Google, Facebook to combat fake news ahead of French presidential election

Jos

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With the French presidential election coming up, Google and Facebook are teaming up with major news organizations to prevent fake news stories from spreading on social media and influence its outcome. At least 17 major news organizations are taking part in the project, including Le Monde, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Liberation, BuzzFeed and France Medias Monde.

Similar to own fact checking plans announced in December, Facebook will rely on users to flag fake news on its network so that the articles can then by fact-checked by its partner organizations. Any news report deemed to be fake or inaccurate by two of its partners would then be tagged with an icon to show that the content is contested — although the content itself will not be removed from the social network.

Facebook has 24 million users in France, more than a third of the country's population.

Meanwhile, Google’s initiative is called "CrossCheck" and aims to "help the public make sense of what and who to trust in their social media feeds, web searches and general online news consumption in the coming months," according to the announcements. Among the things that Google will be doing is training students from France's leading journalism schools in advanced search techniques that can be used to identify fake news. They will add context to each false claim and create a live feed of shareable report cards on the CrossCheck website, which will be overseen by the Agence-France Presse.

CrossCheck will also allow the general public to submit questions and links to disputed stories. 

The first round of France's elections takes place on April 23rd and a second round should take place in May. While the fact checking initiatives are targeted at French election news, Google and Facebook aim to do the same during the upcoming German elections too.

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Fake news is a brilliant pretext for covering all the truths which really sting - outside of just the regular ones which can be dealt with. Can you imagine if they had been doing this during the election? *CLINTON EMAIL SCANDAL* ohh fake news! lol.
 
When you see that one of these companies is BuzzFeed you know what's up. It's likely they are gonna hide news they don't agree with by labeling it as fake news. Next thing they remove news websites from their search results because they are "aggregator of fake news". But I will keep an open mind and see where it goes.
 
When you see that one of these companies is BuzzFeed you know what's up. It's likely they are gonna hide news they don't agree with by labeling it as fake news. Next thing they remove news websites from their search results because they are "aggregator of fake news". But I will keep an open mind and see where it goes.

No doubt Media Matters will be take the lead on their fact-checking, with help from Politifact and Factcheck.org (ALL backed by George Soros). Let's face it - all you can trust now is common sense and a solid understanding of human nature, assuming the leftist schools haven't brainwashed those out of you completely. The younger you are the greater the chance that's the case. Oh, and let's not forget that Google is now trying to change the definition and history of fascism to paint it as a right-wing idea. That's how worthy of your trust they are.
 
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When you see that one of these companies is BuzzFeed you know what's up. It's likely they are gonna hide news they don't agree with by labeling it as fake news. Next thing they remove news websites from their search results because they are "aggregator of fake news". But I will keep an open mind and see where it goes.

No doubt Media Matters will be take the lead on their fact-checking, with help from Politifact and Factcheck.org (ALL backed by George Soros). Let's face it - all you can trust now is common sense and a solid understanding of human nature, assuming the leftist schools haven't brainwashed those out of you completely. The younger you are the greater the chance that's the case. Oh, and let's not forget that Google is now trying to change the definition and history of fascism to paint it as a right-wing idea. That's how worthy of your trust they are.

Amen to that. Part of the problem I see today, I'm in my late 50's, was raised long before the era of political correctness. We called "African American's" black, we called "native American's" Indians, "Asian American's" Japanese, Chinese etc. Plus, we didn't go out of our way to strip every southern confederate name from the history books, taught ENGLISH, real history etc.
Now, by the time most kids are in their 20's, they've been so brainwashed, and are so conditioned into not questioning anything, that "fake news" is easy. Not to mention one of the biggest complaints I have, is twitter/Fakebook, et al...social media.
Just take Ferguson for example. Tweet goes out unarmed black "teenager" shot in back by white police officer.
By the time the truth came out, they had already burned down the town. Even today, the hands up don't shoot morons are still claiming unarmed teenager was the truth.
I don't know what it will take to wake people up and make them question some of this stupidity.
 
Eventually the only news deemed acceptable for the public will be government regulated news. News either directly from the government or government contractors.

Fact is, sometimes the news is just wrong, not fake, but just wrong. Recently, most of the news is opinions rather than news, again, not fake. Censoring the press is a major blow to free speech. Are they also going to censor and regulate campaign attacks ads? Or are those still just fine regardless of the lack of facts and evidence because they are not "news"? And what qualifies as news? Blogs? Facebook posts? Leaked emails and photos? Editorials expressing the conclusions based on the facts that the writer deem significant as opposed to the facts that cnn or fox or whoever use? How do you fact check a lie by an official source? Everything stated by officials will become unquestionable fact, anything else is fake news... It's a slippery slope
 
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