Manipulation
In his blog, Google’s search giant announced the global launch of a mechanism for checking news for fakes and throws, so the output of the search issue will immediately be supplied with an estimate that can range from Truth to Lies with intermediate options.
In explanation for this innovation, the corporation indicates that the reason for its appearance was the presidential campaign in the USA in 2016, during which the network was flooded with fakes of all colors, shapes and colors.
The media giant said that it will not be engaged in verifying the news itself, outsourcing this case to an “international community of reporters”, which includes 115 active organizations around the world (and none on the territory of the Russian Federation). This means that these organizations will lies evaluate the veracity of the search results displayed to users and inform about it directly in the search results list without bothering the user with independent checks, searching for sources and comparing opinions.
This is a very dangerous practice, which in the long term will make it even more effective to manipulate public opinion through one-sided assessments of complex events. For example, regarding the conflict in Ukraine – 4 Ukrainian organizations, including active participants of the information war, stopfake.org, are in the list of Google “fact-verifiers”, in contrast to 0 of such organizations on the territory of Russia, which automatically makes pro-Ukrainian position on any truths happening in the conflict zone , And pro-Russian – a lie.
The same picture with regard to the conflict in South Ossetia in 2008 – now the search for the issue on this issue will be checked by the Georgian organization, funded (according to the description) by European funds and the US Embassy in Georgia.
What is the role of innovation in the formation of managed public opinion? In my opinion, no less than the protected articles from Wikipedia on controversial historical issues with controversial sets of selected sources. The position of search neutrality for a long time was corrected until finally it came to the current incarnation – direct impact on the end user through the finished evaluations under the auspices of the huge authority of the search giant.
