美国国家公共电台 NPR Facebook, Google Spread Misinformation About Las Vegas Shooting. What Went Wrong?

 

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

In the hours after the massacre¹ in Las Vegas, fake news about it started showing up on Google and Facebook. A man was falsely accused of being the shooter. His name bubbled up on a Facebook safety check site and at the top of Google search results. And all of that was automated². NPR's Laura Sydell reports that as these powerful tech companies continue to be a main destination for news, this problem is likely to happen again.

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE³: His name first appeared on a message board on a site called 4chan. 4chan is known as this gathering⁴ spot for underground hackers⁵ in the alt-right. Everyone who posts is anonymous⁶. And we're not saying the man's name because he's been through enough. Shortly after the shooting, the police announced that a woman named Marilou Danley was a person of interest. She'd been living with the shooter in Nevada. On a message board called /pol/ - Politically Incorrect, someone said it was her ex-husband who was the shooter. His Facebook page indicated he was a liberal, and the far-right trolls on /pol/ went to work to spread the word.

Even after police identified the shooter, the wrong man's name appeared for hours in tweets. On Facebook, it appeared on an official safety check page for the Las Vegas shooting, which displayed a post from a site called Alt-Right News. And on Google, the top searches linked to places that said he was the shooter. When you searched his name, a 4chan thread about him was promoted as a top story. So why did parts of these hugely powerful companies continue to point to a totally innocent man?

Bill Hartzer is an expert on search. He says Google is constantly searching the web and picking up new information as it appears. The innocent man went from hardly having anything online to having a whole bunch of stuff.

BILL HARTZER: Google has not had the time to really vet⁷ the search results yet. So what they'll do is they will show what they know about this particular name or this particular keyword.

SYDELL: In a statement, Google said the results should not have appeared. And it will, quote, "continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future." One improvement that Greg Sterling⁸ thinks Google should make is putting less weight on certain websites, like 4chan. Sterling's a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.

GREG STERLING: In this particular context, had they awaited sites that were deemed credible⁹ more heavily, you might not have seen that. So if news sites, for example, were given some sort of preference in this context, you might not have seen that.

SYDELL: Unfortunately it seemed like Facebook was giving these same site's credibility. In a statement, Facebook said it was working on a way to fix the issue that caused the fake news to appear. But Sterling thinks part of the issue with having these companies determine what's news is that they're run by engineers.

STERLING: For the most part, the engineers and the people who are running Google Search don't think like journalists. They think like engineers running a product that's very important.

SYDELL: And there is this scale of what Google and Facebook do. They're massive. Computers have to do a lot of the work. And with such huge scale, even if there were humans, there would be mistakes, says Yochai Benkler, a law professor at Harvard who studies online news. Benkler thinks if Facebook and Google were to block sites like 4chan, it would not solve the problem.

YOCHAI BENKLER: So tomorrow, in another situation like this, someone will find some other workaround. It's not realistic to imagine perfect filtering in real time in moments of such crisis.

SYDELL: But for the man who spent hours being accused of mass murder, the technical problems at Google and Facebook probably aren't much comfort. And they won't be much comfort for the next person who lands in the crosshairs of fake news. Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.

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1 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

2 automated   

a.自动化的

参考例句：

• The entire manufacturing process has been automated. 整个生产过程已自动化。
• Automated Highway System (AHS) is recently regarded as one subsystem of Intelligent Transport System (ITS). 近年来自动公路系统(Automated Highway System,AHS)，作为智能运输系统的子系统之一越来越受到重视。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

5 hackers   

n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客”

参考例句：

• They think of viruses that infect an organization from the outside.They envision hackers breaking into their information vaults. 他们考虑来自外部的感染公司的病毒，他们设想黑客侵入到信息宝库中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks againoff-again email exchanges. 通过几星期电子邮件往来安排见面，他们最终同意了。 来自互联网

6 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

7 vet   

n.兽医，退役军人；vt.检查

参考例句：

• I took my dog to the vet.我把狗带到兽医诊所看病。
• Someone should vet this report before it goes out.这篇报道发表之前应该有人对它进行详查。

8 sterling   

adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑)

参考例句：

• Could you tell me the current rate for sterling, please?能否请您告诉我现行英国货币的兑换率？
• Sterling has recently been strong,which will help to abate inflationary pressures.英国货币最近非常坚挺，这有助于减轻通胀压力。

9 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？