Google and Facebook Have Failed Us - The Atlantic
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/google-and-facebook-have-failed-us/541794
In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet.
But they did not do so by themselves: They used the infrastructure that Google and Facebook and YouTube have built to achieve wide distribution. These companies are the most powerful information gatekeepers that the world has ever known, and yet they refuse to take responsibility for their active role in damaging the quality of information reaching the public.
Freshness : comme tout vulgaire chasseur de scoop, Google extrait des informations de tendances et de la fraîcheur d’une information... pas étonnant que cela favorise les rumeurs. Depuis le début, on sait que sur internet « la rumeur a fait le tour du monde avant que la vérité n’ait pu chausser ses bottes ».
The note further explained that what shows up in “In the News” derives from the “authoritativeness” of a site as well as the “freshness” of the content on it. And Google acknowledged they’d made a mistake in this case.
The thing is: This is a predictable problem. In fact, there is already a similar example in the extant record. After the Boston bombings, we saw a very similar “misinformation disaster.”
Sur Facebook aussi la seconde dérivée est le moteur de la notoriété.
The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. But to Facebook’s algorithms, it’s just a fast-growing group with an engaged community.
Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks.
Meanwhile, Kevin Roose of The New York Times pointed out that Facebook’s Trending Stories page was surfacing stories about the shooting from Sputnik, a known source of Russian propaganda. Their statement was, like Google’s, designed to minimize what had happened.
“Our Global Security Operations Center spotted these posts this morning and we have removed them. However, their removal was delayed, allowing them to be screen-captured and circulated online,” a spokesperson responded. “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused.”
Mettre des humains dans la machine
There’s no hiding behind algorithms anymore. The problems cannot be minimized. The machines have shown they are not up to the task of dealing with rare, breaking news events, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. More humans must be added to the decision-making process, and the sooner the better.