Google announces the 'Google News Initiative' to further combat the spread of 'fake news'

[Polycount]

The spread of "fake news" isn't just a problem for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter - it's something search engines struggle with too. As you can imagine, Google is certainly no exception to this trend given their position as one of the most popular search engines around today. Indeed, following the Las Vegas shooting, Google mistakenly promoted stories in their news feed which offered heavily skewed or false versions of the tragedy's events.

Though the search giant has already made several strong attempts to combat the spread of these sorts of stories, they aren't resting on their laurels. "It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish what’s true (and not true) online. Business models for journalism continue to change drastically," Google CBO Philip Schindler said in a blog post today. "The rapid evolution of technology is challenging all institutions, including the news industry—to keep pace. We need to do more."

In the blog post, Google announced their new "Google News Initiative" (GNI), a project devoted to curbing the spread of misinformation online by "[elevating and strengthening] quality journalism," "[evolving] business models to drive sustainable growth" and "[empowering] news organizations" through technological innovation.

This three-pronged approach to combating fake news will see Google invest "over $300 million" into the GNI over the next three years. This money will be used for several purposes but perhaps most importantly, it will be used to "[work] directly with news organizations" to combat misinformation through the "First Draft" program.

For the unaware, First Draft is a website that offers journalists information, guides and free online courses to help them spot and avoid spreading fake news stories.

That said, Google understands the spread of fake news is not entirely the fault of publishers. To address the issue on the user side, the company will be working with reputable educational organizations such as Stanford University and the Poynter Institute to launch "MediaWise," a program designed to "improve digital information literacy" for young consumers.

It's certainly nice to see a company as large as Google take additional steps to fight misinformation online but only time will tell if their latest efforts will be enough to accomplish that goal.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/73798-google-announces-google-news-initiative-further-combat-spread.html

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Ya-huh... F you Google... I don't trust a damn thing you say. You use your size and power to silence those using your mediums whom you do not agree with.

 

[wiyosaya]

By 45's decree, whatever it is will always be fake news if it is unfavorable to 45.

 

[JaredTheDragon]

Ridiculous. ALL mainstream news is already fake, coming straight from Langley or its cohorts abroad. The entire "fake news" movement is seventy years too late.

This is just censorship given another name, just like they've been doing with YouTube and Facebook.

 

[Ultraman1966]

Ridiculous. ALL mainstream news is already fake, coming straight from Langley or its cohorts abroad. The entire "fake news" movement is seventy years too late.

This is just censorship given another name, just like they've been doing with YouTube and Facebook.

So where is the real news then?
This is not a trick question.
Russian has done its job. An Empire is difficult to defeat from the outside; but get it to doubt and then fight itself...that's a different story.

 

[JaredTheDragon]

So where is the real news then?
This is not a trick question.
Russian has done its job. An Empire is difficult to defeat from the outside; but get it to doubt and then fight itself...that's a different story.

You're kidding, right? Russia has had nothing to do with the news here, or the elections, or anything else that TPTB claim it has done. Russia is owned by the exact same banks that own everything here, and in Europe, and everywhere else on the planet. Nations only exist for media purposes - to galvanize or divide sentiment among the People.

Note what the recent figurehead at Langley himself said, according to this CNN interview:
"Former CIA director Michael Hayden says there's not enough evidence for him to say that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but said there is enough to justify an investigation."

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/05/29/michael-hayden-jared-kushner-russia-sot-lead.cnn

What? Not enough evidence, but enough to justify an investigation? How could he even KNOW that without already doing or starting an investigation?

Over at Variety, another ghost-rag:
"The Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee said that they have found “no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” while Democrats say that the investigation has been shut down prematurely."

https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/trump-russia-collusion-republicans-investigation-1202724879/

And at USA Today, yet another obvious ghost-rag operated by Langley:
“As of right now we have no credible evidence that there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government and if we found that I would run it over to the Department of Justice and ask for prosecution as soon as that happened,” Nunes said in an exclusive interview with Visalia Times-Delta. “Being that it’s been six or seven months now since the claims have been made by the party that lost the election, my guess is it doesn’t exist.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...le-evidence-russia-trump-collusion/360996001/

So where is the real news?

There isn't any, about any of these types of current events, politics, or science. You have to find the information and decide credibility for yourself. I myself can see through ghosts (spooky assets/agents) like the transparent twats they are, almost every time, because I've been looking so long and hard to de-spin everything. There's even tons of spin by the writers here, probably the main reason they didn't hire me. I didn't want to spin stories, I wanted to write about tech.

That said, there's lots of GOOD stuff here too. Topics that can't be spun, or not nearly as easily, such as benchmarks - but even then, we see tons of spin and in some cases outright errors or fictions, as the readers and commenters are so apt to show and tell us. But if you want tech news, this is as good a place as any, with very little Langley bias. Probably because they don't care if we learn about emerging public tech - only the hardcore PRIVATE tech is kept secret, such as Caesium-electron generation and of course the photon charge field that mainstream science so viciously denies exists. /endrant

 

[Ultraman1966]

Basically, you're claiming it's all fake news but you then use the same mainstream media to prove your point?
That's so meta...

 

[JaredTheDragon]

Basically, you're claiming it's all fake news but you then use the same mainstream media to prove your point?
That's so meta...

It works both ways, Ultra. The Fake News were the ones who CLAIMED Russian collusion in the first place, remember? So we have both sides, even further more sides to this "story", but yet zero evidence. Have you seen any evidence that Russia did anything nefarious in the fake election? Why bother, when they know it's fake, just as their elections of Putin are fake? Do you believe the CIA put Putin in power over there? That's what Russia putting in Trump would mean, in reverse.

It's all spin, you see. The elections are fake and have been for centuries, the presidency is a fake position with no real power (just a figurehead - exactly like Zucky and Jobs and Gates and Musk), and any collusion would also be fake, since there was no real election to begin with. It's all just theater to keep our eyes off what's really happening.

And what's really happening? The Powers That Be are still using every major government to loot and pillage the People, that's what is happening. And has been for centuries but vastly moreso now. Taxation, inflation, fiat currency - hell, we even see it in the GPU industry directly, and the CPU industry to a lesser degree these days. Some will call it the free market, but they're missing the point. Crypto-currency is already ghost currency, with only fiat value. So they're chasing their tails just to make as much money as possible before the bubble bursts.

Exactly like the banks do, using the national governments as their GPUs. That's a metaphor by the way, not to be taken literally.

 

[Uncle Al]

We can only hope they are held to the same standard that Facebook is about to ..... big data manipulators need to be held to 100% accountability, regardless ..............

 

[regiq]

You can find any version of "truth" that suits your taste on the internet. Without the right "mental apparatus" it's not possible to assess all the information. Recent populist march through the western world is largely based on that.
Publishers must be responsible for the quality of information they post, but altering the search engine reminds censorship to much (of course it happens all the time just by showing personalized search results). Maybe adding annotations to possible fake news could be some kind of a solution (for reasonable people, not the truthers, but who cares about them)?

 

[regiq]

Go with duckduckgo.com

 

[Danny101]

America media and government is perfectly capable of disseminating false and misleading stories and has done so time and time again. Russia is just a scapegoat for fodder and political maneuvering. I love my country, yet I find it ironic how we insert ourselves in other country's politics including coups through our intelligence services and cry foul at the hint of interference of our system. Even if our activities might be worthwhile, at least be honest about how the game is played.

 

[regiq]

America media and government is perfectly capable of disseminating false and misleading stories and has done so time and time again. Russia is just a scapegoat for fodder and political maneuvering. I love my country, yet I find it ironic how we insert ourselves in other country's politics including coups through our intelligence services and cry foul at the hint of interference of our system. Even if our activities might be worthwhile, at least be honest about how the game is played.

I'm not judging your opinion about US, but you shouldn't defend Russia. This country took a lot of hostile actions against western civilization recently. Putin needs outside threat to keep his power and he's creating it with provocations.

 

[Danny101]

I'm not judging your opinion about US, but you shouldn't defend Russia. This country took a lot of hostile actions against western civilization recently. Putin needs outside threat to keep his power and he's creating it with provocations.

It's not an issue that can be explained in a few lines. So many nuances. I'm just pointing out that Russia is going to do what it's going to do and will face consequences for such. My main ire is that my country's leaders have been derelict in their duties to defend the country on a platform that it itself created and should be the foremost authority, and are deflecting blame when they should take responsibility. Our greatest national security threat is the national debt. What will we do if the rest of the world decides to call it in? Up schitt creek, I'd say.

 

[Cubi Dorf]

Google once fight to not let China censor internet. Now Google censor internet.

 

[Ultraman1966]

It works both ways, Ultra. The Fake News were the ones who CLAIMED Russian collusion in the first place, remember? So we have both sides, even further more sides to this "story", but yet zero evidence. Have you seen any evidence that Russia did anything nefarious in the fake election? Why bother, when they know it's fake, just as their elections of Putin are fake? Do you believe the CIA put Putin in power over there? That's what Russia putting in Trump would mean, in reverse.

It's all spin, you see. The elections are fake and have been for centuries, the presidency is a fake position with no real power (just a figurehead - exactly like Zucky and Jobs and Gates and Musk), and any collusion would also be fake, since there was no real election to begin with. It's all just theater to keep our eyes off what's really happening.

And what's really happening? The Powers That Be are still using every major government to loot and pillage the People, that's what is happening. And has been for centuries but vastly moreso now. Taxation, inflation, fiat currency - hell, we even see it in the GPU industry directly, and the CPU industry to a lesser degree these days. Some will call it the free market, but they're missing the point. Crypto-currency is already ghost currency, with only fiat value. So they're chasing their tails just to make as much money as possible before the bubble bursts.

Exactly like the banks do, using the national governments as their GPUs. That's a metaphor by the way, not to be taken literally.

I don't disagree that there is a lot of manipulation. But your post makes no sense; how can I get any facts if we can't trust any major news outlets? It will be next to impossible for a lay person to get any facts if you decide that pretty much no one can be trusted.
This is paranoia at a level which I don't think we can have any civilised discussion about so I am tapping out!

 

[PcePce]

Yeah, I'll pass on taking the blatantly biased Mega-Corp's word on what is or isn't true. We already have the MSM for that.

You don't need "digital information literacy" to discern real news from fake. You need logic and you need to know who's paying whom, along with a healthy degree of skepticism for any source--regardless of how strongly they assure you they're telling the truth.

I'd rather have a thousand different, conflicting accounts of an event than to have Google's Utopian doubleplustrue account.

 

[captaincranky]

We can only hope they are held to the same standard that Facebook is about to ..... big data manipulators need to be held to 100% accountability, regardless ..............

The only trouble with that concept is, the fact that you would need a more powerful entity to control the likes of Google, and then another even more powerful entity to control them, and so on and so forth...