Google offers ‘good news’ only feature

Google is rolling out a feature that allows users to hear positive news stories on command, an effort developed in conjunction with a journalism group focusing on combating negative news fatigue.

The feature, announced this week in a blog post, will exist on Google Assistant devices and will play a randomly selected positive news story focusing on an individual or a group solving a problem when prompted with the voice command "tell me something good."

"Just say 'Hey Google, tell me something good' to receive a brief news summary about people who are solving problems for our communities and our world," the company wrote in a blog post.

The feature, Google notes, is an "experiment worth trying" because it is directly designed to improve users' experiences.

It "isn’t meant to be a magic solution," the blog post continues. "But it’s an experiment worth trying because it’s good info about good work that may bring some good to your day."

The feature follows an announcement earlier in the year from Google concerning the company's efforts to battle fake news on its various platforms and search engine.

The company launched a Google News Initiative in March, which it said has the goal to fight disinformation on Google, particularly during breaking news events.

Tech companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter have faced criticism over slow responses to fake news and foreign election meddling on their platforms.

Representatives from a dozen major tech companies reportedly met Friday at Twitter's headquarters to discuss plans to combat foreign intrusions in the upcoming 2018 midterms.

Way back during the Gulf War One, I was watching all the devastation on TV on CNN, it was depressing. I said to myself there should be a GNN, the Good News Network. Then I thought about it. What would they report?

Firemen rescue cat from tree!
Children at Random Middle School learned algebra!

What about, “Good Samaritans hand out blankets and warm soup to homeless on cold night.” Is that good news or bad news? I mean it’s great to be charitable and help people, but reporting on the homeless in the street in the middle of winter is not good news.

And what about “Government allocates $50 billion to public secondary education fund”. That’s good news for teachers, bad news for other taxpayers.

“Murderer shot by police”. Good news?

I guess though, since Google tracks just about everyone, that they will send you the stories that are good to you even if they are bad news to everyone else.

Allowing the owners of a gossip/information platform to be the arbiters of what is "good" for the rest of civilization may remind some conservatives of Dr. Russell Kirk's writings, especially those cited below:

So-called "progressives" portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they are totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty.
Today's liberals, especially these so-called "progressives," with all of their domination of academia and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:
"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)
Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their limited world view.
Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from crude hoes and axes to putting a man on the moon, and from oppression by King George to a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders.
If they were allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their posterity never would know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.
Now would be a good time for all of us to read (or re-read) Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.
In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a striking resemblance to Progressive players on the stage in American politics today.
For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:
"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."
Yes, the pseudointellectuals of academia, the media, and much of Congress, by their own admission, have fancied themselves "intellectuals."
By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, having no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.
America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for liberty.
It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).
Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of the Far Left.
Progressives/Leftists rely on what they must believe to be the ignorance of the American people when they make such ridiculous and condescending claims. They are being outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." - Thomas Jefferson

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.