<story><title>Google promoted Texas gunman fake tweets</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41915065</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beaner</author><text>I feel like there&amp;#x27;s a big push to blame &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; and related phenomena on tech companies right now.&lt;p&gt;Fake news is created and shared by people. Tech is just one of the vehicles through which we share it.&lt;p&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t tech, it&amp;#x27;s people. Fix the root cause with education and the tech will reflect it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PostOnce</author><text>The problem is that tech companies aren&amp;#x27;t just showing you everything everyone says... they&amp;#x27;re picking and choosing what to show you.&lt;p&gt;The 10,000ft overview is that they show you whatever keeps you coming back or staying on-site longer. This gives them more ad impressions and makes them more money.&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if their algorithms determine that showing you fake news, lies, and other socially-destructive and false propaganda is more profitable... they can and will do that.&lt;p&gt;So the question is, how do we regulate what the tech-utilities get to filter from your view? Should we regulate? It&amp;#x27;s not the regulation of speech, but rather the regulation of the willful filtration of speech for profit.&lt;p&gt;i.e., &amp;quot;dont show this guy dissenting views to his position or he&amp;#x27;ll stop coming back&amp;quot;, where does that fit into our needs as a society and how should our laws tackle it, if at all?</text></comment>
<story><title>Google promoted Texas gunman fake tweets</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41915065</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>beaner</author><text>I feel like there&amp;#x27;s a big push to blame &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; and related phenomena on tech companies right now.&lt;p&gt;Fake news is created and shared by people. Tech is just one of the vehicles through which we share it.&lt;p&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t tech, it&amp;#x27;s people. Fix the root cause with education and the tech will reflect it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>runesoerensen</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t tech, it&amp;#x27;s people&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This sounds remarkably like an argument I&amp;#x27;ve heard before, but there will always be destructive people and people seeking to profit from events like this.&lt;p&gt;In this case certain features created by tech companies perpetuate and amplify the destructiveness of those people, and that&amp;#x27;s a problem tech needs to solve quickly. Education could definitely help people filter information better, and in turn tech companies can leverage that curation to deliver better products.&lt;p&gt;The short term fix? Perhaps Google should just disable their tweet carousel (at least during certain events) until it works reliably and doesn&amp;#x27;t contribute to misinformation on this scale.</text></comment>