Twitter, Facebook and Google appeared before the US Congress today to explain their difficulties in identifying bots, propaganda and ‘fake news’. Fortunately, others do not seem to have the same difficulties. The latest addition to the plug-in collection is an extension for Google Chrome which monitors accounts for bot-like behavior and propaganda and then flags…
The financial press is excited today because Eric Schmidt described himself as a robotic ‘job elimination denyer’. However, a closer look at what Schmidt actually said shows that he holds no illusions about the changes that are coming. First of all there is the phrase ‘job elimination denyer’ by itself. In its modern use, the…
Fake news played a role in the outcome of Brexit and the US election. It is being used as a propaganda tool throughout Europe and promoters of fake news are attempting to influence the French election specifically. It is also being used in an attempt to influence elections in Africa and was recently blamed for a decline in…
In a video published yesterday, Sourcefed claimed to have evidence that Google was deliberately manipulating search results to benefit Hillary Clinton. However, when I tried to replicate the results (with a VPN set to show I was in California) I found that I got very different results from what they were claiming: First at 1:29…
Twitter executives are reportedly considering changing Twitter’s 140 character limit to a 10,000 character limit – turning Twitter into a blogging service and feed reader. For me Twitter is the world’s best cocktail party. I can walk in to a room full of people that I have specifically chosen. For me that room includes politicians,…
Last week a couple of Google researchers published a paper on the possibility of fact checking websites and ranking search results based on accuracy instead of possibility. Personally I’m thrilled with the idea. I’m tired of doing a search on Google and then having to sift through the pseudo science, myths and conspiracy theories. It…
Currently popularity is crucial to the way things are ranked on Google. The more people link to something, the more important Google’s search algorithm thinks it is. The problem is that the current method leads to a lot of bad information being rated really highly. A successful hoax will get linked to by people who…
Back in the day, before the internet was available to consumers, before we had GUIs (Graphic User Interfaces) and long before AOL made it easy for people with no computer skills to connect we had local BBSes. You could dial up (on your 2600 or, maybe 5200 baud modem) and exchange text files, play text…
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Google spokesperson Nathan Tyler announced that the company has changed “the Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” on Google products. The truth is that there is nothing controversial about this. In November the UN General Assembly officially recognized Palestine as a ‘non-member observer state’. Now that Palestine has been officially…
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Google spokesperson Nathan Tyler announced that the company has changed “the Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” on Google products. The truth is that there is nothing controversial about this. In November the UN General Assembly officially recognized Palestine as a ‘non-member observer state’. Now that Palestine has been officially…
