(2017-04-26) Thompson Not Ok Google Fake News

Ben Thompson: Not OK, Google: Fake News, on the other hand, tells people who’ve already made up their minds what they want to hear. Certainly it’s not ideal, but the tradeoffs in dealing with the problem, at least in terms of Facebook, are very problematic

Today Google announced its own fake-news motivated changes.

deciding how to respond to fake news is a trade-off; in the case of Facebook, the fact that fake news is largely surfaced to readers already inclined to believe it means I see the harm as being less than Facebook actively taking an editorial position on news stores.

I am pleased that Google is making this change, at least at a high level. The way Google is approaching it, though, is very problematic.

Google, on the other hand, is less in the business of driving engagement via articles you agree with, than it is in being a primary source of truth

Danny Sullivan, who has been covering Google for years, has one of the best write-ups on Google’s changes, including this frank admission that the change is PR-driven

Sullivan goes on to explain the changes Google is making to autocomplete search suggestions and featured snippets, particularly the opportunity to provide immediate feedback. What was much more convoluted, though, was a third change: an increased reliance on “authoritative content”.

I wrote last week about Facebook and the Cost of Monopolies

I noted in a follow-up that Facebook hasn’t done anything wrong, and under the current interpretation of the law, isn’t even really a Monopoly.

The conundrum is even worse with Google

It follows, then, that any action to break up that monopoly is inherently anti-consumer, at least in the short-run.

Perhaps the most unanticipated outcome of the unfettered nature of the Internet is that the sheer volume of information didn’t disperse influence, but rather concentrated it to a far greater degree than ever before, not to those companies that handle distribution (because distribution is free) but to those few that handle discovery.