Google Suspends Fact Check Project, Crediting TheDCNF Investigation With Decision
Google says it is discontinuing its fact-check feature because it proved to be too faulty for public use, directly attributing the decision to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The company has no date set for when it will return, if ever.
“We launched the reviewed claims feature at the end of last year as an experiment with the aim of helping people quickly learn more about news publications,” a spokeswoman for Google told TheDCNF, while also adding that TheDCNF was the catalyst for the recent move. “We said previously that we encountered challenges in our systems that maps fact checks to publishers, and on further examination it’s clear that we are unable to deliver the quality we’d like for users.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twS_wCzYr-A
Facebook to Rank News Sources by Quality to Battle Misinformation
Tech giant will rely on user surveys of trustworthiness to try to preserve objectivity
Facebook Inc. FB 0.83% plans to start ranking news sources in its feed based on user evaluations of credibility, a major step in its effort to fight false and sensationalist information that will also push the company further into a role it has long sought to avoid—content referee.
The social-media giant will begin testing the effort next week by prioritizing news reports in its news feed from publications that users have rated in Facebook surveys as trustworthy, executives said Friday. The most “broadly trusted” publications—those trusted and recognized by a large cross-section of Facebook users—would get a boost in the news feed, while those that users rate low on trust would be penalized. The change only applies to U.S. users., though Facebook plans to roll it out later internationally.
The announcement, which confirms a report last week by The Wall Street Journal, comes after Facebook outlined another major news-feed overhaul that would diminish the presence of news in favor of what it calls “meaningful” interactions on the platform. This shift will result in news accounting for about 4% of the posts that appears in users’ feeds world-wide, down from the current 5%, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Friday.
Social media companies accelerate removals of online hate speech: EU
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have accelerated removals of online hate speech in the face of a potential European Union crackdown.
The EU has gone as far as to threaten social media companies with new legislation unless they increase efforts to fight the proliferation of extremist content and hate speech on their platforms.
Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube signed a code of conduct with the EU in May 2016 to review most complaints within a 24-hour timeframe. Instagram and Google+ will also sign up to the code, the European Commission said.
The companies managed to review complaints within a day in 81 percent of cases during monitoring of a six-week period towards the end of last year, EU figures released on Friday show, compared with 51 percent in May 2017 when the Commission last examined compliance with the code of conduct.