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I'm a tiny bit obsessed with Bing, and what they're doing in the news space to compete with Google. Obsessed might be too much, but let's say "more curious than most, which isn't saying a lot because who is actually curious about Bing?" anyway ... 1/?
Their trending bar is usually the same standard mix of top stories of the day, with a secondary emphasis on the weird and the quirky. Here's today's. If you've been on twitter or a local news site in the last 48 hours, you know most of these.pic.twitter.com/PcCm9y2JsY
Often they'll feature stories that in the rest of the news ecosystem have been played out. I have no idea who they imagine their audience to be, but let's assume it's not news junkies. (Which is to say: their audience is "most people.")
But something weird happens sometimes when you click into these little headlines. Like Google News, it gives you a variety of organizations covering the same story. NYT often ends up in there, and looking at that traffic is how every once in a while I remember Bing exists.
Here's their page for that cute magnifying glass fire story.pic.twitter.com/0gSOnIZVHJ
Fairly normal stuff, right? Kinda indistinguishable from Google News. But then you scroll down.
Whiskeyriff? Serialpressit? What even ARE these sites being promoted by Bing? The second page gets you something called Freshnewsnow that's literally just a copy/paste from CNN.pic.twitter.com/2nci9uChui
These are not out of the ordinary! Sometimes I'll click on a Bing news story I've never seen anywhere (and believe me, I read a lot of weird news online) and it's entirely filled with junk news sites.
If you looked closely at that first screenshot of today's trending Bing stories, you might be guessing where I'm going now:pic.twitter.com/QT3A0XFCUS
Pretty ok up here at the top! You get some mainstream sites, a mix of the one very local important source and some aggregators. You get a bio of the guy.pic.twitter.com/2eslvpr3w7
And then you scroll down just one screen. You get a wiki page shared directly to conspiracy claims about Sandy Hook (good intention here!). And then you get ... an 18-month-old CNN article? And, oh dear, two links straight to Infowars, including the actual conspiracy. Oh dear.pic.twitter.com/pSqz4QwT5l
I actually don't even know what to say here. Aside from, "huh, they really did that."
Anyway, yes, sharing actual conspiracy theories is an extreme outlier. But that other stuff isn't, really. Serialpressit shows up under that escaped Georgia inmate story, too. I genuinely don't know what this site is, but here's their article page.pic.twitter.com/t6kyqOFNIz
(I am especially amused by the DMCA/Content Removal shortcut at the top.)
Here's the first-page roundup of stories for Eddie Murphy getting a lifetime achievement award. Fairly normal! Some mainstream, some niche entertainment stuff.pic.twitter.com/OQuIszuhPc
Never heard of Thetcanada, but here's their article page. (Don't worry, news watchers, that Assange story is from April.)pic.twitter.com/9M0lRjLLRF
Here's their homepage at the moment, a little before 11am on Dec. 31:pic.twitter.com/NTcjzq8002
Here's the page for that heartwarming tale of the big tip in Ohio.pic.twitter.com/bSkCmxBPQn
Anyway! No big thought here, really. Just that a not insignificant number of people use Bing, either by choice or because it's the default on whatever device they're using. And that I wish there was a little more distance between those people and some of these results.
(Final point: Bing is hardly alone here! The internet is full of junk! Google has had its own problems --https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/technology/google-fake-ads-fact-check.html …. This was just a meandering trip down what Bing happened to serve up this morning.)
OMG wait no, one more final point. I finally clicked on that other Eddie Murphy story, from uspotus dot com. It's a bad copy/paste from Entertainment Tonight, stripped of the byline but NOT THE NEWSLETTER SIGNUP.pic.twitter.com/Nyz6I6BXoP
Today on Bing(TM), they are featuring a story about a Guinness Record that has been covered by <squints> 2 total news organizations: his local TV station, and UPI. (The Bre*tbart link is the UPI story.) So few sites that it's just showing the Amazon page for 'baseball cards'pic.twitter.com/zWLiqAZX8X
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