With the internet making self-publishing so easy these days, anyone can literally create a brand new website in minutes and claim to produce “news”, when in reality they might simply be creating fake headlines and news to generate views, which in turn can be used to leverage ad platforms like AdSense to make money.
However Google isn’t too thrilled that fake-news websites are making money off AdSense when in reality they do not offer users anything concrete in return, which is why the company has recently announced that they will be taking steps to restrict AdSense from being used by such websites.
Google’s updated policies will now ban ads from being placed “on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose”. Recently there has been a lot of debate regarding fake news, especially with regards to Facebook who has in the past allowed fake news to run rampant on its platform.
The company has pledged to try and fix this but in the meantime it seems that Google is already taking steps of their own. Hopefully by cutting off their revenue stream, the proliferation of fake news websites will start to die.
Filed in . Read more about Google.