Wikipedia, Google launch heat on ‘fake news’

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced the launch of a new online publication aiming to fight fake news with community-driven journalism.

Wikitribune, which is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, will cover politics, current affairs and science and technology news using a combination of paid, professional journalists and support from Wikipedia’s army of community volunteers.

Wales was spurred to launch the project by US politics – particularly by the uneasy relationship with reality that seems to be common among President Trump’s administration.

“Someone I know convinced me to give Trump 100 days before making my mind up,” Wales told The Guardian, “but then on day one Kellyanne Conway came out and said her ‘alternative facts’ line. That was when I really decided to move forward.”

Search engine giants, Google is also intensifying its fight against fake news by making public the big changes it is making to its Search system to ensure that questionable content don’t get through. At least not much.

Google is combating fake news and inappropriate content by employing the assistance of humans. Much of Google’s search features rely on algorithms and machine learning but, as history has proven, those aren’t exactly infallible.

Google has a team of human evaluators that rate the quality and accuracy of search results in general. These evaluators don’t affect page ranks of individual pages but simply flag search results as they see fit.

In addition, Google is now also seeking your help as well. That is, it has added ways for users to give feedback and report inappropriate search results. This does require that users care enough about improving Google Search for everyone or have been offended strongly enough to take action.

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