Google's "Project Owl"


Fake News is the big buzz phrase after the 2016 election but what can really be done about it and how can internet search engines such as Google do anything to help monitor or control such sites?  Google's Project Owl is an attempt to do just that. In this article from the New York Times, Daisuke Wakabayashi gives a voice to the sites that are seeing a sharp decline in visits due to "directly - or indirectly censoring controversial subjects in their response to concerns over so-called fake news" (Wakabayashi) David North, whose website has been affected by this says that "Google had stopped redirecting search queries to the site." (Wakabayashi)

Project Owl is designed "to provide algorithmic updates to surface more authoritative content, and stamp out fake news stories from its search results." (Wakabayashi) Here is the problem and how this ties into what we have been studying. This puts a private company in control of what we receive as news. Because there are no regulations, Google can decide what is and is not fake news and what gets passed onto the public or not. So the Internet and information are controlled further by a corporation that is not regulated.

It is important to remember that when society gets into a frenzy of de-regulation that there was a reason that those regulations were first put into place.

Here is a link to the article if you would like to read it in full, it is very interesting.

the new york times as google fight fake news, voices on the margins raise alarm

Comments

  1. Scott BrownSeptember 27, 2017 at 9:36 AM

    I have heard in general conversation about Project Owl but was unaware of many of the details. Thank you for this post. I will say I do think it is a good idea in general but I think the consequences of it are far greater if it is not done 100% correctly. The possible censorship this gives google I think can be bad but since they are technically a private company I guess that is their right. I just wish people would double check and reference stories the read online to validate them but I know that is asking a lot.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 27, 2017 at 1:24 PM

    Wow, I had no idea that Google had started this "Project Owl." I can definitely see it being good and bad. Good in the sense that it will hopefully advocate for more legitimate news sources and honest reporting, but bad (as you said) having a private company pushing what they believe to be credible and relevant to your search inquiries. Hopefully, if this becomes an issue, as your foreshadowed, the market will change to a search engine that doesn't filter searches like that - although with how Google's been branded, they'd have to really upset a lot of people.

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