Fake news is a problem in which it can sometimes prey on those who might be naive enough to believe everything they read on the internet, in which they take the false information and spread it while believing it to be true. Google has been working on trying to curb fake news, and have recently made some changes to its rules that will hopefully further cut through the noise.In an update to its guidelines on how to appear in Google News results, Google writes, “Sites included in Google News must not misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about their ownership or primary purpose, or engage in coordinated activity to mislead users. This includes, but isn’t limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises.”
While this might not be particularly rampant or a problem in other countries, Bloomberg points to how Russian Internet Research Agency used this tactic in which they posed as a credible US news outlet to spread misinformation and managed to reach an audience of 500,000 in the process. However with this change in policy, websites that hide or mask their country of origin will simply not appear under Google News, which hopefully can help reduce the amount of fake news that users are exposed to.
In a statement made to Bloomberg, a Google spokeswoman was quoted as saying, “We update our policies on a regular basis to reflect a constantly changing web and how people look for information online. As a result, we want to ensure that people can understand and see where their news online is coming from and that sites are being transparent about their origins.”
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