Fake news is so effective for the general human. It is hampering us in the online world. So tech giants are taking some step to stop that false news.
The Initiative To Stop The False News
Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Wikipedia are undertaking a concerted effort to crack down on the dissemination of fake news. While some may cry “fake news” to any story they disagree with, fake news is defined by Facebook as “hoaxes shared by spammers” for personal and monetary reasons.
The term “fake news” also encompasses falsehoods disguised to look like legitimate news and overtly biased reporting meant to sway voters during elections.
Google’s initiative
False news is to be criticized by companies like Google and Facebook. In this situation, Google said about taking action to prevent false news. The company asked to take an initiative called ‘Google News Initiative’. In a blog post on Tuesday, it said that the initiative has taken to prevent the fraudulent spread of online news. And to prevent fake breaking news.
In a move to combat the epidemic of false and unreliable information on the internet, Google is pledging to spend $300 million over the next three years to support authoritative journalism.
As part of its efforts, Google is helping to create a Disinfo Lab in partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School’s First Draft. Which will attempt to identify false news during critical breaking news situations? Google and YouTube, the video site owned by Google’s parent company, have criticized for allowing conspiracy theories and unreliable partisan sources to filter to the top of search results for breaking news. In 2016, during the US election, Google, Facebook, and Twitter failed to prevent spreading false news spreading on the platform. There was a lot of criticism in this regard.
How tech companies are fighting fake news
To address fake news, Google announced plans last month to improve the quality and reliability of its search results. This came after the search giant criticized for showing results for sites denying the Holocaust.
One of the methods Google is employing is using human editors to evaluate the quality of search results. The ultimate goal of this effort is to train the company’s search algorithms to spot low quality and false content.
Another tool Google has adopted is user reporting for its Autocomplete feature, adding another human element into the mix. Users can now report when Autocomplete results are offensive, misleading or false. Google is also working to add reporting features to its Featured Snippets. Which are the small blurbs found at the top of search results?
