While denying allegations that fake news stories on social media played a part in electing Donald Trump, Facebook and Google both began Monday to restrict advertising from fake news sites.
Google has a policy change in progress that would prevent sites misrepresenting content from using its AdSense advertising network, according to Reuters, which also reported Facebook made its advertising policies more specific, saying its ban on deceptive and misleading content applies to fake news.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly denied any role for Facebook in influencing the presidential election, but the policy change appears to be an attempt to limit the role of fake news on the site. The changes only apply to the advertising content, however, not to any fake news shared by users in their news feeds, Reuters noted.
Google also focused on advertising policies, not on fake news stories that might appear in search results. “Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property,” a statement from Google read, Reuters reported.
According to the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of Americans now get news from Facebook, where attention-grabbing headlines known as clickbait can mislead readers with provocative headlines that are often not representative of the actual article.
Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira theorized that fake news has proliferated because it is easier now for anyone to make a website than in the past, NBC reported.
Few details were given about how either Facebook or Google would enforce the new fake news advertising policies.
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