Google is adding a new feature to its news feeds which the company hopes will make it easier for people to fact check stories. Called simply “Fact Check, ” the new tag from Google should allow users to look up information cited in news stories for confirmation.
It is one of the biggest complaints heard the world over in the Internet age: so much so called information on line is either misleading or out right false. How many times do you see friends on Facebook post links to politically charged websites with provocative headlines like, “Bill Clinton Outed as Cannibal, ” or “Donald Trump Really a KGB Plant.”
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It seems that every other person we know now has his own blog where they regurgitate all manner of silly rumor and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Its getting harder and harder to tell where the real news ends and the silly, paranoid rantings begin. And as Internet users we all rely on services such Google to provide us with news updates and links to the big stories. So if you do a search for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump with any search engine you do not want to see the drek but the serious news. Or maybe you do want the drek, who knows.
And don’t forget the recent controversy surrounding the Facebook staffers who admitted to censoring Facebook news feeds that its users receive by excluding stories which did not fir their personal politics.
Well we are all in luck because now Google has come up with a way to help us fact check all those news feeds. But most people probably don’t really care anyway.
The company says that Google will now help people find ways to fact check the information is new stories by using tags which will link to websites such as Pendingschema.org.
Google stated in a new blog post, “Google News determines whether an article might contain fact checks in part by looking for the schema.org ClaimReview markup. We also look for sites that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks. We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin.”
