"all of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news"
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e are swarmed with information everywhere we go. Our smartphones, which are with us throughout most of the day, offer
us insights to endless amounts of knowledge. We have access to anything we’d like to know or learn right at our fingertips.
This access to information does have some drawbacks however, as we've come to learn that amongst limitless facts, knowledge and information we also have fabricated stories, fake news or simply just lies. Fake news is a term, unfortunately made increasingly popular by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, that we’ve come to learn thanks to people sharing stories on social media from unverified news outlets, websites posing as real news sites and satire websites.
Many people falsely believe that what they read on the internet is factual, they’re sharing it on social platforms and it's become a serious problem. We also have the President of the United States crying “FAKE NEWS!” at the media for any credible story they put out that goes against himself and his agenda, which is making matters worse.
Several tech companies are putting effort towards eliminating fake news being spread on their websites. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, says that fake news is ‘killing our minds’ and that all technology companies need to create tools to help diminish the volume of fake news. Google has already introduced measures to combat fake news appearing in users' Google Search results. In early April 2017, the tech giant revealed a new feature called ‘Fact Check’ available in Google Search and News.
In the release , Google said:
“Google was built to help people find useful information by surfacing the great content that publishers and sites create. However, with thousands of new articles published online every minute of every day, the amount of content confronting people online can be overwhelming. And unfortunately, not all of it is factual or true, making it hard for people to distinguish fact from fiction.”
Now, when you type in a search query on Google, you will also see a snippet of information from certain websites and a fact check made on the claim. The fact checks are not being conducted by Google but rather by legitimate third parties and will identify the claims of the website as being true or false. The fact checks will not be available for all searches.
Google has also announced an update to its search algorithm to prevent fake news from reaching the top of the search results. This will keep credible and authentic pages at the forefront of Google Search and News. The update will also allow users to flag content they believe may be inaccurate, misleading or inappropriate.
Facebook is also taking steps to eliminate the sharing of fake news on its platform. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social networking company, has pledged to fight fake news as Facebook, with nearly 2 billion monthly active users, is one of the world’s largest distributors of information.
A new tool will alert users when content they are attempting to share is questionable or from an unverified website. If the user chooses to disregard the alert and proceeds to share the link on their timeline other users will see a tag next to the post highlighting it at ‘disputed’. Facebook has also introduced an educational section on their website to teach users how to spot fake news.
Companies can only do so much to prevent the spread of fake news - the onus is also on us to be more vigiliant and a lot less gullible as we're the ones fueling the fake news problem. ■
W