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Google News Introduces Fact Check Feature -- Just In Time For the US Election (thenextweb.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Google today introduced a new feature that will tag and help find "fact checking in large news stories." Tagged articles will show up in the new story box on news.google.com, as well as in the Google News and Weather app for iOS and Android in the US and UK. There's a two-pronged approach to detecting fact checking. First Google looks for actual markup in the site's source code. Then Google looks for pages "that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks." You can learn more about the process here. To be clear, the tags show up in small grey text above the article links -- Google itself isn't passing judgement, nor does it tell you the source article's conclusion in search results. It's merely a sign that says "hey, read me to find out the truth." Still, it's a nice way to make sure readers are at least forming opinions based on fact rather than fiction.

36 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah. Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google will check with Hillary's campaign to see if it's okay to repeat the lies or just substitute their own. Credibility and truth will little to do with it.

    1. Re:Yeah. Right by Nehmo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or are you one of those gullible people who believe that the media is biased against Trump despite the media actually greatly assistingTrump's campaign by repeating every damn stupid thing that he says? He'd never have made it through the primaries if the mainstream media weren't so obsessed with him.

      They unconsciously assisted Trump. They were competing with each other for viewership. The media didn't believe its own adage, "Any news is good news" because it gives name recognition. Now, the main news outlets, and even Google search results, clearly favor Hillary.

      It's the same stuff every day: Everybody is SO Appalled by ______ (insert modified v of what he actually said) that Trump said.; Clinton is (destroying, crushing, obliterating, overwhelming) Trump in popularity.

      Just look at tomorrow's lead stories. That's what they will say.

      This, btw, is why you should vote against Hillary. At least Trump will have a hostile press.

      --
      (||) Nehmo (||)
    2. Re:Yeah. Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Oh look it's a Politifact shill. Totally not biased! Much neutral!

    3. Re:Yeah. Right by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful
      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:Yeah. Right by jafiwam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or are you one of those gullible people who believe that the media is biased against Trump despite the media actually greatly assistingTrump's campaign by repeating every damn stupid thing that he says? He'd never have made it through the primaries if the mainstream media weren't so obsessed with him.

      They unconsciously assisted Trump. They were competing with each other for viewership. The media didn't believe its own adage, "Any news is good news" because it gives name recognition. Now, the main news outlets, and even Google search results, clearly favor Hillary.

      It's the same stuff every day: Everybody is SO Appalled by ______ (insert modified v of what he actually said) that Trump said.; Clinton is (destroying, crushing, obliterating, overwhelming) Trump in popularity.

      Just look at tomorrow's lead stories. That's what they will say.

      This, btw, is why you should vote against Hillary. At least Trump will have a hostile press.

      The part I'd like to know is when did "the news" become 24/7 instructions on what to think and feel about things.

      Try it, just consume whatever news you do, and take note of the time they spend on "the what" verses the time they spend telling you what to think and feel. "You will be shocked!" No. Dude. A responsible and intelligent (not to mention wise) person decides that stuff for themselves. YOUR job as a "journalist" (in quotes, because there aren't any anymore) is to find information, collate it into useful form, and present it.

    5. Re:Yeah. Right by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Funny thing is Rachel Maddow has been doing a series on how Politifact gets it wrong with Democrats. You can watch it on YouTube.

      In other words, you can pick and choose examples to "prove" bias either way, or just do the sensible thing and accept that Politifact is kinda shit.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Yeah. Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because MSNBC is a paragon of virtue and facts. ... ... ... Bwhahahahahahaaa! MSNBC is a DNC Propaganda Bureau.

      And that has been proven and fact checked. Many of the so-called news outlets have been caught with direct ties and cooperating heavily (and possibly illegally) with the DNC and the Clinton Campaign. Uh, did MSNBC report that fact?

  2. Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing like letting a group with publicly declared political affiliation put in automatic links to "TRUTH".
    I wonder how they'll rate the AP, the "news" org that tried to declare that Assad was an ISIS ally?
    Or NBC, which declared that Hillary did nothing wrong with her email server, because she used no "corrosive chemicals" to destroy evidence?
    Or Google, when they declared they were not cooperating with the NSA to deliver email content? Oh, wait...

    captcha: "erasable"

  3. OK but misses a larger problem by CQDX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    which is the burying of critical stories. All these released tapes and allegations of sexual assault should have come out long ago, at least before the RNC primary. Instead they were intentionally held to benefit HRC.

    1. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Informative

      which is the burying of critical stories. All these released tapes and allegations of sexual assault should have come out long ago, at least before the RNC primary. Instead they were intentionally held to benefit HRC.

      Actually it's just a case of what-goes-around-comes-around. Some of the women have explicitly stated that they were motivated to come out by his denials during the second debate.

      Poetic justice, IMO, after featuring Blll Clinton's accusers as the centerpiece of his strategy last weekend. He's outraged that anyone would be interested in the same accusations against him.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    2. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I applaud these women. The vast, vast majority of women, sexually assaulted on a fucking airplane full of people by a goddamn billionaire would have immediately screamed bloody murder and filed lawsuits resulting in multi-million dollar settlements. But no, these brave, strong independent wymynz stoically held their silence for 30 goddamn years to all release their stories on the same day 4 weeks before an election for God and cuntry. There's nothing at all fishy about this to anyone except those who hate strong independent wymynz what don't need no man.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    3. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Things were different 30 years ago. A woman who screamed bloody murder and filed lawsuits would have been slut shamed mercilessly. And she said that she expected that it would cost her her job in the meantime.

    4. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      https://i.sli.mg/iBUuJ9.png
      https://i.sli.mg/jbe6G3.png
      https://i.sli.mg/2jvEeE.jpg

      nothing fishy at all

    5. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The vast, vast majority of women, sexually assaulted on a fucking airplane full of people by a goddamn billionaire would have immediately screamed bloody murder and filed lawsuits resulting in multi-million dollar settlements.

      Do you believe Juanita Broderick? She waited twenty years to come forward.

      I can only imagine the frustration of being a Trump supporter and realizing that you have the one candidate who makes Bill Clinton's creepy sexual history meaningless. All you had to do is find a candidate who wasn't a skeeve, and yet you flocked to the self-professed skeeve like ants to a piece of rotting fruit.

      Donald Trump will never be president. Mark it down. Learn from your mistakes. And for chrissake, stop your whining.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re: OK but misses a larger problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or women could stop carrying on like sexual assualt is the only crime mankind needs to address, and stop having such a sensitive trigger.

      OMG he looked in my vague direction! Help! Police! Sexual assualt.

      Half the time it's insecure women who are just crying out to convince the world they are desirable by pretending some random guy desired them inappropriately.

    7. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by Orgasmatron · · Score: 4, Informative

      She was scared to accuse the Attorney General of the state (who already had a body count). Also, in 1978, inviting a man up to her room could plausibly be taken the wrong way. Remember what Hillary had already done to Kathy Shelton a few years earlier. If Juanita had formally accused Bill of rape, she'd have been on the receiving end of all that, and probably much more.

      Still, she didn't keep completely silent, she told a few people, including a nurse that found her in bed a few hours after the attack, and some other close friends. Some of those people blabbed, and word got out. People hid tape recorders when talking to her in hopes of getting her to drop her guard and talk about it. She refused to talk about it, saying "you can't get to him, and I'm not going to ruin my good name to do it ... here's just absolutely no way anyone can get to him, he's just too vicious".

      After something like seven years of trying to get her to talk, the story was openly circulating in the tabloids with her name attached, and she finally relented.

      If you've seen any of the early interviews with her, it is pretty obvious why she didn't want to talk about it for 20 years. It is still a very painful memory for her, and she is visibly shaken when talking about it.

      There are some notable elements missing from Juanita's story. Until Trump tricked them, the press wouldn't touch her story with a 10 foot pole because it is missing these elements, which apparently dictate which stories are credible:
      * plagarism from other famous sexual assault cases and/or pop songs
      * robotic monotone retelling
      * claims that her attacker had superhuman strength (to bend a solid aluminum airline seat)
      * total silence even to her closest friends until the last few weeks before an election
      * contradictory stories told to close friends at the time of the incident
      * The One Ring to become invisible to slip past guard/chaperones stationed outside the door
      * laughably public setting
      * heavy involvement with the other candidate's campaign

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    8. Re: OK but misses a larger problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your worldview depends on snopes. You might want to do something about that.

    9. Re:OK but misses a larger problem by Orgasmatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh wow. Snopes calls it "Mostly False" because some of the ancillary details aren't right. Stop the fucking presses! Someone tell the New York Times that snopes is choking on Hillary's dick again!

      Also newsworthy, Politifact studiously avoided learning any details of the case that might contradict the headline they assigned to it in advance. Consider this one example:

      She is "discussing the crime lab's accidental destruction of DNA evidence that tied (the accused man, Thomas Alfred) Taylor to the crime." Destruction that led the prosecution to seek a plea deal on a lesser charge, according to the article.

      Which crime lab destroyed the evidence? Her crime lab destroyed the evidence. The state crime lab had a match already and handed the intact evidence over to the defense, which promptly destroyed it. Then, in a move that only a lawyer could love, the defense asked that the key evidence be thrown out because after destroying it, they were unable to verify the state lab's conclusion.

      And did you catch the extreme spin they put on the polygraph statement? Every human on the planet that understands English and is more than about 5 years old understood exactly what she meant. But not snopes! Nope, snopes spun that into a general laugh about the polygraph supporting the defense instead of the prosecution, because Hillary, with her extensive first-case-ever experience "knew" that the polygraph usually helps the prosecutor. That sounds like a good reason to laugh about losing all faith in polygraphs. Right? Right?

      Snopes and politifact are Marxist political opinion sites that only pretend to be interested in facts. (We can add Google to that list.) No one but fellow Marxists actually believes them any more. You remember the one where Trump and Sanders both quoted the same figure for black youth unemployment and they scored the Sanders one true and the Trump one false? Classic.

      Oh, and mustn't forget NBC. New to this game, but catching up fast.

      But good work ignoring the bulk of my post to concentrate on the one tiny part that you imagined you already had a good answer to.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
  4. Sure Google.... by dbreeze · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
  5. Re:Commonly accepted criteria for fact checking by Namarrgon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And thus the campaign against objective reality continues. It's exactly this blanket dismissal of factual sources that's created such fertile ground for the mud-slinging loonies on both sides.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  6. Eric Schmidt is a giant Hillary Supporter by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.bing.com/search?q=...

    Hell the man built a company just to help Hillary (search for Hillary, Eric Schmidt, Groundgame)

    So just who is going to be able to fact check Google's already established bias ?
    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
    http://dailycaller.com/2016/09...

    I think I am going to start rotating search engines. Variety is likely for the best.

  7. Re:Oh Goody by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But who fact checks the fact checkers?

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  8. Google Facts by bestweasel · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hoping this from one of the links will lead to better-informed comments:

    Fact Check
    Google News may apply this label to your content if you publish stories with fact-checking content that's indicated by schema.org ClaimReview markup, especially round-up stories that contain multiple fact-check analyses within a single article. The (fact-checking) label helps users find fact-checking content in major stories.

    When determining whether to use this tag for your article, consider whether that article meets the following criteria, which we consider characteristics of fact-checking sites:

    Discrete claims and checks must be easily identified in the body of fact-check articles. Readers should be able to understand what was checked, and what conclusions were reached.

    Analysis must be transparent about sources and methods, with citations and references to primary sources.

    The organization must be nonpartisan, with transparent funding and affiliations. It should examine a range of claims in its topic area, instead of targeting a single person or entity.

    Article titles must indicate that a claim is being reviewed, state the conclusions reached, or simply frame that the articleâ(TM)s contents consist of fact checking.

    Please note, that if we find sites not following those criteria for the ClaimReview markup, we may, at our discretion, either ignore that site's markup or remove the site from Google News.

  9. who owns the media, who owns the facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If something is never reported, it can never be fact checked.

    captcha: industry

  10. Re:If it's like Politifake, expect far left bias. by Jack9 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess you are in the camp of "both are establishment", which makes no sense to me. They both have money and are elitist, but that's not the issue in a principate. This may literally be one of the last times (in anyone reading's lifetime) that the political arena will result in a choice between a self-appointed egoist (who basically scammed his way via celebrity) and a multinational political favorite for POTUS. This will poison that contest forever, either through his failure to win or his failure as a president.

    --

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
    Everyone knows me.
  11. Re: Oh Goody by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    FACT: any sentence that starts with FACT: is a fact. and that's a FACT.

  12. """Fact check""" by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the type of fact checking they mean, I assume.

    They rate as "Mostly False" something where the only disputable fact is whether she "volunteered" for it, and it appears she didn't. Literally everything else in the little poster is demonstrably true, in fact they actually say the same thing below.

    Hillary Clinton volunteered to defend a rapist. False. OK, they're good there.

    Hillary Clinton alleged that the victim was lying/crazy. True. Snopes tries to be cute and claim that she's just repeating what some psychiatrist said, because.. you know.. defense lawyers never find an expert witness to say what they want. Sorry, fact is that Clinton accused the victim of being crazy. Sure, she used the "I have been told" weasel words, but as we know from Trumps similar tactic that means nothing. It's in the affidavit and she signed it.

    Hillary got the guy off a longer sentence, and laughed about it. True. Again, these are unarguable facts. You can certainly quibble over context, but the fact is that the guy got a reduced sentence, that she implied he was guilty, and that she laughed about said implication. All public record and undeniable.

    So tell me how that is "mostly false"? I might give them credit if they said "mixed" or "depends on context and interpretation". I can also see how even in the context of these facts you could say that none of it is a big deal, and that's a valid interpretation. But just "Mostly False"? No. It's isn't.

  13. Re:Expect conservative meltdown. by quenda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its not only conservatives who ignore or deny reality when it conflicts with their beliefs.
    Liberals can have their own blind-spots to science, such as gender and racial differences.

  14. Politifact by RoccamOccam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "You (Hillary Clinton) get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena you delete 33,000 emails." -- Donald Trump

    Politifact rates that a "Half-Truth" because (according to Politifact):

    Trump’s timeline is correct. The congressional subpoena came on March 4, 2015, and an employee deleted the emails sometime after March 25, 2015, three weeks later.

    However, the implication — that Clinton deleted emails relevant to the subpoena in order to avoid scrutiny — is unprovable if not flat wrong.

    The FBI’s investigation did find several thousand emails among those deleted that were work-related and should have been turned over to the State Department. However, FBI Director James Comey said in a July 2016 statement that the FBI investigation "found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them."

    That's absurd. First of all, you don't fact check on an implication, it was a very straight-forward statement of fact. Secondly, the FBI finding "no evidence" doesn't even prove the implication false.

    1. Re:Politifact by RoccamOccam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But he didn't make that claim. That was the inference of Politifact. They admitted that the claim was true, added their own inference, claimed that their own inference was false (on the basis of missing evidence, which means that their own inference was simply "unproven") and then somehow assess the original claim as "half true".

      Using that approach, any statement can be assessed as "half true".

  15. Re:Expect conservative meltdown. by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 4, Informative

    That is true. Genders and races are a real thing and there are differences between them. Not just outward appearances, but real physical or intellectual differences. On average, men are physically stronger than women, women are emotionally more stable and less aggressive than men, white people are more intelligent than black people, black men have longer ... you know, than white men.

    On average.
    But down to the level of individuals, it's unfair to judge people based on averages. Do you consider yourself an average person? On an individual level, everyone is different.
    But the key point is that, even though people are different in many ways, be it race, gender or their individual characteristics, they all deserve to be treated the same and given the same chances. Because we are all humans with our hopes, dreams, emotions and potential, regardless of physical or intellectual ability.

    In fact, many times it's the people who are at a disadvantage that perform big acts and change the world. Being handicapped in a way, but having the need for respect and recognition, is one of the strongest motivators. Short men like Napoleon and Hitler set out to conquer Europe. Physically unattractive people tend to follow intellectual pursuits and provide humanity with great innovations. Socially disadvantaged people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks engaged themselves politically and managed to change a nation.

    This is why I think that "fascism" as an ideology is wrong. At first glance it might sound like a brutal, but scientifically logical idea to weed out the "weak" and only breed the pure and strong. But often times it's the "weak" who accomplish great things and move humanity forward, because they are the ones who are out there to prove themselves. Not to mention that science also tells us that genetic homogeneity is a weakness whereas diversity and the mixing of genes is critical for long-term survival.

  16. Re:Expect conservative meltdown. by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 5, Funny

    black men have longer ... you know, than white men

    Prison sentences?

    -- Pete.

  17. Re: Expect conservative meltdown. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's only tens of thousands of individual documents on wikileaks and public record proving Hillary and company lying and conspiring against everything and everyone but them selves. But Trumps the liar. Thank you for correcting the record.

  18. Re: Expect conservative meltdown. by Entrope · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "There was no classified information on that server. None."
    "It was not classified at the time."
    "It was not marked classified."
    "I relied on others to properly handle classified information."

    Should I continue? Perhaps on transparency, or bribes, or when we should trust rape accusers?

  19. Re:Must suck for you nutcases by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Which they were able to do by the Liberty fought for by Republicans.
    Fact: The Republican Party was founded primarily to oppose slavery, and Republicans eventually abolished slavery. The Democratic Party fought them and tried to maintain and expand slavery. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in 1865 with 100% Republican support but only 23% Democrat support in congress.

    Fact: Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was a strongly pro-Union (but also pro-slavery) Democrat who had been chosen by Lincoln as a compromise running mate to attract Democrats. After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson thwarted Republican efforts in Congress to recognize the civil rights of the freed slaves, and Southern Democrats continued to thwart any such efforts for close to a century.

    Fact: The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress. The 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress.

    Fact: The Ku Klux Klan was originally and primarily an arm of the Southern Democratic Party. Its mission was to terrorize freed slaves and "ni**er-loving" (their words) Republicans who sympathized with them.

    Fact: In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, a Republican, integrated the US military and promoted civil rights for minorities. Eisenhower pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. One of Eisenhower's primary political opponents on civil rights prior to 1957 was none other than Lyndon Johnson, then the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. LBJ had voted the straight segregationist line until he changed his position and supported the 1957 Act.

    Fact: The historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress. In the House, 80 percent of the Republicans and 63 percent of the Democrats voted in favor. In the Senate, 82 percent of the Republicans and 69 percent of the Democrats voted for it.

    Fact: Contrary to popular misconception, the parties never "switched" on racism. The Democrats just switched from overt racism to a subversive strategy of getting blacks as dependent as possible on government to secure their votes. At the same time, they began a cynical smear campaign to label anyone who opposes their devious strategy as greedy racists.

    Most major American city governments have been run by liberal Democrats for decades, and most of those cities have large black sections that are essentially dysfunctional anarchies. Cities like Detroit are overrun by gangs and drug dealers, with burned out homes on every block in some areas. The land values are so low due to crime, blight, and lack of economic opportunity that condemned homes are not even worth rebuilding. Who wants to build a home in an urban war zone? Yet they keep electing liberal Democrats -- and blaming "racist" Republicans for their problems!

    Washington DC is another city that has been dominated by liberal Democrats for decades. It spends more per capita on students than almost any other city in the world, yet it has some of the worst academic achievement anywhere and is a drug-infested hellhole. Barack Obama would not dream of sending his own precious daughters to the DC public schools, of course -- but he assures us that those schools are good enough for everyone else. In fact, Obama was instrumental in killing a popular and effective school voucher program in DC, effectively killing hopes for many poor black families trapped in those dysfunctional public schools. His allegiance to the teachers unions apparently trumps his concern for poor black families.

    A strong argument could also be made that Democratic support for perpetual affirmative action is racist. It is, after all, the antithesis of Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. Not only is it "reverse racism," but it is based on the premise that African Americans are incapable of competing in the free market on a

  20. Re:You do, obviously by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is they're really just propaganda and get cited as if they're authority.

    Jeb Bush: "My name is Jeb Bush."

    Politificat: "Pants on fire! His real name is John Ellis Bush."

    When Snopes gets political they do the stawman thing. If you make Claim A, they'll restate your claim as B, which is similar to A but not actually A, then debunk B calling it "mostly false," and then at the end say "what's actually true is A..." But all the casual observer sees is that you're a liar making mostly false claims, even though your claim was entirely true.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.