Social Media platforms have been facing slack because of their inadequacy in checking the spread of fake news. For instance, the lynching of people after allegation of child snatchers on WhatsApp. Even Facebook stepped up to introduce features to counter the spread of fake news.
Facebook has admitted to its use for spreading misinformation and fake news during the US Presidential elections in 2016. But it may be in time to avoid this during the impending General Elections in India in 2019. It has begun fact-checking news, for the more than 270 million Facebook users in India.
Now, Google’s YouTube has decided to bring in stringent measures in this direction. It announced new measures today to stem the spread of conspiracy theory videos and fake news on its platform, including inserting context from trustworthy sources into search results about hot topics. YouTube is working with the Google News Initiative, which was launched by its parent company earlier this year to support journalists and publishers.
Google is employing 10,000 ‘human reviewers’ to monitor search results around the world and determine what will count as authoritative sources and news stories. But there is still going to be a concern about those fake videos which will appear in YouTube’s recommendations, without the scrutiny of these human viewers.
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The menace of fake news has been bothering all the tech influencers, policy makers and lay people, alike. YouTube also said it will commit USD 25 million over the next several years to improving news on YouTube and tackling “emerging challenges” such as misinformation.
Similar to Facebook’s attempts to fight fake news by adding information about publishers and articles to News Feed, YouTube said it is will add context to search results about breaking news topics to help people quickly see if a video is from a trustworthy source. Search results will also include linked previews of news articles, since journalists usually write about breaking news first before producing more labour-intensive videos, and reminders that information about developing events can change quickly.
This seems like a positive move against the concern of fake news, especially in today’s age of urgency of breaking news and rush to make headlines.
