Fake News

Google takes steps to help stop the spread of fake news and hate speech.

15:10 26 April 2017

Google is changing the way its core search engine works in ranking sites to help stop the spread of fake news and hate speech. Google, which has been criticised last year for giving prominence to groups seeking to deny that the Holocaust took place, said that it would implement changes to thwart attempts to abuse its algorithms.

 

Ben Gomes, the vice-president of engineering at Google's search division, admitted that many groups and organisations were using "fake news" to help spread "blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information".

 

He said that Google would combat the problem by adding new metrics to its ranking system that should help to stop false information entering the top results for particular search terms. It has also updated the guidelines to the thousand of human raters to help in picking out “misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories.”