Google News Will Purge Sites Masking Their Country of Origin (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg: Google moved to strip from its news search results publications that mask their country of origin or intentionally mislead readers, a further step to curb the spread of fake news that has plagued internet companies this year. To appear in Google News results, websites must meet broad criteria set out by the company, including accurately representing their owners or primary purposes. In an update to its guidelines released Friday, the search giant added language stipulating that publications not "engage in coordinated activity to mislead users."

Additionally the new rules read: "This includes, but isn't limited to, sites that misrepresent or conceal their country of origin or are directed at users in another country under false premises." A popular tactic for misinformation campaigns is to pose as a credible U.S. news outlet. Russian Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed organization, used that technique to reach an audience of nearly 500,000 people, spread primarily through Twitter accounts, Bloomberg reported earlier.

Comments

Google translate

[Okian Warrior]

I entered the OP text into "Google Translate", here's what I got:

We're making a bunch of private rules which are ill-defined, fuzzy, and overly broad. We're going to couple these with selective enforcement backed by AI algorithms using a high false-positive rate, and use it to remove sites without warning or identifying what specific sections are in violation or what rules are violated.

In that way, Google will strip out all fake news, ensuring that only true and correct news remains.

Re:I hope they coordinate with other sites.

[Gravis Zero]

This is a very reasonable form of defense

Defense against what? Hackers that leak emails proving that the mainstream media is in bed with the DNC? Controversial trolls that force people to question the political dogmas?

No, defense against propaganda that is intended to intensify the divisions within out nation. What they do does not make people question their politics but rather harden people in their viewpoints. I'm all for exposing corruption but their goal is simply to cause civil unrest and promote political extremism to fuel that agenda.

I very much want to what you are claiming they do but the fact is that they are making people more extreme in their viewpoints and normalizing that extremism.