Google -- "Facts"

[davej]

"Just the facts. Ma'am"

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530102.600-google-wants-to-rank-websites-based-on-facts-not-links.html

 

[Ingolme]

This is a problem because not everybody accepts the facts, but perhaps it's for the better to improve education by giving conspiracy theory websites a lower ranking. I see this has been addressed in the article:

He says tools like LazyTruth are useful online, but challenging the erroneous beliefs underpinning that information is harder. "How do you correct people's misconceptions? People get very defensive," Stempeck says. "If they're searching for the answer on Google they might be in a much more receptive state."

[Don E]

Well, imo, just another way to "control/police" the internet by giving people the idea that if it's a fact and google says so, it's true and that's all there is to it. People should be allowed to explore and research and come up with their own conclusions based on their own research, not what some giant search engine says as fact. "If it's on TV, it must be true." Same idea.

[Ingolme]

I think Google's trying to filter out the abundance of obvious lies that show up when people search for things.

 

For example, when people search "moon landing hoax" Google would return reliable sources that show it wasn't a hoax.

[justsomeguy]

Climate change might be another example. If over 99% of research papers conclude that climate change is man made, and less than 1% of them come to other conclusions, maybe it would make sense if 99% of the search results pointed to the consensus. There's obviously a lot of room to shape how people think on political issues though, but no more or less than with any other kind of media.

[Don E]

For example, when people search "moon landing hoax" Google would return reliable sources that show it wasn't a hoax.

 

 

Yes I agree something should be implemented to return the best accurate(factual) results about a particular subject when searching but imo when a user enters something specific like "moon landing hoax", since they are searching precisely for that for whatever reason, information regarding that should be returned. Now if they enter "moon landing" and say for example the more popular sites/results are of sites discussing a "hoax" about it, in this case since they entered precisely "moon landing", results for that should be return(factual information) and should come first despite the other more popular sites that normally come first.

 

IMO, search engines should return as best as they can precisely what the user is searching for depending on what they entered. This to me is the point of search engines as it has been since the internet began really. Please understand, yes I agree factual information should be returned but should depend precisely what the user enters(like in the example I gave above). Perhaps google should implement an option upon searching that allows you to search for factual information to be returned. This would be ideal I guess to be fair to the owners of the websites that offer alternative views and opinions on subjects.

 

If we want to talk about facts being return, then w3schools.com is 'SOL' because there are many out there that believe w3schools is not a reliable 'factual' information website in regards to web design/development.