As the U.S. Presidential campaign reached its peak last fall, Google introduced a “fact check” tag to highlight the fact-checked, reliable sources in Google News results. Now, the company is expanding the feature to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Google’s Vice President of News, Richard Gingras, said in a blog post on Wednesday that users in those three countries would see fact-checking websites marked as such in Google News results. The fact check tag will be visible in the expanded story box on Google News, as well as on the Google News & Weather apps and in the “news mode” in Google Search.
The tag first appeared in the U.S. In October 2016, and then expanded to France and Germany a month later.
Google has faced criticism in the past year for allowing fake news to spread across its search engine, and this tagging project is part of the company’s efforts to combat the problem of misleading articles. After the U.S. Election, Google said it would cut off fake news publishers from its advertising network, and the company has taken other steps with Facebook to address false information.
For example, Google last week launched CrossCheck, a project that involves the company partnering with 20 French media companies and the First Draft Coalition to debunk false news stories relating to the French elections this year.
