Here is an interesting site I sometimes frequent. It claims that they expose Fake News. https://leadstories.com/
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Fake News
- Thread starter Tranquility
- Start date
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Awesome! site! I like the 80's Bat Boy! feel to it! It certainly seems a reasoned! perspective! on the news!
Edit:
After reading a few stories, I'm uncertain as to why they do the graphical nonsense. Without taking a position on the stories themselves, it seems to me they are at least legitimately trying to get things right.
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf
TL/DR;
Facebook can be defined as the epitome of fake news.
TL/DR;
Facebook can be defined as the epitome of fake news.
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
I suspect this is a bot "news" item.
There was a battery at Berkeley a few days ago where a person punched an activist. The person was arrested. If you search for five things and the person's name, you'll see similar "writing" in many places. The interesting thing is, READ the article. Not for the facts, but for the syntax. Even the portions within quotes, where the article quotes people who certainly have a high level of education, the grammatical and syntactical errors are rife.
https://dvdclip.com/zachary-greenberg-5-quick-info-you-have-to-know/
An example:
There was a battery at Berkeley a few days ago where a person punched an activist. The person was arrested. If you search for five things and the person's name, you'll see similar "writing" in many places. The interesting thing is, READ the article. Not for the facts, but for the syntax. Even the portions within quotes, where the article quotes people who certainly have a high level of education, the grammatical and syntactical errors are rife.
https://dvdclip.com/zachary-greenberg-5-quick-info-you-have-to-know/
An example:
The College additionally confirmed, the assertion mentioned, that “the sufferer shouldn’t be a pupil at, or affiliate of, the College, and had joined members of a pupil group as a member of an advocacy coaching program.”
“The truth that the sufferer was not a campus affiliate has no bearing on this case. He had each proper to be on campus, and each proper to specific his viewpoint,” mentioned campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.
“The truth that the sufferer was not a campus affiliate has no bearing on this case. He had each proper to be on campus, and each proper to specific his viewpoint,” mentioned campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
I don't vouch for the tool, but, here's a site that purports to help guide people on what "news" follows good journalistic process.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/
It give you a guide on your browser if you like; and, you can vote how right it is.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/
It give you a guide on your browser if you like; and, you can vote how right it is.
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Another brick in the wall of fake "news" goes to the search engine you use to look things up.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/08/03/1419828112
Why should you care?
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/08/03/1419828112
Why should you care?
We present evidence from five experiments in two countries suggesting the power and robustness of the search engine manipulation effect (SEME). Specifically, we show that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) such rankings can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation. Knowing the proportion of undecided voters in a population who have Internet access, along with the proportion of those voters who can be influenced using SEME, allows one to calculate the win margin below which SEME might be able to determine an election outcome.
Study's abstract:
Internet search rankings have a significant impact on consumer choices, mainly because users trust and choose higher-ranked results more than lower-ranked results. Given the apparent power of search rankings, we asked whether they could be manipulated to alter the preferences of undecided voters in democratic elections. Here we report the results of five relevant double-blind, randomized controlled experiments, using a total of 4,556 undecided voters representing diverse demographic characteristics of the voting populations of the United States and India. The fifth experiment is especially notable in that it was conducted with eligible voters throughout India in the midst of India’s 2014 Lok Sabha elections just before the final votes were cast. The results of these experiments demonstrate that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) search ranking bias can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation. We call this type of influence, which might be applicable to a variety of attitudes and beliefs, the search engine manipulation effect. Given that many elections are won by small margins, our results suggest that a search engine company has the power to influence the results of a substantial number of elections with impunity. The impact of such manipulations would be especially large in countries dominated by a single search engine company.
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Full day today. Two things. One, have you heard of the video? (The one were a Google executive is talking about manipulating searches for partisan purpose. https://www.projectveritas.com/2019...revent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ ) If not, why not?
Taking it as true or not is different from if it is important. The world's main search engine manipulating each search for partisan results seems--important. Good reporters might show the facts and then come to the conclusion the statements were not representative of how Google operates. But, they would REPORT it. Right?
Second, here's an inoculation even anti-vaxers might accept.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news...game-reduces-susceptibility-to-disinformation
It's a game. That teaches you how manipulation happens. After playing it, people are not so susceptible. Science.
https://getbadnews.com/#intro
Taking it as true or not is different from if it is important. The world's main search engine manipulating each search for partisan results seems--important. Good reporters might show the facts and then come to the conclusion the statements were not representative of how Google operates. But, they would REPORT it. Right?
Second, here's an inoculation even anti-vaxers might accept.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news...game-reduces-susceptibility-to-disinformation
It's a game. That teaches you how manipulation happens. After playing it, people are not so susceptible. Science.
https://getbadnews.com/#intro
Summer
Long Island, NY
Important??? It'd say monumental.
Thanks for posting this. Played the game. Did pretty good.
His_Highness
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Report it? Not from the ones that are the enemy of the people....
Summer
Long Island, NY
Can't speak for info wars, but the other 2 are not fringe, fake or garbage websites, rather, they are considered conservative websites upholding those perspectives & values. To each his own - right, RUDE BOY?
*After I posted, RB's post was edited to delete the 2nd paragraph quoted in this post. (Edited posts don't change previously quoted posts.) I just don't know why the edit/deletion was necessary.
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Tranquility
Well-Known Member
If you don't want to believe your lying eyes, that is your prerogative. I am uncertain as to your argument, however.
Are there such things as facts?
Is something not a fact if it was told you by a really bad person? Is something a fact if it is told you by a really good person?
Again, the question did not get to the Truth or Falsity as to if Google is manipulating searches for political purposes. I'm sure @RUDE BOY and I might disagree, based on the facts we know, if they are.
But there is a taped allegation out there by a high-ranking Google executive talking about how they do that very thing. That seems a reportable event. Unless the tape is a deep fake, what possible reason could there be to a news organization putting it out there?
The question is, is this the first place you found out about it? Do a search on Google for it, see if you can get the result. Try the same on Youtube, Twitter, Reddit and Vimeo. My goodness, it's almost like it didn't happen at all. Except, it did. The person filmed has already admitted it was of her but she claims she was misunderstood. Not that it was changed or was false, but that people who see it would misunderstand what she was saying.
His_Highness
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Just to be clear....this post was a sarcastic effort to kill two birds with one stone.
I never take anything as true that comes from a company, news agency, political person or even someone who could be unwittingly stating something that has a microscopic grain of politics to it. The result is that I believe NOTHING. It's just too damn tiring to try and follow the bread crumbs needed to eliminate the doubt. I'm not even sure it's possible to eliminate the doubt. This applies to both of the birds I tried to hit earlier.
I highly doubt that I'm alone. I'm not just jaded....I'm fatigued.
grampa_herb
Epstein didn't kill himself
Summer
Long Island, NY
The fake news is not that the Google story is false, it's that the Fake News programs won't report the story because they are not impartial news organizations, therefore illegitimate: not in accordance with accepted standards or rules of reporting news that that citizens need to be an informed electorate. This meddling is known as obstruction & possibly collusion.
RUDE BOY
Space is the Place
Obstruction of what and collusion with who ?
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
On the record interview with a Google insider.
https://www.projectveritas.com/2019...lic-on-camera-tech-is-dangerous-taking-sides/
https://www.projectveritas.com/2019...lic-on-camera-tech-is-dangerous-taking-sides/
(New York City) Project Veritas has published an on-the-record interview with an insider who works at Google named Greg Coppola. This video interview follows a series of insider Google reports, including internal Google documents, recently published by Project Veritas which exposed political bias, “algorithmic unfairness,” and the use of “blacklists” at YouTube.
Coppola is a senior software engineer at Google who works on artificial intelligence and the Google Assistant:
COPPOLA: I’ve been coding since I was ten [years old.] I have a PhD, I have five years’ experience at Google and I just know how algorithms are. They don’t write themselves. We write them to do what want them to do.”
The insider spoke with Project Veritas because he wants people to be aware of his concerns about technology companies’ ability to influence politics:
COPPOLA: “Well I think we’re just at a really important point in human history. I think for a while we had tech that was politically neutral. Now we have tech that really, first of all is taking sides in a political contest, which I think, you know, anytime you have big corporate power merging with political parties can be dangerous. And I think more generally we have to just decide now that we kind of are seeing tech use its power to manipulate people. It’s a time to decide, you know, do we run the technology, does the technology run us?”
Coppola believes that Google’s political motivations have compromised the integrity of the company’s Search and News products:
COPPOLA: “I think we had a long period, of ten years, let’s say, where we had search and social media that didn’t have a political bias and we kind of got used to the idea that the top search results at Google is probably the answer. And Robert Epstein who testified before Congress last week, um, looked into it and showed that, you know, the vast majority of people think that if something is higher rated on Google Search than another story, that it would be more important and more correct. And you know, we haven’t had time to absorb the fact that tech might have an agenda. I mean, it’s something that we’re only starting to talk about now.”
Asked about Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony to Congress in December 2018, where Pichai said Google’s algorithms are politically unbiased, Coppola said:
COPPOLA: “First of all, I report to Sundar of course. And I have a great deal of respect for him as a manager. I work on the Google Assistant, which really doesn’t have a political bias. Google Assistant is things like, hey, Google, set an alarm for nine AM, play some music, that type of stuff… I think it’s, you know, ridiculous to say that there’s no bias. I think everyone who supports anything other than the Democrats, anyone who’s pro-Trump or in any way deviates from what CNN and the New York Times are pushing, notices how bad it is.”
According to Coppola, the company became more political just before the last presidential election:
COPPOLA: “I started in 2014. 2014 was an amazing time to be at Google. We didn’t talk about politics. No one talked about politics. You know, it was just a chance to work with the best computer scientists in the world, the best facilities, the best computers and free food. I think as the election started to ramp up, the angle that the Democrats and the media took was that anyone who liked Donald Trump was a racist… And that got picked up everywhere. I mean, every tech company, everybody in New York, everybody in the field of computer science basically believed that. A small number of people do work on making sure that certain new sites are promoted. And in fact, I think it would only take a couple out of an organization of 100,000, you know, to make sure that the product is a certain way…
Coppola pointed out that he believes most Google employees are not politically-driven in their work, and that the company is actually very protective of its users’ private data despite public criticism of the company:
COPPOLA: “Most people’s job [at Google] is not political and doesn’t involve politics. I mean there’s a vast number of systems and a lot of them have nothing to do with politics like processing natural language… In fact, I would say that Google actually concerns of the assistant is taking much longer to build the assistant than it would otherwise need to because there is such a respect at Google for privacy and for user data. And I hope you leave this in and I hope people realize that there is really, I would say as an insider at Google there is a lot of interest put in taking care of people’s data and conversely it means that, you know the list of reputations of mappings from new site to some number representing their credibility is probably something I can access.”
The insider expressed concern about going public, but also offered solutions for how to remedy allegations of political bias at Google:
COPPOLA: “I think the biggest problem here is just the overall lack of transparency that we have in our products today. Um, for example, if we had open source software, we would know why each answer was arrived at.”
COPPOLA: Yeah, I mean, I have a job that pays well and has other benefits like working with very intelligent coworkers and really at the forefront of computer science. The Google Assistant is probably the most advanced artificial intelligence system anywhere in the world. Then for someone like me who’s been coding since I was a kid, um, it’s hard to find a job that pushes me to the limits the way working at Google does. But I guess I just, you know, I look at search and I look at Google News and I see what it’s doing and I see Google executives go to Congress and say that it’s not manipulated. It’s not political. And I’m just so sure that’s not true. That it’s, you know, it becomes a lot less fun to work on the product. So it affects you that much. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the thing about Google is if you leave, um, you know, any other salary at any other company will be lower. Hmm. So I do think it’s a sacrifice.”
COPPOLA: “I just want to say to all the non-programmers that I really don’t buy the idea that big tech is politically neutral, and I think we need to start incorporating that into whatever strategy we use to have a democracy going forward.”
Coppola is a senior software engineer at Google who works on artificial intelligence and the Google Assistant:
COPPOLA: I’ve been coding since I was ten [years old.] I have a PhD, I have five years’ experience at Google and I just know how algorithms are. They don’t write themselves. We write them to do what want them to do.”
The insider spoke with Project Veritas because he wants people to be aware of his concerns about technology companies’ ability to influence politics:
COPPOLA: “Well I think we’re just at a really important point in human history. I think for a while we had tech that was politically neutral. Now we have tech that really, first of all is taking sides in a political contest, which I think, you know, anytime you have big corporate power merging with political parties can be dangerous. And I think more generally we have to just decide now that we kind of are seeing tech use its power to manipulate people. It’s a time to decide, you know, do we run the technology, does the technology run us?”
Coppola believes that Google’s political motivations have compromised the integrity of the company’s Search and News products:
COPPOLA: “I think we had a long period, of ten years, let’s say, where we had search and social media that didn’t have a political bias and we kind of got used to the idea that the top search results at Google is probably the answer. And Robert Epstein who testified before Congress last week, um, looked into it and showed that, you know, the vast majority of people think that if something is higher rated on Google Search than another story, that it would be more important and more correct. And you know, we haven’t had time to absorb the fact that tech might have an agenda. I mean, it’s something that we’re only starting to talk about now.”
Asked about Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony to Congress in December 2018, where Pichai said Google’s algorithms are politically unbiased, Coppola said:
COPPOLA: “First of all, I report to Sundar of course. And I have a great deal of respect for him as a manager. I work on the Google Assistant, which really doesn’t have a political bias. Google Assistant is things like, hey, Google, set an alarm for nine AM, play some music, that type of stuff… I think it’s, you know, ridiculous to say that there’s no bias. I think everyone who supports anything other than the Democrats, anyone who’s pro-Trump or in any way deviates from what CNN and the New York Times are pushing, notices how bad it is.”
According to Coppola, the company became more political just before the last presidential election:
COPPOLA: “I started in 2014. 2014 was an amazing time to be at Google. We didn’t talk about politics. No one talked about politics. You know, it was just a chance to work with the best computer scientists in the world, the best facilities, the best computers and free food. I think as the election started to ramp up, the angle that the Democrats and the media took was that anyone who liked Donald Trump was a racist… And that got picked up everywhere. I mean, every tech company, everybody in New York, everybody in the field of computer science basically believed that. A small number of people do work on making sure that certain new sites are promoted. And in fact, I think it would only take a couple out of an organization of 100,000, you know, to make sure that the product is a certain way…
Coppola pointed out that he believes most Google employees are not politically-driven in their work, and that the company is actually very protective of its users’ private data despite public criticism of the company:
COPPOLA: “Most people’s job [at Google] is not political and doesn’t involve politics. I mean there’s a vast number of systems and a lot of them have nothing to do with politics like processing natural language… In fact, I would say that Google actually concerns of the assistant is taking much longer to build the assistant than it would otherwise need to because there is such a respect at Google for privacy and for user data. And I hope you leave this in and I hope people realize that there is really, I would say as an insider at Google there is a lot of interest put in taking care of people’s data and conversely it means that, you know the list of reputations of mappings from new site to some number representing their credibility is probably something I can access.”
The insider expressed concern about going public, but also offered solutions for how to remedy allegations of political bias at Google:
COPPOLA: “I think the biggest problem here is just the overall lack of transparency that we have in our products today. Um, for example, if we had open source software, we would know why each answer was arrived at.”
COPPOLA: Yeah, I mean, I have a job that pays well and has other benefits like working with very intelligent coworkers and really at the forefront of computer science. The Google Assistant is probably the most advanced artificial intelligence system anywhere in the world. Then for someone like me who’s been coding since I was a kid, um, it’s hard to find a job that pushes me to the limits the way working at Google does. But I guess I just, you know, I look at search and I look at Google News and I see what it’s doing and I see Google executives go to Congress and say that it’s not manipulated. It’s not political. And I’m just so sure that’s not true. That it’s, you know, it becomes a lot less fun to work on the product. So it affects you that much. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the thing about Google is if you leave, um, you know, any other salary at any other company will be lower. Hmm. So I do think it’s a sacrifice.”
COPPOLA: “I just want to say to all the non-programmers that I really don’t buy the idea that big tech is politically neutral, and I think we need to start incorporating that into whatever strategy we use to have a democracy going forward.”
Just for the record the 80's Bat Boy was real. I went to school with him.80's Bat Boy!
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Tranquility
Well-Known Member
Another on search engine bias. This test had to do with searches related to recent shootings.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-...ts-70-percent-liberal-4-percent-conservative/
https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-...ts-70-percent-liberal-4-percent-conservative/