Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, large corporations and social platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter have struggled to combat misinformation and false news. In this sense, Google has done more than last year alone 500,000 fact checks that leaked the news that appeared on google search.
Check out the pictures and source, and find out if a google reviewer decided on the news.
On the occasion of the “International Fact Check Day”, Google published some tips that users can use to identify fake news and misinformation. They are as follows:
-Check the context of the pictures: The images used to illustrate news or events are often taken out of context. With that in mind, when you find an image in a publication, it is possible to right-click it and click “Search for an image in Google” to find the source of the image.
– Find out about the source: It is common to find results from web pages that were not recognized or never visited. When in doubt, you can do a google search removing the results from this website to see what the rest of the pages say. Simply search for the term and add “-site: pagename.com”.
-Verifier: Google has a tool called “Fact Check Tools” which is a fact checker. With that in mind, if any dubious news or article is found, it is possible to paste the url of the page into this tool to find out if the google reviewers decided on it.
-Check the location: If the information includes images of the location where it occurs but the location is not known, you can use Google Maps, and specifically the Google Street View tool, to check in detail that the images are real.
-Reporting: In Google it is possible to find more sources for the same news. To do this, simply go to the News tab and, if available, click the Full Reporting option, which shows the same news but from different sources.
In addition, Google has developed a digital tool that journalists can use to identify fake news, misinformation attempts and “deep fakes”.
