back to article Google, Twitter gleefully spew Texas shooter fake news into netizens' eyes

Following the murder-suicide of 26 people in church on Sunday by Texas gunman Devin Kelley, ad giant Google managed to shoot itself in the foot by promoting fake news about the 26-year-old. As countless internet users noticed Monday morning, a search for the gunman's name on Google brought up a special "carousel" of tweets …

  1. Mark 85

    I must be doing something right (by my standards) or wrong (by Google's standards) as I never see this carousel of crap and hopefully, I never will. It's hard enough to avoid all the BS the web tosses at users as it is. For them to continue this trend of tossing crap is unconscionable. Their defense of it, even more so.

    1. ratfox

      I never see it either. Maybe the Twitter thing might only show in the US?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I've never seen any of the various ads, articles, etc. here and I believe I'm in the US. My profiles with the services (Google, FaceBitch, Twitter) may have a lot to do with that. Seems I'm a pure hardware guy. Who woulda thunk that?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "and I believe I'm in the US"

          You must be one of the ~ 20% of US citizens that can't find their own country on an Atlas?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Google, Twitter gleefully spew Texas shooter fake news "

      It was nothing to do with guns.

      The solution is more guns.

      etc.

      etc.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Google, Twitter, Trump....

        We need to go back to a time when people took thirty seconds to check their sources. Have some news organisations who are more interested in accurate reporting than in being first to publish...

        (Heck even a news organisation that rates their own articles as 'rush job', 'cursory sanity check', 'got told twice', 'actually asked someone', 'have a trusted source', 'verified by talking to someone directly involved')

        1. elip

          We have these news organizations now. Unfortunately, they were labeled 'fake news' and 'Kremlin stooges' by Google, Facebook, a completely anonymous group of "concerned citizens" (PropOrNot), the DoD, Kieren and the MSM outlets.

      2. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Happy

        "The solution is more guns."

        As demonstrated by the man from across the street, who grabbed his ASSAULT RIFLE and put it to good use, no doubt saving lives in the process. I only wish that some 'cowboy' had been attending church that day, with pistols on his hips. Maybe then even MORE people would've been spared.

        also heard today that the mass murderer had escaped from a mental institution for criminally insane people in 2012, after beating his wife (radio report). The list of "wrong things" with this "worm feeder" just goes on and on. But I'd rather he had lived and been arrested. Going through court (and then prison) would be more difficult to deal with than offing himself (the coward's way out). And being in Texas, they probably would've executed him, after a nice long trial (and some time on death row) in which he gets to reflect on how he ended up there..

        1. TheVogon

          "As demonstrated by the man from across the street, who grabbed his ASSAULT RIFLE and put it to good use, no doubt saving lives in the process."

          No, the massacre was over by then - the guy was trying to escape - and killed himself anyway so it saved no one. It just created a cross fire that could easily have hit a bystander. The primary thing that would likely have prevented this would have been less easy access to firearms.

          nb - at least 2 US based studies have also shown that having a firearm in your household INCREASES the risk of death by firearms to everyone in it!

  2. FatGerman
    Facepalm

    If a cinema showed 5 seconds of hardcore pornography just after the credits of a PG rated movie, would they be able to use Google's argument too?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      If Google are reporting what the top story on Twitter is - is it upto Google to check whether Twitter is right?

      Should Google fact check Presidential Tweets before showing them on its site?

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Optional

        "Should Google fact check Presidential Tweets before showing them on its site?"

        Yes. Fuck yes. Absolutely yes. Yes a dozen more times and yes.

        So should everyone else.

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Optional

          "So should everyone else."

          Agreed. but probably not for the same reasons you were thinking of.

          [there have been a large number of them that have been 'later proven right' after being blasted by the lame-stream media. Had THEY done some 'fact checking' they wouldn't have been able to drag out the fake news over what they simply disagreed with]

          Of course, the occasional 'covfefe' tweet makes for a nice laugh. Best not to 'nod off' while typing and accidentally hit 'send'. When you consider how tiny the edit text is for 'El Reg', 1/2 the size of the rest of the text on the web page, I make typing mistakes a LOT, and have to post-edit everything.

          So yeah, I can identify with the 'covfefe' thing. It's kinda funy, too.

          (spelling error deliberate to make a point)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Optional

            No Bob, it's not typos they mean. They are referring to anything remotely conservative or non-PC that he might tweet. Those are the things they want "fact checked" and denounced 24/7 by Goggle et al. Nothing less will satisfy them at this point.

          2. Seajay#

            Re: Optional

            The laugh with the covfefe tweet was not him sending it. You're right, that's an easy mistake.

            The laugh was the White House press office defending it as not a typo but a well considered presidential tweet.

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Why shouldn't Google fact check presidential tweets?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'll have to ask my father-in-law....

      .... who once lent us a VHS tape labelled "Dinosaurs", with a program matching the tile, when my kids were small. At the end though, was the remaining portion of the "Playboy Channel" program he had taped over and forgotten about That became "Daddy's Dinosaur tape". I still have it, if only I had a VHS machine on which to play it.

      AC to protect the innocent.

  3. WonkoTheSane
    Facepalm

    The weak of mind believe this stuff

    I hear Alex "Infowar" Jones parroted this claptrap verbatim this morning

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The weak of mind believe this stuff

      More likely Alex Jones STARTED it, rather than parroted it.

      The problem here is that people who like the mislead the public have caught on that if they tweet lies that are what a lot of people want to hear, there will be enough retweets that it will:

      1) be assumed to be fact by millions because they will have "seen it from multiple sources" so when the mainstream media reports differently it is seen as "fake news"

      2) Fakes out and overwhelms google and twitter's algorithms, so manual intervention is required to remove the bullshit.

      Every time there's a mass shooting the alt right fringe figures like Jones push memes that the shooter was a liberal to push their meme that liberals are evil incarnate. He was given a dishonorable discharge from the Navy for hitting his wife and cracking the skull of his 11 month old daughter, and attacked the church because that's where his in-laws went and he apparently had it in for his mother-in-law. His politics are irrelevant, this was personal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The weak of mind believe this stuff

        Magic's First Law: People either believe something is true because they want it to be true or because they are afraid it might be true.

      2. WonkoTheSane
        Headmaster

        Re: The weak of mind believe this stuff

        "More likely Alex Jones STARTED it, rather than parroted it."

        The technical term for this is apparently "gaslighting"

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

      3. elip

        Re: The weak of mind believe this stuff

        DougS, you speak of the parroting and 'fake news', and then go on to spew the same bullshit without checking twice. He didn't crack the skull of his 11 month old daughter - it was the daughter of his wife, different father.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The weak of mind believe this stuff

          How is getting a minor and irrelevant detail accidentally wrong "fake news"? Fake news is all about deliberate lying to push a viewpoint - like right wing fringe figures falsely claiming the shooter was a Bernie supporter in order to push the 'liberal nutjob' meme.

  4. Palpy
    Pint

    In the town where I live --

    -- we have a large university with a good journalism program. Students learn, among other things, that journalists must verify their articles, justify their sources -- and, if sources are anonymous, use multiple checks on material -- and clearly identify which articles are factual and which are meant as opinion pieces.

    And professional journalists often get fired if they fabricate information or sources.

    Not so with Alex Jones. Or Bill O'Reilly -- it took exposure as a sexual predator to get him fired. These guys are fabulists, not journalists. As the Book says, the truth is not in them.

    So when someone writes that they "don't trust the mainstream media" I think, If you don't get information from evidence-based journalism, where DO you get information about the wider world? Unsubstantiated, unsourced rumors and bloggers' bullshit? Evidence-free tweets and fake Facebook junk dreamed up by teenagers in Macedonia and Ukraine? Alt-news sites that claim there is oil on the moon and Sharia'ah law in Chicago?

    It's bemusing. And, apparently, there are enough fact-free voters in the US to influence elections -- a development which bodes ill for rational governance. Or even a modicum of rationality in national decision-making. Beer, however, seems to be getting better and better.

    1. Lysenko

      Re: In the town where I live --

      DevOps journalism doesn't need any QA or verification staging. The priority is to shove crap through the continuous delivery pipeline as fast as possible in case you get beaten to the punch by the competition. It doesn't matter if your product is rubbish, you just need to make sure the sprint gets signed off on schedule. "Mean time to remediate" is the metric de jour remember. "QA", "verification" and "ship to a quality standard, not to a schedule" are so 20th century.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In the town where I live --

      Keep them dumb with bad education, and feed them lies and racist bullshit and you have a population who will vote how you tell them to, and they will think it was their idea.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In the town where I live --

      That's why bloggers and talk show hosts shouldn't be equated with journalists, because they aren't interested in facts, only in getting people to believe what they want. Depending on the blogger / show sometimes it might be the truth, or a slanted version of the truth, sometimes it is lies fabricated from whole cloth. Too many people only want to hear things that confirm what they already believe.

      If they think liberals are evil, a false story about the mass shooter that tells them that is welcome. If it turned out the mass shooter was a Trump volunteer and went to his rallies, that would not be what they want to hear. So why not get the lie out now that "he's a liberal" in case it turns out otherwise and that gets reported in the press - then those who have already been told he's a liberal would see the claim he was a Trump supporter as "fake news". That would confirm what they've already been told - that the mainstream media owned by liberals and lies about everything. It becomes a self-perpetuating circle.

      Though as I said above, this shooter's motivation was entirely personal, and his politics - whatever they were - are irrelevant since they weren't a motivation for his actions at least based on what I've read about so it far.

    4. Alistair
      Windows

      Re: In the town where I live --

      There are enough fact free folks all over the world to have precipitated several measles outbreaks in the last 4 years because "vaccines cause.......<insert dog whistle of choice>"

      While the garbage floats to the top (see Caribbean plastic slick) has been around as a physics principle since time immemorial, and thus the Google algorithm suffering from this principle, what society (at least most of the G40 societies) had was a reasonable level of bullshit detection. Sadly, that tool seems to be in *very* short supply lately. For several years. Perhaps a decade or two. Sadly, this affect is spreading to some small corners of the Reg Commentariat.

      1. Palpy

        Re: Measles and vaccines...

        ... Ooo, you ought to hear my Darling Better Half on that one! She teaches health and phys ed at university, and by the Eggs of the Elder Ones, you best have done research before you argue vaccines and herd immunity with her. I get my shots (I would anyway, but she makes sure).

        It's peculiar. I inveigh against non-evidential thinking, but I know I don't avoid it completely myself. Few can, I think. But those who suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect do not even know that they lack knowledge, while I'm damned sure I am ignorant about many things. And therefore I had best check sources and research before I go swallowing large gobs of opinion which may have sharp fishhooks in them.

        I don't know... my Dad's generation seemed to have this more under control. Or maybe it was just him. And his brothers. Not sure. Every generation, as they age toward senescence, bemoan the generation that replaces them. O tempora o mores, and all that.

        1. Eddy Ito

          Re: Measles and vaccines...

          Funny thing about "Dad's generation", at least in the US, the reason they had a better grip on things was likely because they didn't have to deal with their nerves being rubbed raw with various forms of nonsense like goop glop, breatharianism, and the death of the melting pot. Besides, everyone was too busy chasing commies and practicing the duck and cover.

          Maybe less acute minds need to have something to focus on in order to avoid going down the cow patty path of mental masturbation that leads to a hypersensitivity to rational thought that causes orgasmic outbursts claiming the moral high ground based on being offended by the possibility of being wrong.

          Hmm, that was a bit longer than planned.

          1. Dan 55 Silver badge

            Re: Measles and vaccines...

            Your Dad's generation had MSM to filter out the crap. Now it's practically all bullshit all the time.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Measles and vaccines...

              Your Dad's generation had MSM to filter out the crap. Now it's practically all bullshit all the time.

              Yes, pretty much this. Back in the day Alex Jones would have a newsletter you had to subscribe to, so he would only have 3000 mouth breathers digesting his daily bullshit. Now he reaches millions, and the less crazy but still well into the realm of alternative facts sites like Breitbart have provided an outlet for conservatives who felt Fox News was too mainstream (though since Trump's nomination it has abandoned all illusions of being a news outlet and is now basically the US equivalent of state run media for Trump)

          2. Lysenko

            Re: Measles and vaccines...

            didn't have to deal with their nerves being rubbed raw with various forms of nonsense like goop glop, breatharianism

            You seem to be forgetting the history of Snake Oil and this famous aphorism, not to mention all manner of religiously framed imbecility.

            Ubiquitous bovine byproduct isn't new, it is the militantly anti-intellectual assumption that "expert" is a synonym for "liar" that has changed. The old patent medicine peddlers used fake qualifications and educational histories to fool the rubes whereas their modern counterparts succeed with the exact opposite strategy. Even if you were touting something as ludicrous as homeopathy you needed to claim to had studied at a monastery in Tibet: now you just need to cite a three year posting history on mumsnet.

          3. strum

            Dad's generation

            There was just as much crap/fake news around in the old days - but it was 'a bloke I met in the pub' or 'a chick I met at a Grateful Dead gig'. You heard it once and it was gone (except for Marianne Faithful and the Mars bar - which lasted for decades).

            Today's fake news is relentless, hammering into our brains on an hourly basis. And it's intended to mislead (whereas old-time gossip was only intended to be interesting).

            1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

              Re: Dad's generation

              Dad's generation could believe the news.

              When the news reported Senator McCarthy saying that there were 3000 communists in the state dept you could believe it because politcians were honest back then and the TV news reported it accurately

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Dad's generation

                The news was accurate - they reported what McCarthy said. Now McCarthy could be wrong or lying, just like Trump could be wrong or lying when he says "no Russian collusion".

                Where the news helps the process of separating fact from fiction is when they do investigate reporting - let's see if we can find any evidence of all these communists in the state department, or of Russian collusion.

                Nixon would have finished his second term if it wasn't for Woodward and Bernstein. Usually they don't have quite THAT big an impact, but every little piece either shines a light and shows where criminal investigation by the FBI and/or fact-finding by congressional oversight committees is necessary, or potentially helps them along by uncovering something they weren't aware of.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "represent a dynamic conversation that is going on in near real-time"

    A "conversation" is not a ringside seat to a collection of trolls shouting abuse and lies as they game Google's deliberately-feeble filters. In the real world we'd call that "a disgraceful imposition, excused by smarmy yes-men"

  6. Daggerchild Silver badge

    The sacrifice must enter of its own free will

    So, people don't like what they see in the metal mirror, eh? Well, we both know which side is solely responsible for changing that.

    So, this realtime zeitgeist modification engine that people are talking about:

    a) - it exists, is run by evil corporations, and should be destroyed

    b) - it exists, is run by evil corporations, and should be given to $trustworthy_unbiased_imaginary_algorithm

    c) - doesn't exist, and shouldn't exist, because a)

    d) - doesn't exist, and should exist, because humanity needs to be protected

    d) - doesn't exist, and should exist, because humanity needs to be censored

    e) - doesn't exist, and won't work, because objectivity isn't even a human thing, let alone an algorithm.

    f) - doesn't exist, won't work, but will be forced to exist anyway, whereupon everyone and everything will fight over control of it, forever.

    The only way you'd get anything approaching a reasonable filter is to tag sources and readers with their various viewpoint polarities, to keep dissonant realities apart, which would of course just create unchallenged singularities which would then tear at the fabric of reality, AND mean everyone just handed over their own psych profile.

    I prefer the unvarnished truth, with polarity tags/magnitudes/controls, so I can make my own filter, which will never happen.

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Google and Twitter

    Both are NOT reliable news sources.

    This is not the news you are looking for.

  8. Cosmo

    The S*n do it all the time

    They post a story that is complete garbage, get called out on it and pull it from their website as if it never happened.

    1. r_c_a_d_t

      Re: The S*n do it all the time

      The person in front of me at the coffee shop today bought The S*n _and_ The Daily M*il.

      I wept inside.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: The S*n do it all the time

        some people read those supermarket tabloids for the laughs.

        /me reminded of the original M.I.B. movie - "check the hotsheets" - something like 'best investigative reporting on the planet' - "Alien ate my husband"

  9. RyokuMas
    Facepalm

    ... the biz is still refusing to accept its responsibilities and obligations as a de facto publisher.

    That's because Google is, was and always will be an advertising company. It doesn't care if what it shows is factually accurate, as long as it generates clicks that can be tracked and/or earn revenue.

    The problem we now face is what can be done about this. Google's potential to control information is on a level where they can effectively ignore this responsibility, should they so desire - between lobbying power, friends in the right places and a legal team that can tie process up in knots for years, it will take someone with a huge level of clout - as in EU or US government - to bring them back under control.

  10. tiggity Silver badge

    Google results

    When I last looked, Google was a search engine not a cuarted web index.

    Results show urls

    So I can see a result is from Twitter, Facebook etc. and rate its likelihood of factual accuracy / trustworthiness appropriately

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