Google Adds Fact Checking to Google News

[engine]

The latest addition to Google News is fact checking service.

Today, we’re adding another new tag, “Fact check,” to help readers find fact checking in large news stories.Google Adds Fact Checking to Google News [blog.google]

[aristotle]

Unfortunately a lot of people in the U.S. don't care about facts.

[jambam]

This is bad for freedom of speech. Slippery slope.

[EditorialGuy]

This is bad for freedom of speech.

How so? People will still be free to lie.

[jambam]

Yeah like google.

[engine]

Eh, I don't get the negativity over this! Surely, you want the facts to be correct. If Google's fact checking proves to be wrong, and time will tell, then it will have reason to be called into question.

We've yet to see how well it works, and whether it is accurate, and after that time i'll make a judgement.

In the meantime, i'll be looking for ways to include accurate information in the fact checking service.

[aristotle]

Surely, you want the facts to be correct.

Well they can't be facts if they aren't correct.

But more seriously, there are a lot of truth-haters who immediately raise with a huge orchestrated howl in the media against anyone who dares to point out any real facts relevant to the current political "discussion". So you shouldn't be surprised at any "negativity" that arises from this announcement.

[jambam]

Yes but my negativity comes not with fact checking but who is doing the fact checking. Google news is biased enough already.

[linkbuildr]

This is terrifying.

[Walt Hartwell]

I'm not taking any position one way or the other, but sometimes facts are different depending on the person.
I grew up being told Sir Francis Drake was an amazing and admirable(think about it) person. My wife grew up being told Sir Francis Drake was the lowest of the low, a pirate with no redeeming qualities. Our kids probably have no idea who Sir Francis Drake was. :)

Tough concept to fact check.

[Cindy_B]

I am with @jambam. This is not good. I do not want Google doing any fact-checking for me. I am a DEPLORABLE, so I fear it may impact the things that I want to read, if you get my jist:)

[Shaddows]

Pretty sure Google is not fact-checking, so much as labelling links to fact-checkers.

Re: Drake: "He was a good person" is not a fact, it's an opinion. "He served as mayor of Portsmouth" could be found to be wrong (it was Plymouth).

What I want to know is how you become an authoritative fact-checker, as opposed to a liar armed with markup.

[Walt Hartwell]

Historical events are usually taught as facts. England has one history, Spain has a different one, yet they are both correct regarding this individual. Point of reference can and does alter what people consider facts, having nothing to do with opinion.

[aristotle]

Walt Hartwell wrote:
Point of reference can and does alter what people consider facts.

Just because someone considers something to be a fact doesn't mean that it is.

Shaddows wrote:
What I want to know is how you become an authoritative fact-checker, as opposed to a liar armed with markup.

That's a good question. If liars can lie about "facts", they can also lie about "fact"-checking.

[EditorialGuy]

If liars can lie about "facts", they can also lie about "fact"-checking.

There are any number of sites that have earned reputations for reliable fact-checking. I'd imagine that Google will be linking to those, not to sites maintained by liars.

[aristotle]

What you're overlooking is that some people don't want the facts to be checked.

[johnhh]

All history facts seem to be written by the winners. Drake, Raleigh, and others were just looters who got away with it as they paid the Queen.
<aside>At my school our 'houses' were named after them, as where the local open-top buses that ran in the summer</aside>
In fact most 'fact' checking shows bias. Your interpretation may differ.

[Walt Hartwell]

Just because someone considers something to be a fact doesn't mean that it is.

Water boils at 100 degrees
Water boils at 212 degrees
Both are facts, both are true.
An individual's exposure and experience will make one of those statements more valid to the individual than the other statement.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see how the Google fact checking/referencing works in real world exposure.

[graeme_p]

No, water boils at a 100 degrees Celsius at normal atmospheric pressure is a fact. You have not given a different fact, merely a different way of stating the same fact - that does not change the fact. As @Shaddows pointed out facts are not opinion, and the additional links are to fact checking sites, not opinion checking sites.

The change is an extra set of links in Google News, so news stories are linked to relevant pages on fact checking sites.

This does not kill freedom of speech, it gives people extra information and a wider variety of links, and reduces big media domination of news search results.

[Walt Hartwell]

@graeme_p
You say water will only boil at 100 degrees Celsius at normal atmospheric pressure.
What happens when I heat water to 212 degrees Fahrenheit?

The point, which people seem to misunderstand, is that your perception of the world isn't the same as mine.

[Cindy_B]

Don't think that things won't get filtered out. There are videos out from the last two days by a conservative undercover investigation into voter fraud and YouTube seems to be deleting comments, suppressing likes, suppressing views, etc., and YouTube is owned by Google. It's happening, folks, and it has got to be watched.

[iamlost]

Personally I find it rather amusing that Google, whose entire empire has been built upon validating popularity, finds itself having to point out that much of what they are presenting as the best available news results may actually be ummm...

[EditorialGuy]

What you're overlooking is that some people don't want the facts to be checked.

Exactly. Facts have a way of debunking bogus arguments, especially in the political realm.

[tangor]

I preferred g as the collector of all information, not providing judgment on some information and ignoring other. Sad thing is the fact checking sites g intends to use (big msm) is riddled with bias and error, or lies. Science is fact, everything else is an opinion. :)

[graeme_p]

@Walt, so you can heat water to 212 F without heating it to 100 C?

@tangor, Google is not providing judgement - it is linking to other people's judgements. The site in the example they gave is not MSM either - it is a small non-profit.

Science is not necessarily fact either: science consists of models and hypotheses some of which have been validated to a sufficient degree to be regarded as fact, some of which are unproven but have evidence, other are opinions. A hundred years ago science said that electromagnetic radiation was transmitted through the "ether", and that non-white people were intrinsically inferior. Two hundred years ago science said combustion occurred through the release of phlogiston.

[aristotle]

graeme_p --
Huge sums of money are being spent to bombard the U.S. public with lies and misinformation. The goal is to drown out the truth under a flood of lies.
Obviously this is a difficult thing for a mathematical algorithm (like google's) to cope with.

And adding this "fact"-checking feature, despite the good intentions, will only have a tiny effect. Plus some are concerned that google will link to the "sites maintained by liars" that EditorialGuy mentioned.

So you can see the problem.

[MrSavage]

I sort of have a different take on this. The news sections are the brand sites, now the fact check sites will be listed there and thus expanding the news section. For somebody with a site that isn't privileged enough to be included in news, this is making the organics slip further out of site. I have found the news listings hard enough to deal with but if those are going to expand further down now, this is getting more discouraging. Of course it depends how Google is going to utilize fact checking and on what searches.

[EditorialGuy]

Plus some are concerned that google will link to the "sites maintained by liars" that EditorialGuy mentioned.

I doubt very much that Google will use "sites maintained by liars" as fact-checking resources.

[tangor]

Who defines "liars"? That's the slippery slope involved here. WAPO and NYT, for example, are extremely biased and tend to over report errors and under report inconvenient facts. Then again, others might have quite the opposite opinion. If g was truly about data collection and serving the most accurate and popular queries then this new "feature" would not be necessary.

[EditorialGuy]

Who defines "liars"? That's the slippery slope involved here. WAPO and NYT, for example, are extremely biased and tend to over report errors and under report inconvenient facts.

That sounds like spin. What would a fact-checker say? :-)

More seriously:

There are any number of fact-checking sites that have earned respect from the fact-based community. Those who who prefer an alternate reality don't have to click links to fact-checking sites they don't like (just as they don't have to click through to stories in media they don't like when browsing Google News or Bing News).