The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence
blog.googleI don't want personalized news, I use Google News for the exact opposite reason. I want to see semi-random headlines from a variety of source to increase my exposure to stories I might not have seen otherwise.
1. I haven't used Google news until today, but I believe that's what the "Headlines" tab at the bottom bar is for. It seems to just show you the major headlines from everywhere, no personalization or AI involved.
2. Every news story has a "Full Coverage" button on the bottom-right that pulls up that same story from a variety of stories, so you can get different perspectives.
I agree that injecting AI and personalization into news is an easy way to put yourself in a bubble, but it seems that Google has at least tried to give users the tools to minimize that.
Personalisation isn't inherently bad. For example, I have zero interests in sports, and I don't think I'm putting myself in a "bubble" for not wanting any sport related articles in my feed. I also may have niche interests, such as puzzle games, which a generic feed would never surface.
Where AI gets dangerous is focusing on either a single source, or providing one side of the story, but that's exactly what "Full coverage" attempts to solve as you mention.
> see semi-random headlines from a variety of source to increase my exposure to stories I might not have seen otherwise
Isn't that exactly personalized news?
But you can just load it on incognito or signed out and not have any personalization other than location/country.
Personalization does not arise from passive use. Consider the converse, articles from a list of user selected sources. That sounds more like personalized news. Besides Google News used to function that way so I think I should be entitled to my opinion of how it should function.
Oh, just found out that Google News has what you're looking for: go to headlines section.
I opened the app and found it weird that there were news about Taylor Swift, the British royal wedding and a lot of other topics that I'm not interested in. Then I noticed I was in the "headlines" section, and not the "for you" section.
I'm glad they split both up.
What a horrible UX, loading it in “Incognito mode”, no.
You get what you pay for.
It's quite useful! These days I browse pretty much all news sites in Incognito mode, due to paywalls.
They address this: some stuff are personalized, but not everything.
"content in Full Coverage is the same for everyone—it’s an unpersonalized view of events from a range of trusted news sources."
I like(d) the raw news feeds from AP etc. I say liked because they all seem to be disappearing. Just give me a long list of the incoming headlines, I'll filter by scanning, thanks.
I am hesitant about raw news, I think context is at a minimum important. I would much rather read an article published 12-36 hours after the fact that is rich with context and detail. I have blocked CNN from my feeds for this reason, they place a high value on immediacy and I think this heavily degrades their content.
I agree completely, though I'd be happy for both styles to exist. For semi-random news from a wide variety of sources, I like https://www.memeorandum.com/
Same like Google news does not take sides. But assume it will continue with these changes?
The same interface could easily do both...
> I don't want personalized news, I use Google News for the exact opposite reason.
That's what I used to use google news for too. Then a few years ago, google "personalized" and "localize"d news to your area and it became pointless. Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then. So you could see the difference in coverage between our media and china's media and europe's media and middle east's media of the same event.
Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories. And considering they espouse the same message on pretty much everything, I stopped using google news.
I understand that google was heavily pressured by the news industry to push traffic to major US news sites, but I wish they would have given us the option to opt out of personalization and localization.
What's even more disappointing is that google search was updated to heavily favor local news. So if I search for "North korea news" or "syria news", the search result is ridiculously skewed to US news' perspective. They used to list forums, messageboards, etc on search for international events, but they scrubbed those from the search results.
Social media used to have alternate/external/foreign sources but after US media pressure, they've also "personalized" and localized.
It's amazing how easily the news industry has pressured tech companies into limiting what the public sees and hears.
I wish there was a news aggregate site which had a page per news event where it listed international coverage of the event.
> Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories.
What? This is certainly not my experience.
I just went to news.google.com in my desktop browser, and I clicked on the World section. On the Iran sanctions/deal story, there are several sources grouped together in one card. The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"), Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press.
If I click on "View full coverage", I get more sources, of course.
This was not my experience, my feed has been flooded by NYT and WSP stories. This normally wouldn't be a problem but these stories are often different takes on current events and the algorithm is bad serving related articles for these stories. The result is a feed full meta analysis about the news without the actual news.
> meta analysis about the news
aka "opinion" aka "blogging" aka "less expensive and more eye-catching than finding and reporting facts"
> What? This is certainly not my experience.
Your comment describes the experience to the tee.
> The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"),
Where are you from? In the NY area, all I see is US related. A couple of washingtonpost, a couple of nytimes, rolling stone, cnn, etc. Even in the expanded "view full coverage", I don't see mehr news.
> Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press.
So, no diversity? They all are essential one news agency masquerading as different news. Yes, even the australian source.
How about this, I wish I had better access to different echo chambers.
Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press along with the nytimes and washingtonpost are part of the same echo chamber. They all push the same message. I want to see what the other nations/regions are saying. I want different opinions/perspectives/news.
You might want to try this:
Not perfect, but at least it brings more viewpoints.
When even Reuters and Associated Press gets branded as echo chambers, a lot of people have ostensibly let fully go of objective reality.
> Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then
I still get international sources (sometimes as the first source on a story , as on the Iran deal right now) on both the Google News & Weather app and the Google News desktop page. Strangely, the new Google News mobile page doesn't as much (and doesn't seem to expand to provide multiple sources for the same story the way it used and the other interfaces still do), and there's little consistency in sources, or even stories selected, between the three interfaces.
Just look at Wikipedia Current Events [1] or WikiTribune [2] if you want news that's relatively unbiased and current. Google has long since been biased/personalized.
This is exactly how I feel but I am located in the UK and sources can be really biased on how and what they report. I usually end up consulting several foreign news outlet including what our national media would qualify as not so reputable.
The thing that gets me about Google news is that the personalization is incredibly coarse. I can see a "17 apps that take great selfies" article and the only way to express disinterest is by removing Android from my interest list. I might dislike an article because the publisher is low quality or I'm not interesting in one aspect of the content but it just picks one "reson" to justify showing the article.
I believe you can blacklist publishers, which has always been my favorite feature.
From the article:
> We’ve also built easy-to-use and easy-to-access controls > so you can decide if you want to see more or less of a topic or publisher.You didn't really answer the problem? The person above was complaining that "17 apps to take a better selfie" is under the "Android" topic. Your only other choice is to block the entire publisher, which may be good if all that publisher posts is similar bad articles, but it's hard for you to know.
A far better way would be to get upvote/downvote per article, and then have the AI figure what your interests are, rather than base it purely on clicks, which tends to favor clickbait.
He gave two ways he would like to more finely control content:
1. subtopics (your example) where he was interested in Android but not selfie apps
2. by publisher: "I might dislike an article because the publisher is low quality"
I was replying with a solution to problem #2 only.
> And if you want to support your favorite news sources, we’ve made it simple to subscribe with your Google account. This means no more forms, credit card numbers, or new passwords. And soon, thanks to the new Subscribe with Google platform (launched as a part of the Google News Initiative), you’ll get access to your paid content everywhere—on all platforms and devices, on Google News, Google Search, and on publishers’ own websites.
The upside is that it's a desperately needed solution to funding journalism. Hopefully people can pay per article, making quality journalism better funded and far more available (many people who can afford one article can't afford a year subscription, I assume).
But the cost is far too high: Google knows everything you read, and becomes the gatekeeper for journalism. Yikes. For those not worried, imagine the day when Google ownership/management shifts from the current well-intentioned people to someone else. That day will come.
All I want is an option to pay $10/mo for news to all sources, and let each publisher receive the proportion of that that my clicks determine.
That's less than the price of any single news source. Why would they offer that price to you?
Because the vast majority of news consumers online are ad-supported non-paying customers.
I'm not going to pay $20/mo each to WaPo, NYTimes and WSJ. But I would pay $20/mo for "entry" level subscriptions to all of them, which I'm pretty sure is more than the Ad revenue that I would otherwise bring in.
$10/mo may not be the best price point, but IMHO having cheaper pay-as-go options would drive in a lot of unrealized revenue.
Wouldn't that exacerbate clickbait?
If get clickbaited 2 or three times, I stop browsing your site.
Yea... this is the last thing I want. Another massive company (ala Facebook) controlling the feed of information into my brain.
I thought we were trying to get away from that?
German here: Recommend the magazine review of the perlentaucher- which is a manual weekly worldwide magazine best-of. Unfortunatly for international readers its in german.
https://www.perlentaucher.de/magazinrundschau/2018-05-08.htm...
I hope this fixes the current issues with google news on ios. The app crashes constantly and freezes my phone completely for a good 20-30 seconds until it restarts. This has persisted across multiple iPhone 8’s. Not a fan of the UI of apple news either.
FWIW I've never experienced those issues using Google News on iOS.
Disappointing to see that it relies on Snopes for "fact checking". Also disappointing to see that what constitutes "quality journalism" is decided by a giant technology company. This is a big step backwards.
Do you have another preferred source? I've actually been quite pleased with my spot checking of Snopes support or refutation on various claims. It may not be truth incarnate, but it seems to do a pretty good job of surfacing a set of verifiable facts when it can.
do you have a source with higher integrity than snopes and factcheck.org?
Have any examples of things they've gotten wrong?
I find that they include their interpretation of a statement when it suits a particular point of view, whereas other times they take things very literally, without a measured reading.
One example is this case: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-compliant-citizenr...
There's also the fact that the team behind the website does not have a stellar reputation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
I don't understand what you are trying to show.
Snopes debunked Infowars' absurd mischaracterization of the Ivey email (which was however poorly written in confusing pretentious wording), and produced the evidence in full to justify its position.
Regarding your second link, I read it and don't see what you are driving at. It says that Snopes has some politically engaged staff members, and doesn't do individual bylines, and someone got divorced.
I am trying to show a double standard and agenda driven content.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/08/17/are-antifa-and-the-al...
The very first sentence of this content illustrates the kind of shady journalism that I would not expect to see from anyone entrusted to be a "Fact checker". They make a reference to "violence in Charlottesville" and the deaths of three people. Two of those deaths are the consequences of a completely unrelated helicopter accident. Here is a news story about the helicopter accident: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/08/1...
The title is "FACT CHECK: Are Antifa and the Alt-Right equally violent". This content goes on to make the suggestion to the reader that Antifa is not organizing any violence (this basis on which the author forms this opinion is categorically false, based on ample evidence around the internet showing cases of organized violence, not in response to "alt right rallies").
Furthermore, there are consequences to what Snopes does when they rate you false. For example:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-washing-machine/
i.e. Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News?
resulted in this:
https://twitter.com/Adam4d/status/969405110324523008/
In the abstract, "fact checking" is not a reliable solution. It is the same problem - if the journalists are not trustworthy, why are the fact checkers trustworthy? Furthermore, Snopes is not reliable.
You keep stretching your argument so far, I can only thank you for linking to sources, since reading them disproves your claim.
In the opt link, it's a "news" item, not a "Fact-check" with a ruling. You pick out mild vague statements as "discrediting", while ignoring all the major points and claims in the Snopes articles.
The second link is a fact-check, which we can all agree (right") is an accurate fact-check
FB banned a self-identified obvious satire article being reposted out of context as non-satire. Can you find an example of FB banning a non-fake article based on Snopes' ruling?
Again, what's the problem here?
Snopes is very quick to claim things as "False" if it goes against their left leaning lens of the world.
As an example arguments used by pro-gun advocates are marked as false. Here's a specific example:
They falsify a claim that doctors kill more people than guns https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/doctors-kill-more-people-t...
Yet this article linked on hacker news article states that medical error is the third biggest cause of death in the USA. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627213
I used to have many more examples, but the reality is that the facts that they "objectively" check aren't necessarily unbiased.
IIRC, that "250K people killed by medical error" includes every time a medical caregiver failed to prevent an already sick or injured individual from dying and didn't follow ideal procedures in retrospect. One of the examples was "the doctor didn't tell a patient with heart disease that jogging would be dangerous, and then the guy had a heart attack while jogging".
That's like saying that "hospitals cause most cancer deaths" because people who have cancer are in the care of professionals before they expire.
People who die from guns aren't being euthanized from already impending death.
IIRC the gun death statistic also includes criminals who are shot by police in shootouts and other situations where use of lethal force is deemed necessary. I don't think it is reasonable to imply that these people would be alive were it not for gun regulations.
I wrote an angry email to a Politifact intern after seeing this article: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/apr/03/...
They rated this article as "pants on fire" for reporting on something that came directly from the mouth of a public official. The politifact intern actually reached out to the official in question and he personally confirmed that he gave the outlet bad information, and yet it retains the rating that insinuates intentional lying and misleading. I think it's infuriating that Google is getting away with giving these institutions an elevated voice. They do not hold an ounce of the journalistic integrity that they claim to and they make little effort to be nonpartisan.
edit: The issue isn't with any particular institution, it's the general problem of any authority claiming to be an objective purveyor of truth and Google giving anyone like that an elevated voice. Even if it's not corrupt now, it's corruptible, and it serves no purpose. People need to come to decisions on their own.
(edit: for the record, I feel it is necessary to say that I do not regularly read this blog, I came across the fellowshipoftheminds.com post as a result of seeing the politifact article on reddit, I do not endorse the site in question)
I don't understand your objection. The Politifact assessment of "pants on fire" is not for the public official, it's for the conspiracy websites that are peddling the public official's mistake to intentionally mislead people. Read the end of the article ("Our ruling"):
> A website pushing conspiracy theories claimed that the March For Our Lives permit was actually prepared months in advance.
> We contacted the police officer referred to in the story who confirmed that the story is inaccurate and the permit was actually issued 11 days prior to the march.
> We rate this story Pants on Fire.
The police officer said they made an honest mistake. The websites that are spreading the mistake have ostensibly ignored the correction. How is that not intentional?
Well for starters, they haven't ignored the correction. https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/04/05/parklathe-curiou...
It's a valid question: large events like this march require considerable coordination among public services and permits are necessary to make sure that police and EMS and public transport can react, and navigating the bureaucratic machine for getting a permit is, by official D.C. guidelines, estimated to take at least 6 months. This march took place only a bit more than a month after the Parkland shooting. If people are to believe that this large march was organically organized in just a month, it must be the case that some public officials pulled strings and made exceptions for them, and that is a story in its own right. Or, on the other hand, it must be the case that this march was planned in advance of the shooting, and was thus not organized organically by student groups, but was perhaps something that was intended to happen anyway, but was repurposed in light of the shooting in Florida, which would change a purportedly grassroots event into something with much less meaning and arguably paints the true organizers as opportunists.
Well, this someone sent an email in search of that question, and got a response, and this website reported on it: they heard that a permit application was received prior to the shooting. I don't see how it's their responsibility to continually check back with the officer that was consulted in order to be sure that he really meant what he said. But, as mentioned, the article contains mention of the fact that the officer has since rescinded his date, and another article is linked that pieces together the timeline.
I don't see how it's fair to label them as liars. They haven't lied. They reported on a response from a public official. They've even edited the article to make mention of the rescinding of the comment. What more should they do, remove the article outright?
(edit: for the record, I feel it is necessary to say that I do not regularly read this blog, I came across the fellowshipoftheminds.com post as a result of seeing the politifact article on reddit, I do not endorse the site in question)
> and navigating the bureaucratic machine for getting a permit is, by official D.C. guidelines, estimated to take at least 6 months
The March for Science, which originated largely from a Reddit thread, happened in 4 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Science
The Women's March was organized in 2.5 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women%27s_March
edit: In the "update" post, the blogger of the allegation basically ignores the explanations for the confusion and goes with the conspiracy. At that point, I think it's reasonable for Politifact to say the blogger is acting in bad faith:
> Given the different dates he’s given for when Metro PD received the permit application and when Metro PD issued the permit, we have no reason to believe Officer Scott Earhardt. In all probability, his first email of March 28 to Dammegard’s contact is most likely the truthful one — that D.C. Metropolitan Police Department received an application for a permit for March For Our Lives “several months” before the March. That in turn implies that, contrary to how the March had been presented to the American people, the Parkland school shooting is not the inspiration for March For Our Lives and may even have been planned and contrived.
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/04/05/parklathe-curiou...
They didn't ignore the correction, they responded to it with a flurry of tangential bullshittery. They also never updated the original article with the correction: https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2018/03/30/application-for-...
Even in the followup/correction post, they state both:
"In the March 28th email, Officer Earhardt states:
“In reference to your inquiry concerning the March For Our Lives Demonstration, here in the District of Columbia on March 24, 2018. MPD received a permit application several months prior to the actual event, and there was several months of planning for this large event.”"
and then also says: "we have no reason to believe Officer Scott Earhardt." [regarding his correction]
So they are taking two contradicting quotes from one person, and saying one of them is true and the other is false.
What are you trying to argue here?
There was no correction to them, because the website never contacted the original source, they based their story on an email provided by a third party without confirming it.
But, sure, reckless disregard for basic journalistic norms and fact checking because the story fit their preconceived nsrrstive seems reasonably to warrant “pants on fire”.
And this has to do Snopes getting something wrong...how?
There's definitely an agenda out there, FB and Google now are both using Snopes for fact-checking. https://steemit.com/health/@holisticgreen/snopes-is-the-auth...
The agenda is the garbage article you just posted. I've never seen such a severe case of ad hominem.
The garbage article I posted at least sheds a little bit of light on the fact that snopes is not the bastion of integrity that for some reason it's being portrayed as via both Google and FB.
Also congratulations if that's literally the most severe case of ad hominem you've ever seen.
Also worth noting: I linked that article because it was the first source I found via searching that highlighted all the shady stuff that founders have done. I'm not aligned with the additional views of the author of that article.
> The garbage article I posted at least sheds a little bit of light on the fact that snopes is not the bastion of integrity that for some reason it's being portrayed as via both Google and FB.
The thing about that is that the "article" doesn't mention a single case of where Snopes was wrong (I only read the first few pages, so they might've buried something, which would be strategically unwise). Which means they want a character assassination because they can't argue the on the issues alone.
The contents might be true, or not, but it doesn't affect the argument.
Great for those who want their appreciation of the world micromanaged by an advertising agency. Way to go homo sapiens(?).