The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff, Wire Reports

Posted: Thursday, January 11, 2018 11:48 AM

Google's New "Fact Check" Feature Exclusively Targets Conservative Websites

Google has a new fact-check feature, and it reportedly almost exclusively targets conservative websites.

The Daily Caller reports that no prominent liberal sites were targeted by the new feature, but conservative publications were widely included. The feature has also been under fire for reportedly asserting that conservative websites made claims they did not make.

The Daily Caller itself has been targeted by this “fact-checking.”

The new search feature displays a sidebar with topics about which a particular website writes, along with a “Reviewed Claims” section. The “Reviewed Claims” section is reportedly left out of the searches for more left-leaning sites such as Gizmodo or Vox, although it is included for the left-leaning site Occupy Democrats.

Additionally, well-known publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are given a special sidebar listing all the awards they have received.

The fact-checking is conducted by websites such as Snopes.com, which itself has been called into question. The website reportedly even failed to distinguish between factual content and a satire piece, which has consequently led to questioning of Google’s decision to use Snopes.com as a reliable source of truth.