Search engines are one of the prime sources of information. However, they can also be a source of misinformation. During the pandemic, the public faces a new threat: a “pandemic of disinformation,” as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described it.
People are often attracted to sensational news that’s either controversial or supports their existing viewpoints. Many websites and social media pages are influencing the masses with misinformation for engagements and traffic. In this digital era, misleading information can have negative consequences for society, culminating in turmoil.
Let’s take a look at what Google and other online platforms are doing to combat misinformation.
Why Is Misinformation Dangerous?
It’s essential to grasp the consequences of spreading potentially false information and its many forms. They harm public discourse by misleading and manipulating readers, whether intentionally or inadvertently. Therefore, it’s important to know the difference between reliable and unreliable news sources.
The most reliable news sites follow strict journalistic standards and focus on fact-based reporting. The New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Reuters, and The Guardian are just a few examples of well-known and well-trusted news sources.
Unreliable news sources tend to rely on opinion rather than fact-based reporting. As a result, they exhibit clear biases and provide distorted data that leans towards their worldview.
There are several untrustworthy news sources as well as various forms of misinformation. To counteract and limit the spread of false information, social media have taken steps to make their platform safer for users.
What Have Social Platforms Done to Tackle Misinformation?
Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram analyze popular topics regularly and delete harmful disinformation. They label posts that don’t cause immediate harm, such as conspiracy theories, as False Information and restrict their distribution so that fewer people see them. People who still come across it, try to distribute it, or have already done so see strong warning labels and notifications.
In addition, Facebook has put in efforts to prevent the spread of false information via Messenger and WhatsApp. For example, WhatsApp has put limits on how messages could be forwarded to slow down the spread of misinformation.
On both WhatsApp and Messenger, they label forwarded messages to indicate that the content is not coming directly from the sender. During COVID-19, Facebook limited unreliable sources of information and promoted reliable sources with notifications.
While another social media platform, Twitter, has been quite aggressive in preventing the distribution of false information through its platform. It has been in focus for its outright deleting of tweets and ban of certain prominent people throughout the world on the accusation of misleading the public with their tweets. Recently, the business experimented with eye-catching misinformation labels for inaccurate but not harmful tweets to warn the account user and others reading it.
YouTube addresses misinformation through several tools. For example, the platform takes down content that does not meet its legal requirements, promotes trustworthy news and information sources, and limits doubtful material and harmful misinformation recommendations.
Google and YouTube are subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc., and Google has also made concerted efforts to combat the issue.
What Has Google Done to Stop the Spread?
The search engine giant has been under the radar for its role in the spread of misinformation. Despite the allegations, Google has shown keen interest in eliminating misinformation and fraudulent content from its platform.
Google’s approach to combat misinformation stands on three foundational strategies. It prioritizes quality in its ranking systems, prohibits harmful content, and provides users more context.
Google has billions of data-rich websites. Its objective is to filter from this vast amount of data and present its users with just the information that is relevant and helpful to them.
It’s tough to deliver high-quality, reliable information, especially in breaking news, which is more prone to misinformation. Even so, Google’s ranking algorithm has helped to minimize the problem to some extent. It also updates its ranking algorithm regularly to address any flaws.
Google is continuously looking for potentially harmful content to filter out spam and misinformation.
Google searches provide viewers with a comprehensive overview of the subject. In response to their queries, Google products and services present users with a list of links or videos, increasing the likelihood of consumer exposure to different opinions or viewpoints before concluding.
Google Will Now Warn Users About Unreliable Search Results
Google algorithm tries to bring the most relevant pages to the top of the page depending on your search queries. However, because Google does not create the information, the reliability of the sources is determined by what is accessible.
Google recently rolled out a new feature that displays caution about the reliability of search results when consumers seek breaking news or other “rapidly changing” topics.
When there is not enough reliable information online concerning an emerging issue, the notifications will let people know. “It appears that these results are changing rapidly,” reads the prompt above the search results. The prompt will notify you with another message, “If the topic is new, it may take some time for reliable sources to provide findings.”
Google claims that an advanced software system will decide when to warn users about which specific news.
Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison for Search, stated in a blog post:
We’ve taught our algorithms to detect when a situation is fast emerging and a variety of sources haven’t confirmed it. We’ll now show you a notice urging you to come back later when additional data from a wider range of sources become available.
This warning does not guarantee that you will not see fraudulent information, and it is unclear how Google will evaluate what constitutes a wide range of sources.
However, it can remove some of the false validity that early, inaccurate search results might gain from a high Google ranking.
The Battle Against False Information
Search engines like Google and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter must ensure that the internet is beneficial to the billions of people who rely on them for their information needs.
The internet has a long battle ahead against the spread of false or misleading information.
There will always be false content that manipulates search engines and deceives consumers. But, the efforts taken by tech firms to reduce the risks guarantee that they are working to ensure users receive unbiased information from reliable sources.