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/?
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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
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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
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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
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I actually don't even know what to say here. Aside from, "huh, they really did that."
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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
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(I am especially amused by the DMCA/Content Removal shortcut at the top.)
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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
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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
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Here's their homepage at the moment, a little before 11am on Dec. 31:pic.twitter.com/NTcjzq8002
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Here's the page for that heartwarming tale of the big tip in Ohio.pic.twitter.com/bSkCmxBPQn
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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.
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(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.)
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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
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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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