By now we’re all familiar with the term “fake news.” What started as a colloquialism to describe made-up news stories that proliferated on social media to skew the election in Donald Trump’s favor has since been flipped by Trump to dismiss any factual news reporting that criticizes him. Much as Trump has blurred the public’s understanding of what “fake news” is for his own benefit, it seems like Google may also be stretching fake news’ definition to undermine progressive media outlets working to hold the Trump administration accountable.
Any website looking to share content, real or fake, relies heavily on now-omnipresent tech platforms like Google and Facebook to reach their audience. After initially downplaying the Russian influence campaign on their platform, Facebook eventually admitted that roughly 126 million users in the U.S. may have seen content created by Russian-linked accounts. Google discovered about $4,700 worth of search-and-display ads believed to be bought by accounts connected to the Russian government. The company found an additional $53,000 worth of ads bought from Russian internet addresses or with Russian money, though it is unclear if these purchases were tied to the government.
In April, Google responded to public outrage and Senate pressure about misleading and false articles on their platform with Project Owl—an initiative aimed at suppressing fake news and pointing users to “more authoritative content.” While the shift was likely well-intentioned, the tech giant seems to have overcorrected and created consequences that have gone beyond pushing users away from Macedonian content farms publishing provably false stories.
On Nov. 28, AlterNet, a progressive media website, sent an email to readers saying that Google’s algorithm changes reduced their search traffic by 40%. While AlterNet certainly infuses opinion and a liberal point of view in their reporting, their articles are always factual and should not be held to the same standard as websites that publish headlines such as “Hillary Clinton Has Third Heart Attack—Docs Says She ‘Won’t Survive.’”
“The impact of Project Owl has been to invisibly censor independent news, while at the same time boosting the standing of a group of mainstream print and broadcast outlets that have collaborated with these platforms to ‘solve’ the fake news crisis,” AlterNet claimed in their email, and it is not the only website fighting this battle.
The New York Times published an article on Sept. 26 under the headline “As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm” that chronicled a drop off in traffic to the World Socialist Website (WSWS) that their editorial chairman attributed to Google’s initiative. WSWS compiled data that shows 13 websites that lost significant Google search traffic post-Project Owl. Notably, Media Matters fell by 42%, Democracy Now fell by 36% and The Intercept fell by 19%.
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Independent news outlets—even those with a relatively small following—are essential to a free and open democracy. The Progressive recently cited a study by Harvard professor Gary King and his former graduate students Ben Schneer and Ariel White that discovered that “if just three outlets write about a particular major national policy topic—such as jobs, the environment or immigration—discussion of that topic across social media rose by as much as 62.7% of a day’s volume, distributed over the week.”
If small, independent news outlets are prevented from reaching their audience because of suppression by giant tech conglomerates, the consequences could be dire.
In their email, AlterNet calls on Google to “rescind the algorithm changes made under Project Owl and instead to consider adopting a more transparent method of determining fake news,” and for “the public, the FTC and Congress to consider regulating Facebook and Google as monopoly platforms for the distribution of content.”
If Google’s mission is truly to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” it may want to begin by not suppressing the progressive voices that challenge an administration that openly opposes a free press.
