When Roof hit Enter for the search term "black on white crime," the search engine returned a list of websites. "The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens," Roof wrote.
Google, in a way, does enable the spread of extremist propaganda, and enabling someone who is mentally vulnerable to read and see certain things may cause them to become obsessed and act irrationally.
Bruck was referring to Roof's assertion in his confession and in a manifesto that a Google search shaped his beliefs.
This is terrifying!! Its crazy to believe that Google could potentially be enabling the crazy and extremes to become even crazier and more extreme. Sometimes to much knowledge at your disposal is dangerous.
In reality, Google’s best editors are its user base, and the company might do well to explain more clearly why a certain snippet was chosen, and more enthusiastically solicit user feedback.
This is an interesting statement since it was previously mentioned that google is pushing for more AI and less human editorial involvement. I understand that AI would make less mistakes, but it also would not be as subjective.
Answers to queries about facts and figures, like historical names and dates, are accurate most of the time (but not always, about which, more below).
I don't like the wording "most of the time". That is so dangerous because even if something is accurate 99.999% of the time, there is still that small percent of the time that it could be wrong, and all it takes to ruin your credibility is one wrong statement or fact.
Over the weekend, the Outline published a lengthy report on the barely regulated Wild West that is Google’s “featured” snippets — the highlighted boxes that sometimes appear at the top of Google search results.
I was unaware of how unregulated this feature is. I generally assumed it was factual and had been checked, which is really dangerous on my part.
Learn the skills and make the world a better place. There may be good excuses for not doing this, but time is not one of them.
That is a good point. So often I use time as an excuse for not fact checking, but this article really takes away the option to do that.
Now I want to re-share this with people, but I’d like to be a good net citizen as well. Good net citizens:
I think this is such an excellent point to make. I never think about fact checking things I share before sharing them, but in a way, it is my duty to make sure the information is credible. Once i repost articles or information, I am essentially endorsing them, so if they are false, that is a negative reflection on me.
Donald Trump retweeted it, telling Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly that it came “from sources that are very credible.”
I feel like I hear this from Trump all the time, and I never know what he means when he says "very credible sources". I hate that people use this term and automatically assume it will justify whatever they are saying. I find something to be less credible when someone says it comes from a credible source, but then fails to name that source.
“The fictions and fabrications that comprise fake news are but a subset of the larger bad news phenomenon,
This quote intrigues me because I have never thought of fake news in this way. I just assumed all fake news was the same and bad, but it is interesting to hear it categorized and differentiated
You have some trust, and you have to be willing to spend it somewhere.
I do agree with this point. We must have certain sources and people that we completely trust, but again, I do not think it is a bad thing to be picky about who we decide to trust.
So 34 other experts had considered this person’s niche work worth talking about but hey, we’re still not sure this guy’s worth listening to on a subject we know nothing about and in which he is making rather moderate claims…
I understand the danger of being too skeptical about everything, but in some ways I think that may be better than the alternative. If you trust everything then you overexpose yourself. While it is necessary to recognize what you should and should not trust, I don't think its a bad thing to be hesitant and skeptical before fully buying into what the author is preaching.
They call for a new drive of interdisciplinary research “to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed.”
I think this is a great goal to have, and definitely necessary. It is so hard to know if you are reading the full truth, so how are we as a society going to be able to be well informed without something like this in place?
that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor.
I find it disheartening that we have reached a period in time, at which, the truth is no longer as popular or widely believed as a hoax or rumor. How are we ever suppose to really know the truth?
We are all familiar with student activists’calls for“safe spaces”on campus. They demand freedom frommicroagressions, small actions or word choices that on their face seem to have no malicious intent but thatnonetheless send denigrating messages to individuals who are not from the dominant culture.
I think it is a near impossible goal to aim to please everyone. In most situations, someone will always be upset, such is the case with safe spaces. And, while yes safe spaces sometimes can be controversial, I believe they are a vital part of society. People need to have a place they can go and feel the freedom to express themselves and interact with others.
How is“the new”
I think that a huge difference between student activism today versus student activism in the 60s and 70s has a lot to do with technology. I think in this modern day technological society it affects our actions in such a huge way. I think social media also plays a big role in student activism, and in the 60s and 70s, social media did not even exist.
Grades don’t prepare children for the “real world” — unless one has in mind a world where interest in learning and quality of thinking are unimportant.
A lot of the time, I think grades and this obsession with having perfect grades makes students afraid of failure. In life, it is inevitable that you will fail at some point, so I think that this notion of having to achieve perfection does a disadvantage to preparing students for the real world.
A “grading orientation” and a “learning orientation” have been shown to be inversely related
I 100% agree with this. I don't believe that my ability to get a good grade on a test proves that I understand and remember the material. If I were to take the same test a month later, I would probably fail it because I am not retaining the information. I only truly retain information when I am able to fully understand the concept and when I find the information to be interesting.
In fact, students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age.
I really appreciate this statement because, as a student, I do believe that at times my ability to learn has been hindered by my desire to succeed. There have been numerous times, in which, I simply memorize something for a brief period of time well enough to regurgitate the information on the test. But, this process prevents me from fully understanding and developing important concepts.
t’s regular human communication astride a new medium.
This is an important point to emphasize. I think that people overcomplicate communication via technology, and that people use the medium to communicate in a way they normally would not. I think that whether you are communicating face to face or screen to screen, communication is communication.
It would, in fact, be a mistake to think that what any of us do is digital. The endeavor of education—even outside Humanities fields—is human.
I agree with this idea. I think that no matter how much new technology is introduced, the core of teaching comes down to the teacher and the teacher's ability to interact effectively with the students. A bad teacher can't hide behind technology forever--at some point they will be exposed.
Plus, you could reuse the content again and again! Design the course once, teach it ad infinitum.
I disagree with this assumption that teachers would simply get lazy and continually reuse content. I don't think the reusing of content is enable by LMS. I think some teachers already reuse content, and that the choice to do so is dependent on the teacher. I don't think LMS changes this fact, or enables teachers any more than they already are.