Content Filtering Seeps Into Mainstream

August 27, 2018

Content filtering is a new trend. For those fearing fake news, or simply tired of bad news, Google is trying to brighten their day. Their home assistant will deliver just good news if you ask it, but is there a dark underbelly to such actions? We started wrestling with this topic after a Digital Trends story, “By Request, Google Assistant Makes it Easy to Find Good News.”

According to the story:

“Google sources the positive difference stories from the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN). The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focuses on publishing stories about how people can make the world a better place — the practice is called “solutions journalism.” SJN gathers and summaries articles from a large and diverse range of media sources.”

While this seems like a cute news snippet, it is potentially dangerous. Take for example, the news of a EU official who penned an op-ed about the dangers of filtering copy written works. Of course, a bot simply filed a complaint of copyright infringement and got the story wiped from the internet. Google’s good news filter is far from this kind of deviousness, but it’s also not so far that one day we could all have important, yet unpleasant news stripped from our world.

Patrick Roland, August 27, 2018

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Censorship, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.