Google News Initiative announced to fight fake news and support journalism

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mentalfloss

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Google News Initiative announced to fight fake news and support journalism

Google is announcing new efforts today to support the media industry by fighting misinformation and bolstering journalism, which will live under a newly announced umbrella called the Google News Initiative. Google already offers something similar in Europe through the Digital News Initiative, but the Google News Initiative is intended to be a wider worldwide expansion of those kinds of efforts.

There are three specific goals of the Google News Initiative: highlight accurate journalism while fighting misinformation, particularly during breaking news events; help news sites continue to grow from a business perspective; and create new tools to help journalists do their jobs. Google is serious about supporting these goals, too, pledging to invest $300 million over the next three years.

Fighting fake news is obviously one of the most crucial parts of Google’s forthcoming efforts. The company has had several brushes with disinformation propagating through search following events like the Las Vegas shooting last fall, making this an area where Google has room to improve. According to Google, the company is working to train its system to be better at recognizing contentious breaking news and adjust toward displaying more accurate results, using the recently added “Breaking News” section on YouTube as an example. But even with those improvements, Google still has problems with search results on YouTube, including issues where conspiracy videos topped the trending results last month following the Parkland shooting. It’s good to see that Google is working to improve this, but it’ll have a long way to go to regain users’ trust.

It’s also working to actively combat fake news, teaming up news organizations like First Draft to launch a new “Disinfo Lab” to combat fake news during elections and breaking news, although Google hasn’t yet provided any details as to where it will live or what form it will take. Additionally, Google is working with the Poynter Institute, Stanford University, and the Local Media Association to launch a new program called MediaWise for younger readers to improve digital media literacy. Google also mentioned that it’s working to better identify what it calls “synthetic media,” or content that has been algorithmically modified.

Google is also launching a program called “Subscribe with Google” that will make it easier for people to subscribe to online news sites like The New York Times or the Financial Times. Users will be able to subscribe directly from news pages using their existing payment information from their Google account. It’s the culmination of Google’s work to help publishers promote content and drive subscriptions, following various efforts last year to identify new possible subscribers and offer more flexible free article rules.

Lastly, Google says it will keep creating products to enhance journalism, pointing to existing tools like AMP Stories as an example of these efforts, although it’s worth noting that there’s plenty of skepticism when it comes to AMP as an open platform. It also announced a new tool called Outline, an open-source tool from the company’s technology incubator Jigsaw that makes it easy for news organizations to create VPNs for journalists and provide them with more secure access to the internet.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/...initiative-fake-news-journalist-subscriptions
 
H

Hoid

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Nice to see. Are they finished destroying journalism then?
 
Jinentonix

Jinentonix

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Google is also launching a program called “Subscribe with Google” that will make it easier for people to subscribe to online news sites like The New York Times
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The NYT? :lol: Well, so much for doing anything about fake news.
 
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Danbones

Danbones

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Oh goody GOOGLE, the MF fakenews Commienaziglobalist network.

I guess Theresa May will be banned from the internets for life now.
 
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Bar Sinister

Bar Sinister

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But where will all of the conservatives on CC get their information? Looks like they might have to go back to buying National Enquirer.
 
Simonoles

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The idea of fighting fake journalism is not so bad, but no one has yet managed to implement it correctly. Any fight against fakes will already imply some censorship because many services automatically ban mentioning some topics or words. In such conditions, there can be no question of developing free journalism. I have been studying journalism for not so long ago, and in many ways, I focus on the site SPAM-SPAM-SPAM. Censorship is much more robust in Europe; despite this, they manage to cover many topics and fight against injustices.
 
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The_Foxer

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Simonoles said:
The idea of fighting fake journalism is not so bad,
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It is and always will be horrible. you're kind of blowing off censorship as "well it's bad but oh well". Censorship is always bad. The important thing is to have a healthy supply of different media so that if something is printed that's a lie then there's someone else who can print the truth. That and you can have professional standards when it comes to verifying a story and making sure both sides have their say and certifying news sources that meet those high standards.

And just in case you were unaware - pretty much all journalism is 'fake' to one degree or another. Very very very few offer a complete and wholly accurate account of any particular story. Sometimes that's out of bias, or just poor reporting practices, or sometimes stories are 'altered' to make them even more 'shocking' to sell papers.

Any attempt at "fighting misinformation" is inevitably a veiled attempt at promoting misinformation that is approved of. Look at what happened with hunter biden's notebook during the election
 
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Taxslave2

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The_Foxer said:
It is and always will be horrible. you're kind of blowing off censorship as "well it's bad but oh well". Censorship is always bad. The important thing is to have a healthy supply of different media so that if something is printed that's a lie then there's someone else who can print the truth. That and you can have professional standards when it comes to verifying a story and making sure both sides have their say and certifying news sources that meet those high standards.

And just in case you were unaware - pretty much all journalism is 'fake' to one degree or another. Very very very few offer a complete and wholly accurate account of any particular story. Sometimes that's out of bias, or just poor reporting practices, or sometimes stories are 'altered' to make them even more 'shocking' to sell papers.

Any attempt at "fighting misinformation" is inevitably a veiled attempt at promoting misinformation that is approved of. Look at what happened with hunter biden's notebook during the election
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I think you missed the point of the post. No media outlet should be permitted to print an outright lie and pass it off as fact. If they are quoting a person is one thing, but to invent stories as CBC often does is just not good for anyone except the taxpayer funded journalist.
 
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The_Foxer

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Taxslave2 said:
I think you missed the point of the post. No media outlet should be permitted to print an outright lie and pass it off as fact. If they are quoting a person is one thing, but to invent stories as CBC often does is just not good for anyone except the taxpayer funded journalist.
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And what is a 'lie'? Is it a lie that hunter biden left his notebook with a repair shop and it had all kinds of incriminating data on it? It was during the election - the story was smothered aggressively as an 'unconfirmed lie' until the election was over. So - was it a lie? It turned out to be true later but the powers that smothered it claim they BELIEVED it was a lie when they did so.

The moment you say 'there should be limits on what they print" then you open the door to that kind of crap. Someone has to decide what is "truth" and what is "misinformation". And that is a dangerous amount of power to leave out there.

Putting requirements for either sources or disclosures is one thing, but while i agree that it's bad if the media lies i think it's worse to open the door to censorship. Eliminate the gov't subsidies of the cbc or any other media and let the market decide - but say no to censorship.
 
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Taxslave2

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The_Foxer said:
And what is a 'lie'? Is it a lie that hunter biden left his notebook with a repair shop and it had all kinds of incriminating data on it? It was during the election - the story was smothered aggressively as an 'unconfirmed lie' until the election was over. So - was it a lie? It turned out to be true later but the powers that smothered it claim they BELIEVED it was a lie when they did so.

The moment you say 'there should be limits on what they print" then you open the door to that kind of crap. Someone has to decide what is "truth" and what is "misinformation". And that is a dangerous amount of power to leave out there.

Putting requirements for either sources or disclosures is one thing, but while i agree that it's bad if the media lies i think it's worse to open the door to censorship. Eliminate the gov't subsidies of the cbc or any other media and let the market decide - but say no to censorship.
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Heavy fines would be a start. Taking MSM off the public tit would be better. This isn't censorship, it is promoting truth.
I'm thinking of the Freedom Convoy and the continued lies from CBC about freedom fighters and how the government admitted to using this lie as reason to impose the Emergency Powers Act.
 
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The_Foxer

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Taxslave2 said:
Taking MSM off the public tit would be better.
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I definitely agree with you there. A 'free' press isn't free if it's beholden to gov't handouts,
Taxslave2 said:
This isn't censorship, it is promoting truth.
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Said every dictator's propaganda wing :) "Truth" is fairly subjective. Remember - trudeau claims he's just promoting the truth.

Taxslave2 said:
I'm thinking of the Freedom Convoy and the continued lies from CBC about freedom fighters
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But those were all TRUE!!!! According to the gov't that would be administrating those fines you mentioned.

The fact is you're entirely right from a theoretical point of view, but in reality that concept gets twisted so fast and easy that we just have to look at a different way to deal with it or risk horrendous abuse.

But - if the cbc is gone due to defunding and the other papers learn that lying doesn't sell as many papers, and other papers get treated well for telling the truth then that's what becomes the norm. All we have to do to get the truth told is make it profitable.
 
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