Google and Facebook finally announced steps to tackle fake news on their respective platforms this week following increasing pressure from critics eager to halt the flow of falsehoods online.
Both companies said they will prohibit fake news websites from advertising on their platforms, thus reducing the exposure of such articles to the public while also starving the companies of an important source of advertising income.
The move comes after the companies received a wave of criticism over its role in propagating misinformation, particularly in this election cycle in which many observed that a bitter partisan war was potentially worsened by polarizing news sources touting untrue assertions. While the technology companies have in the past been hesitant to mediate the flow of news, this change might signal a change in thought as they come to grip with the real-life implications of lackluster surveillance on their platforms.
Wrongthink will not be permitted, citizens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @02:54PM
so now we need facebook and google to filter our news for us? supporters of this shit deserve what's coming. you are disgusting, groveling slaves. way to tow the party, csmonitor! not that i'm surprised. next the powers that be will have all the mega churches preaching censorship as religion, if they don't already.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 18 2016, @03:09PM
I'm wondering just how good an idea the NSA's and CIA's enablers now think it was to give them a free pass on their crimes and even encourage them to do more. Do you think they're re-thinking that issue at all? How sanguine are they now about normalizing assassination-by-drone? Extraordinary rendition? How about government-sponsored hacking? Putting backdoors in all encryption?
It's a bittersweet moment for all of us who warned them then to be saying, "I told you so," now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 18 2016, @07:08PM
so now we need google to filter our news for us?
You understand that the entire purpose of a search engine is to filter stuff, right?
When searching for news most people don't actually want to find completely fake BS.