this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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I do have to wonder, how could Google (or any search engine) be expected to perform fact checking on search results? It seems technically impossible.
It also seems ethically and culturally disastrous. I do not want Google to be the arbiter of truth on the internet. Does the EU law require that the fact-checks be accurate and unbiased?
Google already is the arbiter of truth. EU just wants google to put in some damn effort to the results it curates. Facts by defintion are accurate and unbiased. Why do you feel the need to tack that on?
I was asking because who fact-checks the fact checkers? Everyone and every company has biases, so do the biases of google get overseen by anyone. Can google insert biases or even opinion in fact-checking if it aligns with the agenda of the EU.
I suggest to solve this problem by banning the representation of results as facts and separate "SPONSORED RESULTS" with "results of the search" in a clear way. Cause you make a good point about how hard it is to be objective about a lot of things that alter world politics.
Hmm, I guess from one point of view Google already is the de facto "arbiter of truth on the internet" as the most popular search engine, hence the need for regulation.
Are they really fact checks otherwise?
But then you definitely have a who-watches-the-watchers problem.
Google doesn't just provide links, it scrubs content out of sites (with scripts before, now with LLMs) and presents it as Google's own content.
If they do that, they should be responsible if the content break laws.
Oh, yes I agree they should be responsible for anything they generate themselves, but if it's just a regurgitation of content that their web crawler pulled from a website which then appeared in search results then it's the original website that should be responsible.
It seems like a heavy-handed enforcement of this policy could just break web search functionality entirely.
Downvoters have no idea how web indexes work.
So if Google pulls out the wrong part of your website and gives dangerous information, you'd be responsible?
Well, why is that 'dangerous information' available to be pulled out of my website in the first place?
My guy, leaving out context can change whether information is dangerous or not.
Say I have a website that explains how to get clothes clean, and I recommend bleach. I also have a subsection "Danger: things you should never do with bleach!" listing dangerous things, e.g. "drinking bleach". Now Google pulls out only that list without the heading.
In your world, I'm responsible for Google showing information in the wrong context, which is nuts. I can't be expected to write everything so it's unambiguous, no matter how small a snippet you extract.
"You don't want to drink bleach on a sunny day" could be understood as "It's okay to drink bleach on a cloudy day"
Um... "could be"...? Literally anything anybody writes could be misinterpreted, so I don't really see the point of this line of argument, nor any value in legislating around it.