Google, Facebook move to restrict ads on fake news sites
Google, Facebook move to restrict ads on fake news sites
By Julia Love and Kristina Cooke | SAN FRANCISCO Tue Nov
15, 2016 | 9:53am EST
Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc on Monday
announced measures aimed at halting the spread of "fake news" on the
internet by targeting how some purveyors of phony content make money:
advertising.
Google said it is working on a policy change to prevent
websites that misrepresent content from using its AdSense advertising network,
while Facebook updated its advertising policies to spell out that its ban on
deceptive and misleading content applies to fake news.
The shifts comes as Google, Facebook and Twitter Inc face
a backlash over the role they played in the U.S. presidential election by
allowing the spread of false and often malicious information that might have
swayed voters toward Republican candidate Donald Trump.
The issue has provoked a fierce debate within Facebook
especially, with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg insisting twice in recent days
that the site had no role in influencing the election.
Facebook's steps are limited to its ad policies, and do
not target fake news sites shared by users on their news feeds.
"We do not integrate or display ads in apps or sites
containing content that is illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes
fake news," Facebook said in a statement, adding that it will continue to
vet publishers to ensure compliance.
Google's move similarly does not address the issue of
fake news or hoaxes appearing in Google search results. That happened in the
last few days, when a search for 'final election count' for a time took users
to a fake news story saying Trump won the popular vote. Votes are still being
counted, with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton showing a slight lead.
Nor does Google suggest that the company has moved to a
mechanism for rating the accuracy of particular articles.
Rather, the change is aimed at assuring that publishers
on the network are legitimate and eliminating financial incentives that appear
to have driven the production of much fake news.
"Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on
pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher,
the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property,"
Google said in a statement.
The company did not detail how it would implement or
enforce the new policy.
MACEDONIA NEWS
AdSense, which allows advertisers to place text ads on
the millions of websites that are part of Google's network, is a major source
of money for many publishers.
A report in BuzzFeed News last month showed how tiny
publishers in Macedonia were creating websites with fake news - much of it
denigrating Clinton - which were widely shared on Facebook.
That sharing in turn led people to click on links which
brought them to the Macedonian websites, which could then make money on the
traffic via Google's AdSense.
Facebook has been widely blamed for allowing the spread
of online misinformation, most of it pro-Trump, but Zuckerberg has rejected the
notion that Facebook influenced the outcome of the election or that fake news
is a major problem on the service.
"Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99
percent of what people see is authentic," he wrote in a blog post on
Saturday. "Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes."
Google has long had rules for its AdSense program,
barring ads from appearing next to pornography or violent content. Work on the
policy update announced on Monday began before the election, a Google
spokeswoman said.
The company uses a combination of humans and artificial
intelligence to review sites that apply to be a part of AdSense, and sites
continue to be monitored after they are accepted, a former Google employee who
worked on ad systems said. Google's artificial intelligence systems learn from
sites that have been removed from the program, speeding the removal of similar
sites.
The issue of fake news is critical for Google from a
business standpoint, as many advertisers do not want their brands to be touted
alongside dubious content. Google must constantly hone its systems to try to
stay one step ahead of unscrupulous publishers, the former employee said.
Google has not said whether it believes its search
algorithms, or its separate system for ranking results in the Google News
service, also need to be modified to cope with the fake news issue.
Fil Menczer, a professor of informatics and computing at
Indiana University who has studied the spread of misinformation on social
media, said Google's move with AdSense was a positive step.
"One of the incentives for a good portion of fake
news is money," he said. "This could cut the income that creates the
incentive to create the fake news sites."
However, he cautioned that detecting fake news sites was
not easy. "What if it is a site with some real information and some fake
news? It requires specialized knowledge and having humans (do it) doesn't
scale," he said.
(Reporting by Julia Love and Kristina Cooke; Editing by
Jonathan Weber, Bill Rigby and Edwina Gibbs)
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