PD Editorial: Google and Facebook can’t fight fake news alone

After one of America’s ugliest presidential elections, Google and Facebook have declared that they will crack down on fake news. That’s a welcome change for anyone who prefers news grounded in reality, but it won’t solve the problem. It also raises important questions about how much people should trust tech companies to make the call on what’s fake and what’s not.

In some ways, fake news isn’t new. Lies in nasty campaigns have been around as long as we’ve held elections. In the presidential race of 1800, a Federalist handbill falsely called Thomas Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

Today, that might appear under the click-bait headline “The real parents Thomas Jefferson doesn’t want you to know about.” If Facebook or Google identifies you as a Federalist, the story would rise to the top of your timeline or search results, reinforcing a narrative you already believe that that Jefferson guy isn’t fit to be president.

This year, Americans instead saw false stories about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Despite what you might have read, Pope Francis didn’t endorse Trump, and an FBI agent investigating Clinton wasn’t found dead in a murder-suicide.

It’s a bipartisan problem. A BuzzFeed analysis found that 38 percent of stories shared on Facebook by large right-wing politics pages and 19 percent shared by large left-wing pages contained false or misleading information. Both figures show at best irresponsibility and at worst a deplorable lack of integrity.

Nearly two-thirds of American adults report getting at least some news on social media. Those who trust it blindly are worse than uninformed voters; they become misinformed voters. They undermine not only the electoral process but the very fabric of our civil society. It’s hard to carry on a reasonable discussion about public policy when one side or both sides insist on facts that aren’t based on reality.

Google and Facebook hope to use the power of their advertising networks to discourage fake news. They will cut off funding to sites that generate such stories. That’s a decent stick. Many of the purveyors of fake news are in it for the money, not the politics. Unfortunately, other revenue streams exist.

Google, Facebook and others also can improve their algorithms to block fake news from appearing in search results and on timelines. That’s a perilous path, though. What’s to stop them from censoring something that doesn’t fit with their political or social goals? Even if they remain noble, tough cases will arise.

They might even catch up opinion in the purge of things that are simply false. Social networks are powerful forums for debate, and they should remain so.

The burden ultimately falls on the users who get their news online. Google, Facebook and other sites can cut off advertising and can block obviously fake news, but they will remain conduits for information, not generators of it. If users choose to share a fake story with their friends, the fault is theirs for not verifying it. As it always has been, don’t trust everything you read on the internet.