2. Every news story has a "Full Coverage" button on the bottom-right that pulls up that same story from a variety of stories, so you can get different perspectives.
I agree that injecting AI and personalization into news is an easy way to put yourself in a bubble, but it seems that Google has at least tried to give users the tools to minimize that.
Where AI gets dangerous is focusing on either a single source, or providing one side of the story, but that's exactly what "Full coverage" attempts to solve as you mention.
Isn't that exactly personalized news?
But you can just load it on incognito or signed out and not have any personalization other than location/country.
"content in Full Coverage is the same for everyone—it’s an unpersonalized view of events from a range of trusted news sources."
That's what I used to use google news for too. Then a few years ago, google "personalized" and "localize"d news to your area and it became pointless. Google news was especially great for international events in the early 2010s because you'd get international sources listed back then. So you could see the difference in coverage between our media and china's media and europe's media and middle east's media of the same event.
Now, google news is just mostly NYTimes and Washingtonpost stories. And considering they espouse the same message on pretty much everything, I stopped using google news.
I understand that google was heavily pressured by the news industry to push traffic to major US news sites, but I wish they would have given us the option to opt out of personalization and localization.
What's even more disappointing is that google search was updated to heavily favor local news. So if I search for "North korea news" or "syria news", the search result is ridiculously skewed to US news' perspective. They used to list forums, messageboards, etc on search for international events, but they scrubbed those from the search results.
Social media used to have alternate/external/foreign sources but after US media pressure, they've also "personalized" and localized.
It's amazing how easily the news industry has pressured tech companies into limiting what the public sees and hears.
I wish there was a news aggregate site which had a page per news event where it listed international coverage of the event.
What? This is certainly not my experience.
I just went to news.google.com in my desktop browser, and I clicked on the World section. On the Iran sanctions/deal story, there are several sources grouped together in one card. The top source is indeed Washington post but the same card also contains coverage from Mehr News Agency (which it highlights as "From Iran"), Reuters, The Hill, RollingStone.com, NYT (highlighted as "Opinion"), NEWS.com.au, and Associated Press.
If I click on "View full coverage", I get more sources, of course.
I still get international sources (sometimes as the first source on a story , as on the Iran deal right now) on both the Google News & Weather app and the Google News desktop page. Strangely, the new Google News mobile page doesn't as much (and doesn't seem to expand to provide multiple sources for the same story the way it used and the other interfaces still do), and there's little consistency in sources, or even stories selected, between the three interfaces.
> We’ve also built easy-to-use and easy-to-access controls
> so you can decide if you want to see more or less of a topic or publisher.A far better way would be to get upvote/downvote per article, and then have the AI figure what your interests are, rather than base it purely on clicks, which tends to favor clickbait.
The upside is that it's a desperately needed solution to funding journalism. Hopefully people can pay per article, making quality journalism better funded and far more available (many people who can afford one article can't afford a year subscription, I assume).
But the cost is far too high: Google knows everything you read, and becomes the gatekeeper for journalism. Yikes. For those not worried, imagine the day when Google ownership/management shifts from the current well-intentioned people to someone else. That day will come.
I thought we were trying to get away from that?
https://www.perlentaucher.de/magazinrundschau/2018-05-08.htm...
One example is this case: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-compliant-citizenr...
There's also the fact that the team behind the website does not have a stellar reputation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
As an example arguments used by pro-gun advocates are marked as false. Here's a specific example:
They falsify a claim that doctors kill more people than guns https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/doctors-kill-more-people-t...
Yet this article linked on hacker news article states that medical error is the third biggest cause of death in the USA. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627213
I used to have many more examples, but the reality is that the facts that they "objectively" check aren't necessarily unbiased.
They rated this article as "pants on fire" for reporting on something that came directly from the mouth of a public official. The politifact intern actually reached out to the official in question and he personally confirmed that he gave the outlet bad information, and yet it retains the rating that insinuates intentional lying and misleading. I think it's infuriating that Google is getting away with giving these institutions an elevated voice. They do not hold an ounce of the journalistic integrity that they claim to and they make little effort to be nonpartisan.
edit: The issue isn't with any particular institution, it's the general problem of any authority claiming to be an objective purveyor of truth and Google giving anyone like that an elevated voice. Even if it's not corrupt now, it's corruptible, and it serves no purpose. People need to come to decisions on their own.
(edit: for the record, I feel it is necessary to say that I do not regularly read this blog, I came across the fellowshipoftheminds.com post as a result of seeing the politifact article on reddit, I do not endorse the site in question)