谷歌置頂“特朗普普選票比希拉里多”假新聞引爭議

Google has been dragged into the controversy over fake online news in the wake of last week’s US presidential election, adding to Silicon Valley’s discomfort over allegations that it may have played a role in tipping the vote.

上周美國總統(tǒng)選舉之后，谷歌(Google)因虛假的網(wǎng)上新聞而被拖入一場爭議。這件事使得硅谷在面對外界的有關指控——即指控其可能助推了選情的逆轉(zhuǎn)——時感到更加尷尬。

The internet search engine was forced on Monday to admit its algorithms had failed by giving top placement in its results to a rightwing blog that claimed, inaccurately, that Donald Trump had won more votes than Hillary Clinton.

這家互聯(lián)網(wǎng)搜索引擎公司周一被迫承認其算法出了問題，將一家不準確地聲稱唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)贏得的普選票比希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)多的右翼博客網(wǎng)站，放到了其搜索結果中排名最靠前的位置。

Google also said it was close to putting in place a new policy designed to prevent its Adsense system placing adverts on sites that carry fake news, something that might have helped to fund the spread of deliberate falsehoods ahead of the election.

谷歌還表示，它很快將實施一項新政策，以阻止其Adsense系統(tǒng)在帶有假新聞的網(wǎng)站上投放廣告——這種投放可能幫助為選前故意編造的謊言的傳播提供了資金。

The embarrassment for the world’s biggest internet company followed criticism of Facebook in recent days for not weeding out fake news that spread widely on its social network ahead of the election. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, has rejected the criticism, arguing that only a small mount of the election information shared over Facebook was fake. However, he also conceded that distinguishing the truth was “complicated”.

在全球最大互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司遭遇這一尷尬之前，F(xiàn)acebook也因未能在選前清理掉其社交網(wǎng)絡中廣泛傳播的假新聞而在最近幾天遭遇批評。Facebook首席執(zhí)行官馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)駁斥了這些批評，稱Facebook上分享的選舉信息只有一小部分是虛假的。但他同時也承認甄別真相很“復雜”。

The spotlight shifted to Google on Monday after it gave prominence in its search rankings to a report on a blog site called 70News, which claimed that Mr Trump had won the popular vote during the election. According to the latest figures, reported separately by Google’s search engine, Mrs Clinton was more than 700,000 votes ahead late on Monday.

谷歌在周一引起人們的注意，是因為它在其搜索結果排名中，將一個名為70News的博客網(wǎng)站的一則報告置于顯著位置。該報告聲稱，特朗普在選舉期間贏得的普選民票更多。而根據(jù)谷歌搜索引擎另外報出的最新數(shù)字，周一晚之前希拉里贏得普選票比特朗普多70萬張。

In a note added later to the blog site, the author of the report said: “Update: Anyone asking where I got the figures, it was from twitter posts.”

在70News網(wǎng)站后來添加的注釋中，該報告的作者表示：“更新：致問我數(shù)字來源的人，它們來自Twitter上的帖子。”

Early in the day, the 70News post was given top billing under the “In the news” banner in Google’s search engine in response to the query “final election results”. It was still in second place by early evening, directly under a report from the Washington Post debunking the post.

當天早上，在谷歌搜索引擎針對“final election results”(最終選舉結果)關鍵詞給出的搜索結果中，70News網(wǎng)站這個帖子出現(xiàn)在最高位置，并打上了“In the news”(新聞報道)標簽。而在當天傍晚，該帖仍被置于第二位，就在《華盛頓郵報》(Washington Post)批駁該帖的報道之下。

Google said its goal was to produce “the most relevant and useful results”, and added: “In this case we clearly didn’t get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms.”

谷歌表示它的目標是生成“最相關、最有用的結果”，并稱：“就這件事而言，我們顯然做得不對，但我們在不斷努力改進我們的算法。”

The company does not override its algorithms manually for fear of being accused of bias, and instead tries to adapt its search ranking techniques to prevent the same problem arising again.

由于擔心被控帶有偏見，谷歌對其算法給出的結果不作人工修改，而是嘗試調(diào)整其搜索排名技術，以避免再次發(fā)生同類問題。