Re:Underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video
by toss1 on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:55PM
(#16905771)
> isn't truly a debate over facts, but rather a debate over trust
Spot-on.
This is severely exacerbated players like Google & Facebook, whose algorithms favor "engagement" and "virality", with zero regard for truth. It/s been shown [1] that falsehoods sperad faster, in part because they contain more 'surprise value'.
The result is that these info vendors effectively create an editorial environment favoring falsehoods.
Google has done a bit to clean it up on their search engine, e.g., the Flat Earth search generally points to debunking entries, but the same company's YouTube site contains a bunch of fakes in the top 10 results on the same search.
It is no exaggeration at this point to say that these tech giants are significantly undermining our society by failing to exercise responsibility over their implicit/explicit/algorithmic editorial decisions.
Spot-on.
This is severely exacerbated players like Google & Facebook, whose algorithms favor "engagement" and "virality", with zero regard for truth. It/s been shown [1] that falsehoods sperad faster, in part because they contain more 'surprise value'.
The result is that these info vendors effectively create an editorial environment favoring falsehoods.
Google has done a bit to clean it up on their search engine, e.g., the Flat Earth search generally points to debunking entries, but the same company's YouTube site contains a bunch of fakes in the top 10 results on the same search.
It is no exaggeration at this point to say that these tech giants are significantly undermining our society by failing to exercise responsibility over their implicit/explicit/algorithmic editorial decisions.
[1] http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/study-false-news-s...