Google asks the dumbest questions | The Outline Google has a new ad for its latest smartphone, the Pixel 2, and it’s all over TV. “When you change a period to a question mark,” says text on a screen, “It changes everything.” Then, the period becomes a question mark: “It changes everything?” The implication is that Google, “a company built on questions,” is questioning conventional wisdom about the limitations of smartphones, and the result is the fabulous Pixel 2. OK, makes sense. This might seem like a benign question if Google itself wasn’t completely terrible at accurately answering such queries. Google’s ad for the Pixel 2. Not too long ago, Google unwittingly proclaimed the Earth was flat. "Here are 10 'proofs' that the Earth is actually flat, not round,” read the answer highlighted at the top of Google’s search results, attributed to Metro News. If you asked the same question of Google using its voice assistant, the answer was shortened to, “According to Metro, our planet isn’t a sphere, but instead a sort of pancake thing.”
“News you don’t believe”: Audience perspectives on fake news In this RISJ Factsheet by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Lucas Graves, we analyse data from 8 focus groups and a survey of online news users to understand audience perspectives on fake news. On the basis of focus group discussions and survey data from the first half of 2017 from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Finland, we find that: Our findings suggest that, from an audience perspective, fake news is only in part about fabricated news reports narrowly defined, and much more about a wider discontent with the information landscape—including news media and politicians as well as platform companies. Tackling false news narrowly speaking is important, but it will not address the broader issue that people feel much of the information they come across, especially online, consists of poor journalism, political propaganda, or misleading forms of advertising and sponsored content.
Facebook, Google and others join The Trust Project, an effort to increase transparency around online news “Fake news” and other misinformation, online propaganda, and satirical content people believe is true have filled the web via search engines and social media, and have caused a rift in how people perceive today’s news organizations and the quality of their coverage. A nonpartisan effort called The Trust Project is working to address this situation by helping online users distinguish between reliable journalism and promotional content or misinformation. Today, a key part of that effort – called “Trust Indicators” – are going live on Facebook, offering easy-to-access, transparent information about a news organization’s ethics and practices. Here’s how this will work in practice: starting today on Facebook, an icon will appear next to articles in the News Feed. Facebook, Google, Bing and Twitter have all committed to displaying these indicators, though not all implementations are yet live. These are as follows: Best Practices: What Are Your Standards? Featured Image: Thomas Faull/Getty Images
How did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social | Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan The Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2017 is, disappointingly, “fake news”. We say disappointingly, because the ubiquity of that phrase among journalists, academics and policymakers is partly why the debate around this issue is so simplistic. The phrase is grossly inadequate to explain the nature and scale of the problem. (Were those Russian ads displayed at the congressional hearings last week news, for example?) But what’s more troubling, and the reason that we simply cannot use the phrase any more, is that it is being used by politicians around the world as a weapon against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech. Definitions matter. Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances. The social networks are engineered so that we are constantly assessing others – and being assessed ourselves. We grudgingly accept these public performances when it comes to our travels, shopping, dating, and dining.
Exhibition “Counterfeits, Misinformation and Frozen Images – Design by Dalibor Martinis of the ’70s and ’80s” in Pula Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian On Tuesday July 17, 2018, at 21:00hrs, the Croatian Association of Interdisciplinary Artists – HUIU in Pula will host an exhibition titled Counterfeits, Misinformation and Frozen Images – Design by Dalibor Martinis of the ’70s and ’80s, as part of the accompanying program of Pula Film Festival. The exhibition is jointly organized by HUIU and Croatian Designers’ Association HDD. Exhibition Counterfeits, Misinformation and Frozen Images presents an overview of the design work of one of the most important Croatian conceptual and media artist Dalibor Martinis. Dalibor Martinis is undoubtedly one of the most famous Croatian artists of the so called new art practice, whose beginnings are related to conceptual art, video art, performance art and generally media art.
It’s time to stop trusting Google search already | The Verge Last weekend, in the hours after a deadly Texas church shooting, Google search promoted false reports about the suspect, suggesting that he was a radical communist affiliated with the antifa movement. The claims popped up in Google’s “Popular on Twitter” module, which made them prominently visible — although not the top results — in a search for the alleged killer’s name. Of course, the was just the latest instance of a long-standing problem: it was the latest of multiple similar missteps. As usual, Google promised to improve its search results, while the offending tweets disappeared. But telling Google to retrain its algorithms, as appropriate as that demand is, doesn’t solve the bigger issue: the search engine’s monopoly on truth. Surveys suggest that, at least in theory, very few people unconditionally believe news from social media. Google encourages this perception, as do competitors like Amazon and Apple — especially as their products depend more and more on virtual assistants.
The internet is full of fake news, and there may not be a way to fix it Fake news. The internet is full of it, and Facebook, for one, is making a big push to find it, flag it and make sure that people know what they’re reading. But not everyone is convinced that Facebook — or anyone else — can actually improve the internet’s fake news problem. A new study from Pew Research Center, which surveyed more than 1,000 “internet and technology experts” like professors, authors, and technologists, found that people are split on whether or not the internet’s fake news issue will be resolved. Of those polled, 51 percent believe the “information environment will not improve” in the next 10 years, while 49 percent believe it will. The fake news pessimists believe that technology just moves too fast for humans to catch up with bad actors, according to the findings. Coincidentally, those who believe the situation will get better also cited technology. Misinformation has been top of mind for many in Silicon Valley since last year’s U.S. presidential election.
We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself I led Facebook’s efforts to fix privacy problems on its developer platform in advance of its 2012 initial public offering. What I saw from the inside was a company that prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse. As the world contemplates what to do about Facebook in the wake of its role in Russia’s election meddling, it must consider this history. Facebook knows what you look like, your location, who your friends are, your interests, if you’re in a relationship or not, and what other pages you look at on the web.
You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you Comics Blog Books Shop Comics: Random Most Popular All Cats Grammar Food Animals Tech This is a comic about the backfire effect. Inspiration This comic was inspired by this three-part series on the backfire effect from the You Are Not So Smart Podcast. USC Creativity and Brain Institute Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence By Sarah Gimbel and Sam Harris. Other fun reading Reddit - Change My View Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions Sources You Are Not So Smart Website Podcast USC Creativity and Brain institute Wooden teeth Slave teeth Latest Things Random Comics Home Quizzes About Contact
The online game acting as a “vaccine” against fake news A game that trains you to act like a fake news tycoon might sound like something from a dystopian novel or an episode of Black Mirror, but it is in fact the latest research project from the University of Cambridge. The term “fake news” first came into use in mid-2016, and refers to the spread of misinformation on social media by news sites – many of which have been set up specifically for that purpose. The most high-profile fake news scandal to date was during the 2016 US election, when news site Buzzfeed discovered over 100 pro-Donald Trump sites being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In the age of social media deliria and clickbait headlines, fake news is a global phenomenon that doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Bad News is a new online, multiple-choice based game that is hoping to tackle this problem by helping the public to differentiate between real and false information.
UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it A University of Washington professor started studying social networks to help people respond to disasters. But she got dragged down a rabbit hole of twitter-boosted conspiracy theories, and ended up mapping our political moment. It started with the Boston marathon bombing, four years ago. University of Washington professor Kate Starbird was sifting through thousands of tweets sent in the aftermath and noticed something strange. Too strange for a university professor to take seriously. “There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing,” Starbird told me the other day in her office. Same thing after the mass shooting that killed nine at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: a burst of social-media activity calling the massacre a fake, a stage play by “crisis actors” for political purposes. “After every mass shooting, dozens of them, there would be these strange clusters of activity,” Starbird says. “That was a terrible mistake. Starbird sighed.
Prévention de la radicalisation : que peut faire l’école ? Après chaque attentat, l’École comme institution, mais aussi et surtout les personnes qui l’incarnent, sont soumises à une dissection clinique. Pour comprendre comment un être humain en vient à détruire les autres et à se détruire lui-même, des experts sont invités à brosser des portraits, à éclairer les zones d’ombre et les points de rupture dans une vie. Les parcours éducatifs des terroristes sont analysés, expertisés et passés au crible. Alors que le monde tremble, résiste et réplique aux impulsions de l’extrémisme violent, les attentes des États, mais aussi des organisations supranationales envers l’Éducation – et donc l’ensemble de la communauté éducative – se multiplient, se font écho, créent d’autres tensions, ouvrent des béances, révèlent les fragilités mais aussi les possibilités créatrices, la force d’innovation, la soif de compréhension de chacun et chacune d’entre nous pour mieux affronter, faire face et répondre aux tempêtes futures. Aux États-Unis En Europe II. [1]. [2].
14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media by Joyce Valenza This is the best time in history to be a teacher-librarian. Major shifts in our information and communication landscapes present new opportunities for librarians to teach and lead in areas that were always considered part of their role, helping learners of all ages effectively use, manage, evaluate, organize and communicate information, and to love reading in its glorious new variety. A school’s teacher-librarian is its chief information officer, but in a networked world, the position is more that of moderator or coach, the person who ensures that students and teachers can effectively interact with information and leverage it to create and share and make a difference in the community and beyond. For background, take a look at the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. These information-fluency standards scream inquiry, critical thinking, digital citizenship, creative communication, collaboration, and networking. For librarians, and for most other professionals, the game has changed.