It seems to me the hardest part would be separating truthiness from virality. How do they seed legit sources in the current media climate of racing to the bottom for eyeballs.
Well, to be more specific about what I mean is, Google's algorithm is successful if it finds the pages that people find valuable. It's sort of baked into the value proposition that the end user will be able to gauge the quality of results, so there is a sort of feedback loop. The problem with misinformation is there is no in-band signal for Google about its truthiness. I suppose there heuristics you can use related to fact-checking quality of certain publications, etc, but it's much trickier than general perceived quality.
Nevertheless, I agree that if anyone can do it algorithmically, it would probably be Google.
No, it doesn't. Sometimes, popularity blocks the process of scientific inquiry. As Kuhn pointed out. But in any case, there is no truth, as Popper pointed out.
