After facing considerable backlash over its most popular product, Search, Google has made some major changes.
Earlier this week, we reported that the first result for a query in the U.K. on whether the Holocaust happened claimed it did not — and that the result was returned from a white supremacist website. Now, Google has changed its algorithm to remove that result (and other denial sites) altogether.
This is an improvement over a previous fix, which simply bumped the search result down a bit in popularity. Now, it appears to be completely gone. Of course, it’s unclear how lasting a fix this is, and this certainly won’t be the only problematic query (with even more problematic search results) Google will have to reckon with.
Here is how Google explained how they are making the search engine more accurate and less antisemitic.
When “non-authoritative information” ranks high in its results, the company says it develops scaleable and automated methods to fix the problem, “rather than manually removing these one by one.”
“We recently made improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges.”
Well good for Google. Returning results that are based in facts instead of propaganda is the first step toward moving us away from fake news and toward...you know...news news.
And for those who want their news with a slight racist or antisemitic bent, I guess there is always Bing.
(Of course I'm just joking, I'm sure Bing is also interested in providing fact based content as well. Seriously, does anybody actually use Bing?)
Source http://ift.tt/2hsDNe6
