Fake news is an annoying byproduct of our increasingly digitized society. Living in the connected era, one will frequently stumble upon an odd paradox – with so many information sources out there, how do we know which one we can trust? Good question, Google says – let’s see what we can do about that.
Acknowledging this modern problem, Google today introduced the new “Fact Check” tool – a label which when present, highlights information that was fast checked by news publishers and fact-checking organizations. Now when you research a claim online, Google will display the usual card containing a snippet of information, alongside info about who made the claim and who checked the legitimacy of the claim – which is shown below.
Google is not actually doing the fact checking itself, but has partnered up with 115 fact-checking organizations that will be in charge of verifying information veracity. Others are invited to join the club, Google has strict rules and will only welcome organizations that are “algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information.”
Don’t’ expect fact checking to be available for every piece of information you search for, not at the moment anyway. Google also warns you might stumble upon instances where pages have been checked by different publishers with different conclusions being issued. Nevertheless, the search giant believes that even though different conclusions might be presented, it’s useful for people to have a clear view on how many sources agree with the claim under scrutiny and how many don’t.
Ever since October, Google has been testing the feature in select countries, especially in Google News. Today’s announcement marks the global roll out of the feature in both Google Search and News.
