If It's on the Internet, It Must Be True ... Right?

I suspect you may have seen this recent news article: "Google has Developed a Technology to Tell Whether ‘Facts’ on the Internet Are True."

We all know that the Internet* is awash in manufactured facts, phony quotes, doctored photographs, and other "facts" that are invented and trumpeted by partisans of one political party or religious persuasion or another to prove the righteousness of their beliefs. Here's an example ...

Most people are lazy, and will accept Internet search results without critically examining them or questioning their provenance. Others would like to evaluate information more thoroughly, but either don't know how or don't have the time or energy to do so.

Happily, a team of computer scientists at Google may have discovered the Rosetta Stone of Internet truthfulness ... a theoretical way to rank search results not by how often the individual results have been accessed (which is how search results are normally presented), but by their factual accuracy.

The article I linked to above gives a good summary of the theoretical basis of the Google truth evaluation technology, which you can read at your leisure. My concern is more with the practical effect of such a disruptive new technology on society ...

- It could mean the death of Faux News and MSNBC.

- Bar bets could be conclusively settled once and for all, leading to reduced income for tavernkeepers.

- Extreme right- and left-wing partisans would have to face the horror of seeing their absolute truths convincingly debunked ... leading to a spike in psychiatric hospital admissions**.

- Benghazi would go back to being just another backwater city in North Africa.

- The lunatic fringe would finally have to accept that President Obama actually was born in the United States.

If you ask me, Google needs to get moving on perfecting this technology. We need it desperately ... preferably before the 2016 election season moves into high gear.

Have a good day. Remember that reading it on the Internet doesn't make it true***.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Not to mention Faux News and MSNBC. 

** Not covered by most health insurance plans, by the way.

*** Even here! I don't deliberately lie or distort facts (unlike some "news" services I could name), but I do try to be even-handed and logical ... which pisses some readers off, but that's okay.