Google to pull ads from fake news sites
SAN FRANCISCO — Amid criticism that fake news sites have contributed to misinformation and increasing polarization among the American public, Google announced Monday night that it will stop allowing fake news sites to use its ad software.
Facebook followed with a similar policy, according to the New York Times.
That shift could be a death-knell for popular click-bait sites, cutting off their access to the ads that make them lucrative.
In a statement, Google said it 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.
The announcement came after criticism earlier in the day that searching on the phrase “who won the popular vote” on Google returned a false news story on an obscure right-wing blog that Republic presidential nominee Donald Trump had won the popular vote in last week’s election.
Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 700,000 votes but won the Electoral College, according to the Associated Press.
The article was still coming up as a first search result on Google at just after midnight Tuesday.
Facebook has also come under fire for allowing false news reports on its site, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to weed out while saying that 99% of the news that appears on the social media site is “authentic.”
A group of Facebook employees has reportedly created an unofficial task force to investigate the spread of hoax and false articles.
A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times it had updated its Audience Network policy to clarify that it will not show ads in sites that display fake news. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/15/google-pull-ads-fake-news-sites/93852574/
