Google, Facebook,Twitter, Microsoft join to combat false news

Washington Nov 17: In a move to block false news and give the viewers genuine and credible news Digital platforms companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter have come together.

The top companies along with 75 other news organizations have agreed to participate in "Trust Project" to combat misreporting and false information.

Sally Lehrman of Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the project leader said that "In today's digitized and socially networked world, it's harder than ever to tell what's accurate reporting, advertising, or even misinformation, an increasingly skeptical public wants to know the expertise, enterprise, and ethics behind a news story."

Under this project, each platform will evaluate the news based on "trust indicators" developed which would help the consumers to assess the credible source they can depend.



Some of the news organization which have joined this project are Washington Post, Mic, the Independent Journal Review in the US, Canada's Globe and Mail, the German press agency DPA, the Economist, Italy's La Repubblica and La Stampa, and Trinity Mirror, Mirror newspapers in Britain.

The trust indicators would be developed based on "transparency on funding, the disclosure of the mission of the organization, details about the journalists behind stories, labeling of opinion and factual articles, and references on how the reporting is carried out."

The action assumes significance because recently a report has stated that public leaders are using social media to spread false news and also media organisation have a political agenda as some of them are being established by leaders itself.