In a bid to tackle the recent rise in fake news and speculative content, tech giant Google announced a new initiative to support the media industry through greater filtration of content.
Titled 'Google News Initiative', the firm chalked out three main targets to be achieved, namely highlight accurate journalism while fighting misinformation, particularly during breaking news events; help news sites continue to grow from a business perspective, and create new tools to help journalists do their jobs.
Furthermore, Google also pledged to invest $300 million over the next three years, according to The Verge.
As per the company, strides are being made to enhance the system's quality to recognise controversial news and display more accurate results along the lines of the recently added "Breaking News" section on YouTube. Google has also teamed up organisations to combat fake news during elections and breaking news. Additionally, Google is working with a number of institutes for younger readers to improve digital media literacy and greater identification of algorithmically-modified content.
Google is also launching a program called "Subscribe with Google" that will make it easier for people to subscribe to online news sites directly from news pages using their existing payment information from their Google account, thereby helping publishers improve their reach and subsequently expand their subscriber base.