Facebook, Google Roll Out Measures to Help Public Spot, Fight Fake News Stories

Facebook and Google, dogged by claims that news hoaxes were posted unchecked over the last year (see 1703200052), acted again recently to verify the legitimacy of news shown on their sites. Google said Friday a "Fact Check" label being tested since October is now globally available in all languages. When a user does a search "that returns an authoritative result containing fact checks for one or more public claims," they will see that information on the results page, wrote Google Research Scientist Cong Yu and Jigsaw Product Manager Justin Kosslyn in a blog post. "The snippet will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check of that particular claim." For instance, the result may say the claim may be fact checked by PolitiFact or Snopes.com. The information won't be available for every search result, they wrote, and, in some cases, different publishers checking the same claim may reach different conclusions. "It’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree," they said. Adam Mosseri, Facebook vice president-News Feed, said Thursday in a blog post that a new educational tool developed with First Draft (see 1701040025) is aimed at improving people's news literacy and helping spot fake news. When users click on the tool, located at the top of the News Feed feature, they will see information and resources in the Facebook Help Center, "including tips on how to spot false news, such as checking the URL of the site, investigating the source and looking for other reports on the topic." The tool will be available for a few days to people in 14 countries, he said. Facebook has gotten a majority of the scrutiny and criticism on fake news and has taken measures to counter the spread (see 1701310068, 1612150035 and 1611210002).