Interest in combating fake news has gone up several notches of late and along the same, Google has announced that it is expanding its “fact-checked” feature to three new markets, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
Starting today, people in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina can see fact check tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS andAndroid apps.
In case you are unaware of the feature, it was launched back in October, as a way for the company to highlight those articles and resources appearing in Google News, that according to the company, were accurate. These articles then appeared with a “Fact Checked” label, so that someone looking for accurate information without the time to research could get it quickly. Fact check joined other tags like “opinion,” “local source” and “highly cited”, that were earlier used by Google to highlight new items.
The fact check feature will be made available on Google news’s expanded story box. The company’s News & Weather application for both the iOS and Android platform will also be able to avail this facility in the new locations from now.
Meanwhile, this marks just one of the various attempts being made to curb fake news from rampaging over the web. Google in particular, has been helping government and private agencies in ensuring that fake news articles were recognized as such and taken down before they can cause much damage.
The software giant also took the occasion to remark on the growth of the fact check industry.
We’re able to do this work because the fact check industry itself has grown—there are now more than 120 organizationsinvolved in tackling this issue—but our commitment to this area is not new. In Europe over the last couple of years we’ve been working with publishers on a number of efforts focused on fact checking. Last week, we announced CrossCheck, a joint project involving nearly 20 French newsrooms and theFirst Draft Coalition to debunk myths pertaining to the upcoming French elections.
Meanwhile, if you want your website labeled with the new, “Fact check” label, Google recommends that you use the open ClaimReview schema from schema.org in your story. Google said that adding this markup allows the company to find these stories and highlight the fact checking work that has gone into them.
