It is a sad commentary on the the current state of the world when a company needs to fact check its images. With so much misinformation being spread throughout the world, some deliberately and some just for the LoLs, Google seen the need to add a fact check to their image service, Google Images.
Starting today Google are now “surfacing” fact check information in Google Images worldwide to allow people to make more informed judgements and decisions about what they see online. Fact checks have already been rolled out to Google Search and Google News which is another sad indictment on the world we live in.
Now when you search within Google Images you may see a “Fact Check” label underneath the results. Tapping on one of the images in that result with surface the full fact check information of the image for that web page.
These labels may appear both for fact check articles about specific images and for fact check articles that include an image in the story.
Facts are facts and cannot be twisted, adjusted and are not malleable. There is no such thing as “alternative facts” but to prevent any accusations of bias Google are using “independent, authoritative sources on the web” that meet their criteria which rely on ClaimReview which is used by many publishers along with Google Search and News and YouTube in some countries.
Adding the fact check label to a result does not affect its ranking with the ranking of a result designed to surface those which are the “most relevant, reliable information available, including from sources that provide fact checks.”
It is great to see Google adding a fact check to more of its services due to the sheer amount of nonsensical “information” and “research” being spread around the web these days. If only Facebook would do it to all of their “Karens”.
An interesting idea 🕵, but how can one be sure that the “fact check” is really objective 🤔. If you can’t judge for yourself what madness is … 🙄.