Google and Facebook join French media against false news in elections
By News
With the French elections at the door, Facebook and Google launched a number of initiatives to reduce the dissemination of false news in France. The news came Monday during the News Impact Summit conference in Paris.
The Cross Check is Google 's proposal: it is a tool to ensure the quality of information online, in partnership with several French media outlets and the international network First Draft facts check. "With the presidential election on the horizon, journalists and the French and foreign editorial offices will collaborate to identify and verify the accuracy of the content circulated online, whether photos, videos, memes [a picture, video or phrase, typically with humorous outlines that spreads on the Internet variants], or comments of topical sites, " reads the draft presentation of statement.
The head of Google News Lab in France, David Dieudonné adds that the initiative comes from the Google partnership follow-up to the First Draft network when the American elections: "It is natural to continue to bet on this single method, in collaboration with several French newsrooms, to assist the coverage of a row of the elections in Europe. "
The first phase of the elections, which will decide the successor to the current French President Francois Hollande is scheduled for April 23. The two most popular candidates will advance into a second vote to be held on 7 May. The outcome of the French elections can be decisive for the future of the European Union. Taking the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron - that says it is "neither left nor right" - several of the presidential candidates are openly Eurosceptic. One of the most popular candidates, the ultra-nationalist Marine Le-Pen, promises a government that would take France the euro area and propose a referendum to stay in the European Union .
Among the news organizations selected by Google News Lab to cover the elections are to AFP (Agence France Presse), the BuzzFeed News, the newspaper La Voix du Nord, and the group Le Monde. In addition to journalism professionals, the French students were also invited to help fight the false news. Several students in the media area will be selected to receive training in advanced research techniques. Will be subsequently responsible for writing news updates that are being challenged in Cross Check on supervision of AFP.
Facebook, which is another of the major partners of the First Draft network, will facilitate the process by allowing members of the Cross Check project access the CrowdTangle, a tool to identify and monitor the social content related to the elections.
France also becomes the third country to implement the facts verification tool of Facebook itself, after the United States and Germany. According to a statement from the French team, the intervention focuses on helping themselves French users to report false news and working with organizations specializing in the verification of facts so that those news are posted. The aim is also to reduce the spread of false news to prevent the creators of this content get any profit from the clicks they receive.
Like the project Cross Check, Facebook will count on the collaboration of French news organizations such as AFP and Le Monde.
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