Google Executives Are Floating a Plan To Fight Fake News on Facebook and Twitter (qz.com)

Fake news, bots, and propaganda were hot topics at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last month, and Google executives there floated an intriguing idea to some fellow attendees -- what if the company could tell users whether information is trustworthy before they shared it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter? From a report: Representatives from Google and its parent company Alphabet eagerly discussed how the company can play a greater role in reducing misleading information online, several Davos attendees involved in and briefed on these conversations told Quartz. A notification system, perhaps via an optional extension for Google's Chrome browser, was an idea that these people said was broached more than once. Such a browser-based system controlled by Google could alert users on Facebook's or Twitter's websites when they're seeing or sharing a link deemed to be false or untrustworthy. Right now, this appears to be merely an idea company executives are discussing, not a product in development.

Comments

Unfortunately

[Luthair]

A huge swath of the populace have been convinced by Fox News and other sources that facts are opinions and suggesting to the user that something they want believe is untrustworthy is only going to help convince them that Google & al are part of some vast conspiracy against them.

Re:Oh Good

[AmiMoJo]

Ultimately, you have to trust someone. You can't go to all these events, you aren't allowed in to White House Press Briefings, and important people don't want to talk to you or answer your questions. So the only way to find out what is happening and what important people think is to trust some journalist to report it to you truthfully.

Of course there are degrees of trust, but as we enter an age where anyone can download an app for face substitution or faking speech the need for trustworthy journalism is only going to become more urgent.

Like it or not, that blog that is saying stuff you like or that Brietbart article that made you rage is not the same as an established, proven reliable institution. No-one is perfect, but that doesn't meant that there isn't a scale, or that some people are not deliberately trying to mislead you.