In this day and age where people are given multiple platforms to be seen and heard, it is quite easy to write up something completely fictional, hit the publish button, and fool many people into thinking that what you wrote is indeed fact. However Google wants to address this problem by starting to label articles in search results with a “Fact Check” label.According to Google, “Today, we’re adding another new tag, ‘Fact check,’ to help readers find fact checking in large news stories. You’ll see the tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS and Android apps, starting with the U.S. and the U.K.”
“Google News determines whether an article might contain fact checks in part by looking for the schema.org ClaimReview markup. We also look for sites that follow the commonly accepted criteria for fact checks.” So what does this mean for users? Basically if you search for news on Google and you find an article listed that also has a “Fact Check” label, it means that the article has verified facts to backup its claims.
Of course this by no means implies that articles without the “Fact Check” label contain false information, but rather it provides a quick and easy way for users to verify the information in the article. Given how sometimes legitimate platforms can accidentally promote stories that are hoaxes, this label will no doubt come in handy.
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