The menace of fake news really took center stage during the US presidential elections. Facebook and Google were at the heart of the problem and both of the companies vowed to find a solution. The social media giant started flagging fake news articles in news feed about a month ago.
Now Google is doing its part by launching “Fact Check” worldwide. It uses third party fact checking sites to do see if a search query is based in truth or not. This service was started by Google in September last year and was available for Google News only. It was limited to US and UK at that time and used a claim review process to verify individual news story links.
Fact Check was expanded to Brazil, Mexico and Argentina 2 months ago. Before the worldwide launch fact checking was done by Google themselves with no third parties involved.
More Info on Fact Claims
Now that Fact Check has launched globally, it is available for regular search results as well. A new feature added to the worldwide release is the inclusion of extra information about the fact checking process.
Fact Check in action
Google is relying on the fact checking websites like Snopes and PolitiFact.
Justin Kosslyn, product manager at Jigsaw (known as Google Ideas earlier) said,
For the first time, when you conduct a search on Google that returns an authoritative result containing fact checks for one or more public claims, you will see that information clearly on the search results page.
An Explanation For Every Disputed Claim
Unlike Facebook, if you see a news piece disputed by one or more fact checking sites, Google will offer a complete explanation on why it is disputed. This is because the search engine giant believes that although the claims are same, the explanation can be completely different:
Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree.
As we make fact checks more visible in Search results, we believe people will have an easier time reviewing and assessing these fact checks, and making their own informed opinions.
Hopefully you’ll see less of “This Miracle Pill Can Make You Look 25 Years Younger!” in your news feed or search results.
