Google could launch an effort to keep trolls and bad information at bay, with a program that would rank websites according to veracity, and sort results according to those rankings. Currently, the search engine ranks pages according to popularity, which means that pages containing unsubstantiated celebrity gossip or conspiracy theories, for example, show up very high. New Scientist’s Hal Hodson reports on the proposed Knowledge-Based Trust score: The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.
Google’s new program seems as if it should be welcomed with open arms as an attempt to help increase and certify the veracity of information found on the Internet. I know that when I’m doing a web search, I’m looking for solid, credible, factual information- not something that fits an ideological and/or theological profile. I want the truth, which is something that, to me at least, seems as if it should be de riguer and uncontroversial. Then again, I’m not a Conservative ideologue for whom truth is secondary to political purity.
Au contraire, mon ami; turns out that science and truth really do have a Liberal bias…if you believe those with a vested interest in pushing information that’s fabricated, inaccurate, or based on a specific ideological or theological perspective. Those who make up facts as the go along may well find that their sites will be pushed way down the list by those sites that actually traffic in the truth…and some folks are NOT happy about it.
When you make your facts up on the fly to suit the dominant narrative, it’s not surprising that you’d expect your truth to be treated as THE truth. When you care about the truth only insofar as it can be manipulated to serve your agenda, I suspect you’d guard your “right” to define truth as you see fit with no small amount of zeal. After all, when they take away your right to make up your own truth (what others might call “lies” or “propaganda”), what do you really have left? Unless this is your idea of truth.
Even though the former program is just in the research stage, some anti-science advocates are upset about the potential development, likely because their websites will become buried under content that is, well, true.
“I worry about this issue greatly,” said Anthony Watts, founder of climate denying website “Watts Up With That,” in an interview with FoxNews.com. “My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google… It is a very slippery and dangerous slope because there’s no arguing with a machine.”
Rich Noyes, research director at the conservative Media Research Center told Fox News that media watchdogs that would likely be influencing these truth rankings are more sympathetic to liberal ideals. “They’re very good at debunking myths if they upset liberals,” he said, “but if it’s a liberal or left-wing falsehood, the fact-checkers don’t seem as excited about debunking it.”
“There’s no arguing with a machine”… while I suppose that’s true, under this program, veracity of information, not ideology, will be the determining factor of where a page is ranked. If your idea of “truth” and “accuracy” is something that skews Conservative, you clearly are less interested in truth than advancing an agenda. Truth doe NOT have an inherent Liberal bias, but perhaps Liberals are more concerned with things like research, facts, and accurate information. Perhaps Liberals are more inclined to do their homework, instead of relying on talking points and propaganda. It’s not that Conservative can’t be correct, and those who are should find the rankings of their sites will reflect that accuracy, but truth isn’t fungible and manipulable depending on ideology and/or theology. If you choose to deal in primarily ideological/theological considerations, you can’t reasonably argue that you live in a fact-based world. And claiming that fact checkers are less inclined to hold Liberals accountable for falsehoods is a load of self-serving crap. The problem is that Conservatives are generally unwilling to compete when it comes to truth-telling. It’s not that they’re unable to traffic in truth; they simply choose not to, perhaps because they know they can’t compete with Liberals in that respect…or perhaps doing their homework takes too much effort.
Get your facts straight and tell the truth…and you may well find that you have nothing to worry about, regardless of which side of the ideological spectrum you happen to come down on. Dealing in facts and truth really isn’t all that difficult, but it’s a standard the Internet should require of anyone putting information out there. More power to Google for looking at doing exactly that. If you’re threatened by the idea of your site being downgraded in search engine rankings due to a lack of veracity, you might want to give some thought to trafficking in the true and verifiable. That’s not a “Liberal plot,” that’s reality. You may believe truth to have a Liberal bias, but truth doesn’t respect ideology or theology. It reflect the provable and the demonstrable; if Conservatives have a problem with that, I think it says more about them than it does Google.
