Fake news has always been a problem in India, and on International Fact Checking Day, tech giant Google created a list of instructions and tips that a person can use to verify the authenticity of the content.
The search engine giant has introduced new features to help discover fake information online. In a blog post, Alexios Mantzarlis, Head of News and Information Credibility at Google News Lab, revealed that more than 50,000 new fact checks were performed on Google Search, with all fact checks receiving more than 2.4 billion search impressions during that period .
Google posted the fact-checking steps on a support page that stated that content publishers must meet certain requirements in order to be a trusted source of information as determined by an algorithm.
“The content around fact-checking must give you the claims to be checked, conclusions about these claims and their attainment, as well as explanations of quotes and primary sources of information,” said Google on its support page about falsified information.
Here are the steps for verifying content authenticity:
Multiple sources: Google prompts users to review all coverage of a news item when they switch to news mode or search for a topic in Google News.
Learn more about the source: Google urges users to learn more about the source of an article or website by clicking the three dots to the right of an article. However, this is only available in the United States.
Confirmation of the event at this location: Google also asks users to confirm the correctness of the location of an event using Google Earth or the Street View of a location in Google Maps.
Google’s fact checker: Google developed a fact-checking tool that allows users to enter a keyword and search for allegations made by news posting and fact-checking listed by Google.
Check if an image is true or false: Fake and misleading photos have always been a problem. To help users, Google advises that users can verify that an image is authentic by right-clicking a photo and selecting “Search Google for Image”.
Mobile users can do the same activity by touching and holding the picture for some time. Google then checks whether the image was previously displayed online and in what context it was displayed.
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