International Fact Checking Day: Google unveils new features to track fake news

Fake news has always been a concern in India and on International Fact-Checking Day, technology giant Google has come up with a list of instructions and tips that will help an individual to check the authenticity of the content. 

The search-engine giant has launched new features to discover fake information online. In a blog post, Alexios Mantzarlis, ‎News and Information Credibility Lead at Google News Lab, revealed that more than 50,000 new fact checks came up on Google Search with all fact-checks receiving more than 2.4 billion impressions in search during that time frame.

Google has revealed the steps to determine fact checks in a support page where it said that publishers of the content must meet certain requirements to be a trusted source of information, which is determined by an algorithm.  

“The content around fact checks must tell you the claims that are being checked, conclusions about these claims, and how they were reached and explains citations and primary sources of information”, Google said on its support page on fake information. 

Here are the steps to check the authenticity of content: 

Multiple sources: Google asks users to check the entire coverage of a news piece if they switch to news mode or search for a topic in Google News. 

Dig more about the source: Google urges users to dig out more information about the source of an article or website by clicking on three dots on the right of an article.. However, this is only available in the US. 

Confirmation about the event taking place at the said location: Google also asks users to confirm the veracity of the location of an event through Google Earth or the Street View of a location on Google Maps. 

Google’s fact-checker: Google has come up with a fact-checker tool, which helps users to type a keyword and look for claims made by news publication and fact checks listed by Google. 

Check if an image is true or fake: Fake and misleading photos have always been a headache and to help users,  Google points out that users can check if an image is authentic by right-clicking on a photo and selecting “Search Google for Image.”  

Mobile users can perform the same activity by touching and holding the image for some time. Google will then check if the image has appeared online before and the context in which it appeared.