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Comment by KernlPanik | Hacker News Reader

Who decides what is and isn't fake news? Surely an enormous corporation whose leaders are active in only one political party will be a fair and impartial judge.

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"Google’s PAC gave 56 percent of its 2016 contributions to Republicans and 44 percent to Democrats." [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/opinion/silicon-valley-ta...] Whatever the political opinions of leadership, Alphabet as a company is happy to support whoever is in power.

The separation of economic interests and social interests is relevant here. There can be economic alignment with both parties and social alignment with one party.

According to leaked email via WikiLeaks[1], Alphabet's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt had an interest in advising in the Democratic presidential campaign:

> I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he's ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc.

There's obvious alignment between improving quality of news search results and Google's mission to organize the world's information. However, the timing of the initiative together with the current political climate suggest this is not an action made in isolation.

When do we begin to question this kind of action? When will it be too late to question it?

[1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36828

I agree, but I draw a different conclusion: executives' social alignment is mostly about signaling; PAC spending tells the true story.

That's worth considering. I took the PAC as pure pragmatism, but I'll think about the converse. Thanks for suggesting.

With respect: after literal decades of the right wing using its stranglehold on talk radio to inculcate some awfully racist, awfully homophobic, and downright untrue things into members of my family (who I love very dearly despite it), I'm pretty okay with the shoe being on the other foot with regards to literal fictionmongers like Alex Jones on the Internet.

I'm sure, if The Market cares that much (and the right wing loves The Market), then there will be a thriving Conservoogle that will rise to provide unskewed results a-plenty where InfoWars and friends can cavort at the top of the SERPs.

Pointing and saying 'but the other guys did it' is not a good reasoning strategy.

I'm pretty okay with the shoe being on the other foot with regards to literal fictionmongers like Alex Jones on the Internet.

The problem isn't that Infowars won't be ranked highly for news queries, the problem is exactly what GP said and what you glossed over: SV/academia people, who are overwhelmingly left-leaning (by location if nothing else), are not impartial arbiters of factuality.

And it's not like anyone is, but only the SV/academia types are getting input here.

That is a problem.

There is no way, none, that this won't be used against factual news with a conservative bent. I'd wager my entire net worth on it.

Eropple, please stop deleting your comments. You've done it twice now, and it makes having a conversation very difficult. Many of us are using a notification service and so your words remain in email inboxes.

Agree, as if "fake news" is full of absolutes.. Sarcastic, parody writing, should be buried but could be full of actual facts.

Poorly researched facts could surface if from a reputable source.

Who decides what is or isn't true? Only you.

Or I suppose you could trust science and other institutions, occasionally, with appropriate skepticism. If Google explains how they classify things as fake news and you believe them, to a first approximation, then it's reasonable to be happy with this feature.

I imagine they use the same or similar group that provides the recent fact checking update to search results. Run by the Sanford School of Public Policy.

https://reporterslab.org/fact-checking/

Maybe. But the problem here is that the epistemic closure that makes people fear the addressing of "fake news"--and, to their string-pullers' credit, they were really good at co-opting the phrase to de-legitimize actual news--has already inculcated into those it encloses a primal fear of academia and those very "public policy" scholars.

I don't know how you unwind that, though.

Until Google has a monopoly on disseminating truth, they are still a private corporation.

This means that they decide what is truth within Google properties.

This is a good point. My assumption is that Google's algorithms have less bias than Google's employees. To me this is better than allowing fake news to spread.

If it's from alex jones, it's fake news.

Also theonion

We seem to be witnessing the death of accuracy in reporting. And maybe a post-truth era on the internet.

"I am sure 3 million illegal aliens voted while global warming is a hoax! Obama paid off all the scientists." - I literally have friends on facebook who say stuff like that every time I repost articles from HN about rising temperatures or CO2 concentrations.

The problem with Infowars or any other fringe source, is that they are right often enough. Sure obama didnt turn the frogs gay, but there were plenty of other factual stories covered in a factual way, before being spun into insanity. But you could argue many msm outlets also have very variable scruples, depending on the subject.

Ie. Infowars is generally poor quality, but not always false. I only read it for a giggle on occasion fwiw.

> but there were plenty of other factual stories covered in a factual way

for example?

The reality is even he has admitted he's just a "performance artist"

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