The most recent anti-fake news (A.K.A. anti-conservative news) initiative has been launched by the world’s most popular Internet search engine, Google. In the coming weeks, the company plans to roll out what it’s calling “knowledge cards” or “newstrition labels” for news articles that pop up in the Google search results as a means of providing “greater degrees of transparency” for readers. According to an executive at Google, the initiative will ultimately be launched with the goal of fighting what the company considers to be fake news. (Related: Google insiders warn that outright censorship of the Internet is Google’s top priority.)
“We’ve been using the phrase ‘newstrition’ internally,” explained Richard Gingras, vice president of news at Google during a panel discussion late last week. “I use it because it’s not a Good Housekeeping rule that says ‘this is good or bad,’ it says, ‘no, here’s the ingredient information you need to know about the publication, make your own judgment.”
“So should those knowledge cards about USA Today or MIC have ‘here’s the editorial masthead, here are the editors,’ who owns the publication, for instance. So greater transparency about the organization in and of itself – we think that’s one step,” Gingras added.
To some, more transparency about the sources of news articles and the overall effort to stop the spread of fake news may seem like a good thing. However, it is important to remember two things. First, just like any piece of legislation that makes its way through the halls of Congress or any new rule that is put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency, there is always room for abuse. What starts off as a seemingly noble cause can quickly turn into a full-out effort to silence viewpoints that do not align with the progressive agenda, a trend that conservatives have experienced dozens of times before.
Second, even though it's been largely ignored for years now, we still do have the First Amendment in the United States Constitution, which among other things mentions that Americans have the freedom of speech. Even if information on the Internet is not entirely accurate, that still doesn’t give any company the right to usurp the First Amendment.
It’s almost laughable how Google, Facebook and other large Internet-based companies are attempting to appoint themselves as credible fact checkers, yet time and time again they are proven to be anything but credible. (Related: If Google and Facebook are not regulated, their politically-motivated censorship will lead to open warfare in the streets.)
According to a Fox News article from last year, several former Facebook contractors came forward and explained that Facebook, “routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers,” and that many of them were instructed to “inject” certain topics into the trending list, even if they weren’t popular or relevant. Of course, Facebook later denied the allegations and claimed that they are committed to providing “a platform for people and perspectives from all across the political spectrum,” but we know the truth.
It would appear as though we need a team of fact checkers to fact check the fact checkers. They aren’t stopping fake news; in many cases, they are contributing to it.
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