The new tool comes as major websites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter continue to face pressure to check the spread of “fake news” across the internet, an issue which was catapulted into the spotlight during the US presidential campaign.
Over the past few years, sites such as Google have had to walk a fine line between policing false claims and supporting basic principles of free speech online. Google, after all, is the most popular search engine in the world, sporting more than 77 percent of the global search engine market share. And for many, that level of influence entails some responsibility to make sure its many users are not misled.
“Building systems that help people get better at judging information is an important goal and helping people notice when information might not be credible is an excellent thing to do – in my work, I call this ‘designing for information assess ability,'” says Andrea Forte, an assistant professor at Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics in Philadelphia, Penn. “But depending on corporations to be responsible for educating people about credible information is not a reasonable solution.”
Dr. Forte tells The Christian Science Monitor in an email that relying on ad-revenue driven companies like Google is, at best, an “incomplete solution.” She adds that major websites depend on one-sided, positive messaging in order to make money, so even programs like Fact Check will never be an entirely reliable method of eliminating fake news and providing the user with fair, balanced information.
But it’s a start, she adds.
“Google was built to help people find useful information by surfacing the great content that publishers and sites create,” reads a blog post from Google explaining the new feature. “This access to high quality information is what drives people to use the web and for contributors to continue to engage and invest in it. However, with thousands of new articles published online every minute of every day, the amount of content confronting people online can be overwhelming.”
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