Fake news. It’s a statement that has been uttered so many times this past year it’s lost a bit of it’s meaning. You can’t go a day without hearing President Trump sling it at the media or the tech industry buzz about it in regards to Russian meddling.
The Internet has always been a place with a degree of skepticism. But somewhere in our years of use, people had forgotten that not everything you read on the Internet is true. Or rather, it just became a lot harder to tell real news from fake news. Scammers, trolls, Russians, and click baiters have expertly scammed algorithms and users for years now, sucking them in with stories that only later on prove to be utterly false.
But now Google is ending that.
Why Now
The technology industry has been rocked by the revelation that social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook had a role to play in Russian meddling with the US election. Russian bots were used to spread an abundance of fake news stories about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
It got so bad that Facebook, Twitter, and Google were even called to face the wrath of the government. What came out wasn’t good. Now, these companies are facing the fact that they can no longer claim to be innocent bystanders.
Changes Made
In the aftermath, these sites are already undergoing changes from drastically large ones to smaller ones. Twitter has altered their verification process, removing blue checkmarks from dozens of alt-right people who help spread a lot of the fake news. Facebook has started testing out ways of marking and letting readers know if a site is believed to be factual or not.
And now Google has announced what changes they plan to make.
Google Changes
In an ongoing quest to curb this tidal wave of fake news, Google has updated it’s Google News guidelines to block sites that hide or misrepresent their country of origin.
This is important. Fake news sites often represent themselves as home news sites in the countries they are targeting. But now if sites do this Google will block them. For example, a Russian site pretending to be an American news site will no longer appear on Google News.
These changes reflect Google’s promise to reflect a constantly changing web. It makes sense, especially in the ongoing criticism of media companies, to get rid of these sites. Culling sites that not only have deceptive content, but that are deceptive in their nature and creation, helps stop the flow of fake news.
Worries
The real question comes in implementation. Facebook and Twitter have been struggling to find a balance between user freedom and company regulation. Some will view these policy changes as Google limiting free speech, but since these sites aren’t originating in the United States, the lines become even more blurred.
Ultimately it still remains to be seen how effective Google will be at spotting and removing these sites that hide their country of origin. Google is notoriously slow at removing content and responding to reports. Hopefully, this new scrutiny will kick the company into high gear.