Googleseeks a higher truth, but will struggle to get it
Google has outlined a method to rank searchresults by factual accuracy, but if the hope is to dispelmistruths in political and social debates it's unlikely to work. In fact, itcould contribute more to the problem, writes Jeff Sparrow.
Researchers at Google have outlined a newmethod of ranking search results on the basis of the factual accuracy of content.
A new paper by the search giant'sscientists suggests that the number of incorrect facts on a particular pagecould be tallied, using that as a proxy for trustworthiness. In theory, popularbut unreliable sites would then ｄrop down the listings so that your resultswould be dominated by sources you could trust.
Not surprisingly, the concept has not beenuniversally acclaimed. As one writer put it: "The idea raises concerns asto how exactly the fact checking would take place, and whether it would impactcontroversial or alternative stances on various issues, which could be a blowto freedom of speech and diversity of opinions online."
It should be noted that, at this stage,we're simply discussing an idea, one that may or may not be implemented.Furthermore, Google already ranks your results (that's what a search enginedoes) using an algorithm that's notoriously opaque and that changes all thetime. We shouldn't necessarily assume that a new system would make a bigdifference.
Nevertheless, the motivation behind theresearch is interesting in and of itself.
The new enthusiasm for fact checkingoriginated in the US and seems to have been driven by a liberal revulsion atthe falsehoods and spin peddled by the Bush administration, particularly inrespect of the Iraq war when much of the quality media (the New York Times is agood example) repeated, and even amplified, false claims about weapons of massdestruction. To guard against what the comedian Stephen Colbert called"truthiness" (a claim that feels right in your gut but that may bearno relationship to reality), many American media outlets launched projects thatrated the veracity of political claims and then publicized the results.
That seems to be where Google's comingfrom.
In discussing the research, the NewScientist mentions anti-vaccination sites that rate highly on websites, despitetheir junk science. The scientists themselves use the example of Barack Obama'scitizenship: throughout their paper, they illustrate how their method mightwork in terms of the false claim that the president is Kenyan.
In other words, when they discuss factualaccuracy, they're not talking about giving low rankings to sites that makemisleading assertions in mathematics or hard sciences - such as, for instance,a page that assures readers that adding two and three gives six. Nor are theytrying merely to guard against errors or accidental misstatements. Instead,they want to dispel mistruths in political and social debates - a much morefraught exercise.
The difficulty with the liberal idea aboutusing hard facts to dispel conspiracy theories is that there's noevidence it actually works. On the contrary, studies performed by theUniversity of Michigan in 2005 and 2006 revealed that people exposed tocorrected information in news stories did not change their minds. Indeed, theyoften became, if anything, more convinced of their earlier, wrong, beliefs.
It's not that people are stupid. It's thatfacts become meaningful in political or social debates because of the contextin which they're embedded and the assumptions that make them relevant.Conspiracy theories might involve the dissemination of bizarre and fancifulclaims. But that doesn't mean that such thinking arises from bad information.Rather, the conspiratorial mindset arises as an attempt to organize a worldthat no longer seems to make sense, with empirical evidence shaped to fitaccordingly.
Which is not to say that truth doesn'tmatter of course it does. But truth and power go together - and at the momentmany people feel that they have precious little of either.
Vocabulary:
1. conspiracy - a secret plan by a group todo something unlawful or harmful.
2. empirical - based on, concerned with, orverifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
3. embed - fix (an object) firmly anddeeply in a surrounding mass
4. dispel - make (a doubt, feeling, orbelief) disappear
5. accurate - correct in all detailsexact.
QUESTIONS:
1. Of all the information we can access onthe Internet, how much of it do you think is accurate?
2. What Google proposes filteringinformation display the accurate ones primarily, do you think this isobjectively possible?
3. What are the common conspiracies thatyou know of?
4. If and when you read something on the Internet, how do you know if it’saccurate/ factual or not?
5. Do you believe everything you read fromthe Internet?
