Google buries the (fake) lede
Google isn’t planning to rid its search results
of fake news, “but it’s trying to purge it from
the top,” said Mark Bergen in Bloomberg
.com. The company is “making a rare, sweeping
change” to the algorithm that powers its
ubiquitous search engine. Google’s 10,000-
plus staff of “raters,” who are responsible for
assessing search results, will now flag web
pages hosting hoaxes, conspiracy theories,
and other items the company has dubbed
“low-quality content.” Articles that are found
to be “misleading, false, or offensive” will be
demoted in search results, so they won’t be
among the first a user sees. Last month, for
example, searches for “is Obama planning a
coup” returned “a blatantly wrong article”
as the top result; that item will now be buried
further down.
