Google plans to 'de-rank' Russia Today and Sputnik to combat misinformation

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: November 23, 2017 at 9:26:12 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Google plans to 'de-rank' Russia Today and Sputnik to combat misinformation
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Google plans to 'de-rank' Russia Today and Sputnik to combat misinformation
> Alphabet chief executive Eric Schmidt says Google and other tech companies must act against state-run Russian news 
> agencies to stop spread of falsehoods
> By Alex Hern
> Nov 21 2017
> <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/21/google-de-rank-russia-today-sputnik-combat-misinformation-alphabet-chief-executive-eric-schmidt>
>
> Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has said the search engine is preparing to 
> take action against state-run Russian news agencies, including Russia Today and Sputnik, which are accused of 
> spreading propaganda by US intelligence agencies.
>
> “We’re working on detecting this kind of scenario ... and de-ranking those kinds of sites,” Schmidt said, in response 
> to a question at an event in Halifax, Canada. “It’s basically RT and Sputnik. We’re well aware and we’re trying to 
> engineer the systems to prevent it.”
>
> Google has faced criticism for promoting the two news sites by including them in its Google News service – a curated 
> list of legitimate news sites – as well as other algorithmic services that select and promote news.
>
> Schmidt described the previous approach of the technology industry to misinformation as “naive”, arguing that “almost 
> all the things in Alphabet and the other tech companies can be understood as the maturation of what we do.
>
> “Ten years ago I thought that everyone would be able to deal with the internet because the internet, as we all knew, 
> was full of falsehoods as well as truths. But faced with the data, from what we’ve seen from Russia in 2016 and with 
> other actors around the world, we have to act.”
>
> According to Motherboard, which first reported Schmidt’s comments, he claimed the Russian disinformation strategy was 
> easy to combat, since it is based on “amplification around a message” of information that is “repetitive, 
> exploitative, false, [or] likely to have been weaponised”.
>
> “My own view is that these patterns can be detected, and that they can be taken down or deprioritised.”
>
> But he denied going as far as to ban the two news sites. “We don’t want to ban the sites. That’s not how we operate,” 
> Schmidt said. “I am strongly not in favour of censorship. I am very strongly in favour of ranking. It’s what we do.
>
> “It’s a very legitimate question as to how we rank, A or B, right? And we do the best we can in millions and millions 
> of rankings every day.”
>
> Russia Today’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, issued a statement in response noting that Google’s own internal 
> review system had found that the news site had broken no rules.
>
> [snip]
>
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