BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and others will verify reliability of information for the Google search and news services.
Photo: Flickr / Robert Scoble
On Friday, the Google Corporation will add to its search and news services a mechanism for verifying information, the Verge information website reported.
According to the website, Google will use links to special sources that verify reliability of information, for example, PolitiFact and Snopes, and display on a screen whether a statement is true or not.
According to other reports, any media will have a chance to join the project and ‘check’ news if the algorithm identifies them as an authoritative source of information. The list of evaluators of news’ authenticity has already included BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times and 111 other companies.
The Verge’s article is accompanied by a screenshot with an example of this function. The query line says: “27 million people enslaved.” Below the search line we can read: “Fact check by PolitiFact: Mostly true,” and see a link to a confirmatory article.
Photo: theverge.com (click to see the full-size image)
The website noted that the newly introduced function of Google will attract attention of Internet users to fact-checking organizations, but it will not help fight spread of ‘fake’ news on the Google platform.
Founder of the 20K League consulting company, operating in the field of cybersecurity, Jeffrey Carr, noted that the news checking, which is being introduced by Google, will not allow blocking of false information.
“I believe that this measure is extremely incorrect, and it will not last for a long time,” the expert, who is an author of a number of books on cybersecurity and an initiator of a project to organize conferences with participation of specialists in this field, told the RIA Novosti news agency.
According to Carr, the Google initiative is a “trick.” He noted that “it will not prevent dissemination of any kind of information – true and false, proven or erroneous.”
“The only solution to this problem is to encourage people to approach news critically, but it seems that no one is going to do it, because you will not get money for that,” Carr noted.
If somebody does not use Israeli websights so then?
What a farce. All centralising systems tend towards collapse and on the way become increasinlg authoritarian in an attempt to maintain control. The US empire is no different. George Orwell would be amused.
“…Google will use links to special sources that verify reliability of information, for example, PolitiFact and Snopes,..”
Which are both, themselves, biased and partisan. And both are selective on what they chose to fact-check. And both lean neocon and anti-Russian.
So Google can add a third feature: Fact-Checker Smelliness Index to rate these fact checkers. But then we’ll need a Smelliness Index bias offset determined by an independent, third-party organization appointed by the UN. That will have to be overseen by yet another independent board of… well, you get the idea.
The MSM theater that begs the readers to avoid critical thinking at all costs would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. I don’t necessarily object to the idea of fact-checkers, I object to an unskeptical audience that depends on an artificial lens into ‘the truth’ held up by what are basically MSM offshoots themselves.
Google, BBC and the Guardian as arbiters of ‘ Fake News’ . we really are in an Orwellian World now. :)