Google to Ban AdSense Publishers With Fake News Sites

[engine]

Google is updating its AdSense policies and will now ban AdSense Publishers that carry fake news stories. Apparently, the new policy will go into effect "imminently."

“We have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.” Google to Ban AdSense Publishers With Fake News Sites [nytimes.com]

“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,”

[tangor]

The difference is magnitude, not activity. At no time prior to 2016 was the matter raised, though it certainly existed in just as appalling "per cent of the web" numbers.

What has not yet been answered to my satisfaction is who determines what is fake, if there is a way to get out of penalty hell if wrongly tagged, and what comes next under the hammer. These are the more important questions, not whether g can pick a topic and nuke adsense income or removal from their serps. Of course they can. They are a company which is not currently required to act fair and inclusive without discrimination (which would include fake news, for example). However, that might change under the new net neutrality rules which changed the web from unregulated to Title II status in the USA.

[toidi]

To add to what martinibuster said, in 2008, all MSM, including fox, still had their own investigative departments. Not anymore. None of them investigate anything further than the internet. So, in 2008, fake news would not have made it to the tube, whereas now, it is normal to see fake news reported on the tube and if it is later retracted, it is done in a way that no one notices, probably to save face and credibility.

[romerome]

I agree with tangor I still don't see how people can make these decisions without bias. In college a decent number of my classes looked at how difficult it was for humans to make decisions without bias.

It turns out humans are really really really bad at doing this.

On the web there is a collection of "stupid opinions", "fake news", "things I really really disagree with" and "conspiracy theory".

Telling the difference between them will be extraordinary difficult if not impossible.

Disproving things that are fake and calling them out seems like a better option.

[ergophobe]

I still don't see how people can make these decisions without bias.

People can't make decisions without bias. I don't disagree with that. I just think that the way the web has change and, as martinibuster and toidi mentioned, the way journalism has changed, mean we're in a very different world than in 2008

To be honest, I started looking that stuff up just because I was curious and was surprised myself... 2008 seems so recent.

[tangor]

You know it's political when: [nytimes.com...] (Note, NYT has been recognized by WW as NOT fake news)

The article is about social media and fake news, whatever that blanket term is supposed to mean. The President did name a few major sites like twitter, facebook and Brietbart as fake news sites. He also included Limbaugh (and by association other radio/tv media) as fake news.

To say g, fb, and tw do not listen to, or have deep ties to, or support a particular party would be either silly or self-deception. Most of MSM follows suit. What has become obvious is that MSM faces real competition from other NOT FAKE news/commentary by sites with a different viewpoint that are either eating their lunch in both numbers and accuracy or users simply want something different than the established echo chamber. Is this about fake news or is it about regaining control of the megaphone?

This thread should be about a business relationship contract to display ads for revenue, not whether something is fake or not. Advertisers can say where they want their ads placed, but should the ad serving company get involved in that decision making? g, of course, can say who gets in their serps or not---at the risk of losing trust and credibility of "indexing the WHOLE web. Gate keepers of any kind do so to change the landscape FOR THEIR PURPOSE. This is one gate too many and my fear is it will hurt more than the really bad actors all of us would shake our heads at for being misleading or non-factual.

Edit ... I was done and moved on with my reading day to The Resgister and this was the headline: [theregister.co.uk...]

And it begins!

[NickMNS]

I question how serious any of this is. Google is not banning these sites from the serps. They are not even banning them from using Adwords to advertise. All they are doing is banning them from placing Adsense ads directly on the sites that display the fake news. The Adsense ads can easily be replaced by Media.net or any another ad network's ads, then the remaining traffic can be redirected to secondary websites containing adsense ads by using taboola style ad placements. This technique is already widely used by sites that show pirated and other Adsense banned content.

In my view this whole announcement is simply a means to claim that they are doing some so that they can skirt any regulation.

[romerome]

I don't know about Google. I know adsense is taking action. I have not seen if there are going to be actions as far as the serps.

Facebook on the other hand is deleting pages. And, as is typical with facebook, they are not telling page owners which post caused the page deletion.

[romerome]

I think 2016 is different than 2008. And this is not an argument for a position its more just interesting. But 2016 is in some ways more similar to politics in 19th century America. The press at that time was wildly partisan with wild rumors floating about on either side. It could be thought of as almost old old school clickbait.

[graeme_p]

Spotting fake news requires manual review: can Google do that?

[keyplyr]

Spotting fake news requires manual review

Why? Fact checking software has been around for a while. Google's AI (or an algo of similar sophistication) could easily look at publishing trends from suspect sites to determine if they are credible as a valid news source.

Google has already started purging fake news sites per their announcement AFAIK.

[romerome]

Keyplyr can you provide links to fact checking software. I have seen some software to assist journalists. I have not seen stuff to assist journalists / manual reviews but nothing that is completely automated. I am not saying it doesn't exist I just haven't seen it.

[keyplyr]

I'm not aware of any public links romerome but that doesn't mean those public links don't exist, just that I don't have the interest in spending time looking. On a phone driving through the desert.

[romerome]

I looked around and all I found was this

[independent.co.uk...]

It looks like they are giving funding/grant money to some company that is trying to create auto factchecking software. So it seems doubtful they have already have auto factchecking software.

[keyplyr]

This article referrers to stand-alone public accessible software.

Google supports Full Fact to build automated factchecking tools. In August we released our white paper The State of Automated Factchecking claiming that within 12 months, and with the right funding, we could have an automated factchecking tool in the palm of every willing journalist.

source: [fullfact.org...]

My previous comment was about the factchecking software already in use (not stand alone & not public) at FB, Twitter, Google Adsense, etc that was used to remove false news sites per their announcements.

The alternative is they (Google et al) manually reviewed thousands (possibly millions) of articles at thousands (possibly millions) of web sites and determined which were false news. I find that very difficult to believe but I guess there is a possibility of that being the case.

[graeme_p]

Thinking about it, I think it likely that Google is going after fake news that is essentially spam, and they already have mechanisms for going after spam sites in Adsense.

I think it is unlikely they are going to need fact checking software - what they will need is spam detection.

[graeme_p]

Quote from the NYT article:

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, recently said fake news on the social network was rare

In which parallel universe is that?