facebook inc., twitter inc. and alphabet inc. <u+2019>s google are under increased pressure to police what news content can be posted on their platforms, making them reluctant judges of what is misleading, hateful or true. such moves could alienate users, hurt advertising revenue and fuel a bigger debate on how much influence they should have over news content on their sites. <u+201c>do you really want facebook and twitter deciding what you can talk about?<u+201d> asked karen north, director of the social-media program at the university of southern california. in a post on saturday, facebook chief executive mark zuckerberg wrote, <u+201c>we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.<u+201d> at the same time, the internet companies could face declining public trust if they don<u+2019>t act on the propaganda and harassment spreading on their sites . they have been under fire in the wake of a divisive u.s. presidential election, with critics arguing that facebook should have done more to expunge so-called fake news reports claiming, for example, that pope francis endorsed donald trump. after long arguing that they aren<u+2019>t publishers but rather neutral platforms for the exchange of ideas, facebook and google in recent days have tried to answer critics. on monday, both companies said they would bar sites they consider to be distributing fake news from using their ad-selling services , which can be an important source of revenue for web publishers. twitter on tuesday said it would let users block notifications of tweets that include specific words, among other moves, to combat harassment on the short-messaging service. facebook didn<u+2019>t respond to questions about how it would identify and prevent sites that publish fake news from using its ad service. a previous facebook effort to choose <u+201c>trending<u+201d> stories highlighted the challenge. in may, some workers on the company<u+2019>s <u+201c>trending topics<u+201d> feature alleged that co-workers were screening out news from conservative-leaning sites. in response, facebook fired the curators and now uses an algorithm to choose <u+201c>trending<u+201d> news stories. but the algorithm has sometimes featured false stories. google does rely on people to promote accuracy on its google news aggregator. news organizations must apply to appear in google news. after applying, software scans those websites and eliminates low-quality sites. more than five people then review each remaining applicant and must reach a consensus for the site to be approved. the team has approved roughly 75,000 news sites across 45 countries. google declined to specify the number of moderators or how many sites it has declined. as recently as a few years ago, google news relied on contract employees to review websites<u+2019> applications, according to one former contractor. she said that over two years she reviewed applications from hundreds of websites and youtube channels. the contractor said google news provided reviewers with a checklist for each website, including whether it had an <u+201c>about<u+201d> page, contact information and original content. managers stressed to reviewers that they should attempt to verify sites<u+2019> accuracy by researching other sites online. facebook<u+2019>s trending topics team followed a similar vetting process before the company dismantled the team in august . still, google<u+2019>s primary search engine can be tripped up. sunday, a post from a little-known blog erroneously stating that mr. trump defeated hillary clinton in the popular vote appeared atop the google search results for several election-related queries. mrs. clinton is leading by almost 800,000 votes in the wall street journal<u+2019>s tabulation. <u+201c>we clearly didn<u+2019>t get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms,<u+201d> a google spokeswoman said. google ceo sundar pichai this week told the british broadcasting corp., <u+201c>there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here.<u+201d> the secret, complex algorithm that powers google search uses more than 200 factors to determine how to rank results. google says it allows all content in its search results, save for a few exceptions, such as spam sites. google<u+2019>s search engine doesn<u+2019>t attempt to weigh the accuracy of a site<u+2019>s content. if a propaganda site doesn<u+2019>t violate google<u+2019>s spam rules, it will appear in the search results. yet fake-news sites still often struggle to rank highly because google<u+2019>s algorithm prizes well-designed webpages that have been linked to by other established sites. in its monday announcement, google said it would ban sites that publish fake news from using its adsense network, which can be an important source of revenue. google will rely on employees and software to identify sites as propaganda and respond to cases flagged by users, according to a person familiar with the matter. google has been planning the change for several months and it removed adsense from several sites on monday, this person said. the recent fake-news controversy has put facebook in the awkward position of talking down its influence. with marketers, facebook touts the power of ads on its platform to change consumer perceptions and increase sales, as it aims to steer budgets away from other media sources like newspapers and television networks. but mr. zuckerberg has played down facebook<u+2019>s influence on voters, saying it was <u+201c>pretty crazy<u+201d> to say fake stories in its news feed affected the election<u+2019>s outcome. in his saturday post, mr. zuckerberg said facebook is developing tools to curb fake news, including one that would allow users to flag news that they believe is fake. syracuse university communications professor jennifer grygiel said relying on users is inadequate. she said mr. zuckerberg should hire more workers to review widely shared articles and remove those that are false. <u+201c>facebook cannot claim to be entirely agnostic,<u+201d> said john avlon, editor in chief of the daily beast. <u+201c>if they are going to traffic in journalism and information as part of what they do, there is an obligation to separate truth from lies masquerading as fact.<u+201d> other journalists scoff at such notions. <u+201c>i am very wary of big technology companies becoming censors of what people consume,<u+201d> said vince coglianese, editor in chief of the conservative news site, the daily caller. <u+201c>do we allow facebook to designate what is journalism?<u+201d> write to deepa seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com , jack nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com and lukas i. alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
fake content puts pressure on facebook, google  - wsj
deepa seetharaman jack nicas lukas i. alpert