After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/las-vegas-shooting-fake-news.html
Google and Facebook blamed algorithm errors for these.
A Google spokesman said, “This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”
A Facebook spokesman said, “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused.”
But this was no one-off incident. Over the past few years, extremists, conspiracy theorists and government-backed propagandists have made a habit of swarming major news events, using search-optimized “keyword bombs” and algorithm-friendly headlines. These organizations are skilled at reverse-engineering the ways that tech platforms parse information, and they benefit from a vast real-time amplification network that includes 4Chan and Reddit as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even when these campaigns are thwarted, they often last hours or days — long enough to spread misleading information to millions of people.
The automation of editorial judgment, combined with tech companies’ reluctance to appear partisan, has created a lopsided battle between those who want to spread misinformation and those tasked with policing it. Posting a malicious rumor on Facebook, or writing a false news story that is indexed by Google, is a nearly instantaneous process; removing such posts often requires human intervention. This imbalance gives an advantage to rule-breakers, and makes it impossible for even an army of well-trained referees to keep up.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are some of the world’s richest and most ambitious companies, but they still have not shown that they’re willing to bear the costs — or the political risks — of fixing the way misinformation spreads on their platforms. (Some executives appear resolute in avoiding the discussion. In a recent Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg reasserted the platform’s neutrality, saying that being accused of partisan bias by both sides is “what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”)
Une conclusion imparable :
Facebook and Google have spent billions of dollars developing virtual reality systems. They can spare a billion or two to protect actual reality.