anyone could do is say "No, really, that email that appears to be sent from me and signed by me really wasn't!"
Two points:
* There is a way to revoke the keys [dkim.org], even if it doesn't involve CRLs or OCSP -
Re:Washington Post Amazon (Score:4, Interesting)
A) CNN didn't say anything about people with clearances, instead they divided the world into two groups, the media (where it's okay) and the rest, where it's not okay.
B) That part is explicitly covered in the Popehat article which I linked, anyhow.
C) Wikileaks publishes all verifiable and true material leaked to it and goes for maximum impact, but they're not a hacking group, they can only operate if they have leaks.
For most leaks, you can simply go to ABC / CBS / NBC and avoid playing spy. Wikileaks was needed here, because the media themselves are complicit in many of the things in the Podesta dump. I mean, we have emails like this one [wikileaks.org] showing them going behind their own lawyers' backs to send donors to the Washington Post's party, after being forbidden to put it on the price sheet. That really looks like a campaign donation of some kind, and their own lawyers explicitly forbade it. This is just one of many, many, many such examples. With the media doing things behind everyone's back, how can we be expected to just shut up and trust them, as CNN tried to encourage?
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Technically if you have a clearance it might be illegal to read wikileaks depending on the link used, since that would technically be facilitating the distribution of classified material. Make no mistake about it. Posting something classified on wikileaks does not remotely make it unclassified.
Correct that publicly publishing classified material, whether on Wikileaks, a newspaper, or on Slashdot, does not declassify the material. It's not illegal to read such material whether or not you hold a security clearance; however, if you do hold a clearance and you suspect that classified material has been made public, you are obliged by law to report it to the appropriate authority (usually that would be your Facility Security Offficer).
Re:Washington Post Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe Google should just get out of the censorship business, rather than trying to use their ad service to micromanage what people see and hear. Fake news is not good, but it is not Google's job to "correct" it. By feeding the conspiracy theorists, they are just making the problem worse.
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Tough decision.
Re:Washington Post Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
But there's no way for them NOT to do that. Ad-revenue follows the amount of views, which means if they do nothing they're essentially taking a stance of 'we'll facilitate the spread of any type of mis-information as long as it makes us money". So they're already doing it now, they're just slightly changing their parameters. It's their product and platform, they have no obligation whatsoever to spread lies to make money if they don't want to.
And why not? It's a search engine, the point of which is to provide people accurate information. If some trolls/hackers/political shills/whatever try to skew the search results so that upon googling thing X, instead a completely unrelated/false article Y comes up, that means their product is not operating as intended and they should correct it.
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And why not?
Because it will disproportionately affect the right.
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The onion (Score:3)
How exactly will try differentiate between satire and fake news?
The answer is if course that you cannot.
Stupid announcement.
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How exactly will try differentiate between satire and fake news? The answer is if course that you cannot.
One is intentionally trying to deceive, the other isn't. Seems straightforward.
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I'd have thought the election would have calmed you down a bit, Mr Bannon.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politic... [nbcnews.com]
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I figured they were referencing this, actually -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Washington Post Amazon (Score:2)
That's stupid. Why don't you look around Breitbart a little before you fall into that trap. It may be a partisan news site, but it is clearly not anti-Semitic.
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You've really cut into Mark Cuban's revenue. Well done. Before you know it, he'll be broke and destitute.