Facebook and Google announced that they are taking steps to track down and restrict ads from fake news outlets. The development comes after critics alleged that hoax stories helped Donald Trump to win the presidential elections.
Facebook explicitly said that it will ban fake news sites from using its Facebook Audience network that enables websites to gain revenue by including Facebook ads, Wall Street Journal reported. Google followed suit by saying that it will prevent fake news websites from using its advertising network, AdSense.
Mark Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook did not influence the recent presidential election. He said, "Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic," in his status update.
"The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other."
On the other hand, Google promised to improve its algorithms to address the issue of fake news and hoaxes appearing in Google search results. Google chair of media and communication at Muhlenberg College Joe Pooley said that they had been more aggressive in penalizing click bait and fake news websites, Huffington Post reported.
"We clearly didn't get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms," a Google spokeswoman reportedly said in an email.
The move by Google and Facebook aims to clamp down the revenue of fake-news sites. However, it remains to be seen if their efforts would be able to obliterate or police the industry of misinformation in all corners of the internet in the long run.
Watch the video below for tips on how to spot fake news websites:
