Over the last few years, fake news sites have become a plague on the internet. Filled with questionable stories about controversial subjects meant to gain clicks on social media, they’ve been blamed for everything from the recent election to people’s growing distrust of the news media.

Fortunately, Google and Facebook said they were rolling out rules to fix this, by killing their advertising revenue on misleading sites. Sounds good, right?

Well, no. Because if you’re a journalist or website owner, these ‘rules’ should be some of the most terrifying things you’ve read in your entire life. Here they are, as stated by a Google spokesperson:

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,

Why?

Because the whole statement is vague as freaking hell.

So vague in fact that you could use this an excuse to ban just about news site and publication on the planet. That you could quite easily apply these standards to every publication out there to demonetise whatever you think needs to be wiped off the internet.

I mean, where do I even begin to address this statement?

Oh, I know. How about the purpose of the web property thing?

Cause at the end of the day, it’s not easy to tell whether news is ‘fake’. I mean sure, a site that says ‘Barack Obama admitted to being an alien from Alpha Centauri visiting Earth on the orders of the Combine’ probably isn’t going to be real, but it’s not usually that easy. We’re not talking stuff like the Weekly World News any more:

Instead, we’re talking very unlikely, but reasonable sounding stories. Did Donald Trump say something insanely stupid, like that quote everyone on Twitter is retweeting? Did the EU ministers say the UK was doomed to become a failed statement/military dictatorship after Brexit? Was Jeremy Corbyn seen at a local Communist Party meeting?

We’re talking that sort of the story. The type which could be convincing (especially if you’re a guy on Twitter who doesn’t actually read what you’re retweeting/liking) to a decent portion of the population and doesn’t immediately strike you as ridiculous.

So you can’t really tell whether a story like this is false. Not without a bunch of researchers, a decent amount of time, a large amount resources and a lucky break where other sources can confirm or deny the tale.

And then if you do identify a story as fake…

How do you know what the purpose of the site it’s on is?

How do you know the site is deliberately trying to spread misinformation?

Because at the end of the day, it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between a journalist who’s spreading misinformation and a journalist who’s simply a flat out incompetent moron. I mean, if someone on say, the Guardian said something bad about Trump and it turned out to be wrong, how do you know why he made that mistake?

Cause while he might really be lying due to his hatred of the president elect, he might simply not know enough about Trump to know what he wrote was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t know jack shit about American politics. Perhaps he got it from another source which also turned out to be wrong.

How would the likes of Google be able figure this out?

Answer: They wouldn’t. Regardless of whether they used human editors or machines to do the calculations.

But hang on, you may ask. What about those disclaimers? Couldn’t Google identify and punish satire sites based on those (and how well they’re hidden)?

Well, yes.

For the moment.

However, this is only possible because for the satire site creators, sticking a disclaimer notice on the site is actually seen as a wise move. After all, they avoid being sued for libel by the one guy in a million angry with how he’s been depicted and they don’t lose any traffic for it either. Because you know, most people don’t read past the title anyway.

It’s a win-win situation for them. They don’t get sued, people believe them and they get free money out of the whole deal.

But imagine if this changes. Imagine if suddenly, their ads get cut off because they were ‘misleading’ their audience.

It’s pretty obvious that the site owners are going to investigate what’s going on. And well, if it turns out the disclaimer notices are getting their site ads suspended, guess what they’ll do?

Short answer: nuke the disclaimer notices

At which point, god help us all. Now, not only do we have fake sites putting out clickbait crap to game Facebook and Twitter, but now they’re not even clearly marked as fake news sites! Which means Google and Facebook will have to go back to step 1: identifying them based on the content.

So then we’re back to square one. But the problems don’t end with identifying fake news.

Oh no, there will be consequences when news sites inevitably get misflagged as ‘fake’. Such as say, a very angry webmaster/owner sending Google legal threats for cutting off their income based on what he sees as company bias/discrimination/whatever. Or complaining that Google’s actions (accusing his site of being fake) is considered libel or something.

It’s a legal minefield that could leave enough gaps in the terms and conditions to drive a (lawsuit )bus through.

And this is still only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how awful this statement is and how badly these rules could be interpreted.

Because then we get to the whole ‘conceal information’ aspect. What counts as this?

Well, that’s a good question actually. Because the amount of things you could ban sites for based on the concept is insane.

For example, this could easily be used to shut off ads on sites run by anonymous or pseudonymous authors. After all, they could be seen as ‘concealing information about the publisher’, right?

I guess so.

Which means Google and co now have a nice way to shut down ads on any somewhat anonymous site that annoys them. Hence giving them a cruel way to blast many gaming site owners and political activists straight into the poorhouse.

Above: Sorry Sean Malstrom. Hope you don’t leave WordPress.com, otherwise Google will apparently cut off your advertising.

And it gets worse. Why? Because then ‘concealing information about the publisher’s content’ is even MORE vague.

I mean literally anything could be justified under that logic.

Used an anonymous source? You’re ‘concealing information about the content’ by protecting them and not providing their names. Like here:

Above image taken from a Lets Play Video Games article on the recent Rabbids/Mario RPG crossover rumours.

Say something you know is false because you’re under an embargo or agreement? That’s ‘concealing information about the content’.

Really, you could justify cutting off ads for a lot of reasons with this logic. Perhaps not always bad reasons (because hey, you could nail dishonest journalists for a ‘conflict of interest’ with the same ‘rule’), but enough that it should terrify the hell out of anyone doing journalism at all.

And that’s really the major issue. Google’s plans to stop fake news may be admirable, but the rules and ideas seem so vague that they can be used as a weapon against anyone for any reason whatsoever.

Add how they can just make the fake news problem worse (by incentivising people to lie about their site’s content), and you’ve got a ‘solution’ which could end up it being far worse than the actual problem.

But hey, maybe that’s the point. Maybe the idea isn’t really to stop fake news, but to hit anyone disagreeing with the mainstream narrative in the pocketbook, in hopes it’ll put ’em out of business. Perhaps Google just wants to play judge, jury and executioner.

Or maybe I’m too cynical. Either way, these rules don’t work, and need serious revision if Google thinks it can stop fake news with them.