Two of the world's biggest digital information platforms announce that they are getting ready to roll out tools in Canada intended to crack down on a so-called "fake news." The phenomenon of falsely misleading information being widely disseminated online became a major issue in the United States presidential campaign, which concluded in the November election victory of Donald Trump.
False information becoming rampant
It is also been happening in Canada, where Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch's campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis, has admitted to posting false information about the Trudeau government in order to draw out left-leaning voters.
According to TheGlobeAndMail, Kouvali, early last month, tweeted about a list of "billions" of dollars that Justin Trudeau's Liberal government had supposedly provided to international aid organizations in the last year, including $351 million for a designated terrorist group called Hamas. However, he, later on, admitted that the information was false, telling Maclean's magazine that he posted it to draw some more supporters.
Google and Facebook collaborating for the better good
Both Facebook and Google have been collaborating, testing online tools in the U.S. and U.K., all aimed at helping users identify credible information that is posted on their web platforms They also say that they are expected to provide similar tools to Canadian users as well in the near future.
Google's initiative
Google has incorporated a "fact-check" tag into several news pages to help readers find and identify fact-checked content in large stories. An anonymous source at google said that the company is actively working to bring the said feature to Canada in the near future.
Facebook's initiative
According to Telegraph, Facebook claims that it is still currently in the early stages of testing, tweaking and rolling out tools to fight against fake, unreliable news. Alex Kucharski, Facebook's spokesperson, said that the company's efforts are still in early stages, but they're looking forward towards learning and continuing to roll it out more broadly as the days go by.
