Saturday 15 October 2016

Google to crack down inaccurate and misleading News stories

Google News

Google has introduced a new feature in its News section, to help reads to establish whether the information is true or false.

Articles that have been checked by an official fact-checking website, such as the International Fact-Checking Network , will be assigned a "Fact Check" label in Google News.

This will appear alongside other labels like "In Depth", "Highly Cited" and "Local Source" in Google News results.

Google News chief Richard Gingras said the move was designed to "shine a light" on the fact checking community's "efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin".

Fact check sites tend to use a particular type of computer code , which the search giant said it will use to determine if an article has been fact-checked.

It will also scan the sites to see if they follow widely accepted criteria for such pieces.

Google News

Fact checking has become increasingly popular in recent years. According to the the Duke University Reporter's Lab, there are more than 100 fact checking sites online.

Google's decision to introduce a Fact Check label arrives just as Facebook comes under fire for repeatedly promoting fake news stories in its Trending topics.

The social network laid off its editorial team and replaced them with an algorithm earlier this year, after being accused of left-wing bias.

However, within days of making the change, Facebook's algorithm surfaced a fake news story about Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly, claiming she has been fired for backing Hillary Clinton.

Despite tweaking its algorithm, five fake news stories and three inaccurate ones have appeared in Facebook's Trending news section in the past three weeks, according to the Washington Post.


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