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Google Permanently Bans 200 “Fake News” Sites
Google Permanently Bans 200 “Fake News” Sites
The crackdown has begun.
In a blog post by Scott Spencer, director of product management for sustainable ads, posted on Wednesday, Google said it has banned 200 publishers from accessing its Adsense advertising service for posting fake news stories. Google said it had cracked down on sites which contained 1) Ads for illegal products; 2) Misleading ads; 3) Bad ads on mobile; 4) Ads trying to game the system and, 5) Promoting and profiting from bad sites. But the emphasis was on the so-called “fake news” category which has dominated media buzz for the past two months.
This is how Spencer explained his action:
In 2016, we saw the rise of tabloid cloakers, a new type of scammer that tries to game our system by pretending to be news. Cloakers often take advantage of timely topics—a government election, a trending news story or a popular celebrity—and their ads can look like headlines on a news website. But when people click on that story about Ellen DeGeneres and aliens, they go to a site selling weight-loss products, not a news story.* * *
We’ve had long-standing policies prohibiting AdSense publishers from running ads on sites that help people deceive others, like a site where you buy fake diplomas or plagiarized term papers. In November, we expanded on these policies, introducing a new AdSense misrepresentative content policy, that helps us to take action against website owners misrepresenting who they are and that deceive people with their content.
Google has faced criticism over its handling of fake news stories, including allowing a fake news website to rise to the top of its results displaying an incorrect story claiming that President Trump had won the popular vote.
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Fierce Assaults on the “Attentional Commons”
Fierce Assaults on the “Attentional Commons”
People in tech circles often talk about the “attention economy” with knowing nonchalance. Instead of things being scarce, they note, the real shortage these days ispeople’s attention. Hence the ferocious drive to capture people’s attention.
This analysis is true as far as it goes. What it fails to address is that the “attention economy” is not really an “economy.” It is a predatory invasion of our consciousness. Sellers are using every possible technique to colonize our minds and emotions at the most elemental levels in a relentless attempt to prod us to buy, buy, buy.
Author Matthew B. Crawford made an eloquent case for the “attentional commons” in an opinion piece, “The Cost of Paying Attention,” in Sunday’s New York Times (March 8). “What if we saw attention in the same way that we saw air or water, as a valuable resource that we hold in common?” he asks. “Perhaps, if we could envision an ‘attentional commons,’ then we could figure out how to protect it.”
Crawford recounts a series of all-to-familiar intrusions upon our attention: ads on the little screen used to swipe credit cards at the grocery store…. ads for lipstick on the trays at airport security screening lines…. “endlessly recurring message from the Lincoln Financial Group” along the moving handrail on an airport escalator….the ubiquitous chatter of CNN and TV ads in the airport lounge.
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