UK Edition
Facebook and Google promise to cut off fake news websites from advertising
Facebook and Google have pledged to ban websites that peddle fake news from their advertising services after the world’s two most popular websites were accused of spreading false and incendiary articles about the US presidential election.
Facebook, which has faced a storm of criticism in the last week over its role in Donald Trump’s victory, added fake news websites to its list of banned adverts, which also prohibits ads for guns, gambling and spy cameras, on Monday night.
Some hours earlier, Google had said it would not allow fake news websites to use its advertising software.
The move comes after both companies were criticised for assisting misinformation campaigns.
Facebook, in particular, has been accused of allowing fake news stories to spread across its social network. Critics have claimed that widely-shared articles, including one claiming the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump and another that Hillary Clinton’s house had been raided by the FBI, helped Donald Trump win support in his run to the White House.
Google was dragged into the row over the weekend when a search for “final election results” prominently displayed a news story from a website called 70news falsely claiming that Mr Trump had won more votes that Ms Clinton.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has dismissed suggestions that it influenced the election result, claiming last week that the idea is “pretty crazy” and saying that fake news accounts for less than 1 per cent of articles people see.
However, he has reportedly faced opposition from within his own ranks. Executives at Facebook fretted over their role in the election in the hours after the vote and rebellious employees have reportedly set up task forces to combat the fake news problem.
Facebook’s ban on fake news in its advertising networks will remove such websites from its “Audience Network”, which displays adverts on other websites and apps. However, it will not crack down on what is seen as the major problem - that false headlines are widely shared by people’s friends.
The company faced claims last night that it had built a tool that would have dealt with fake new stories in the News Feed, but declined to implement it. Facebook denied the report.
Google’s move to ban such websites from using its ad-selling software will cut off a major source of revenue for the sites, but would not have prevented the 70news story featuring prominently in results.
“While implied, we have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” a Facebook spokesman said. “We vigorously enforce our policies and take swift action against sites and apps that are found to be in violation. Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”
Google said: “We 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.”