Google admits directing cancer sufferers to bogus cures and dodgy medical advice
The US web giant’s head of news Richard Gingras said there was 'no question' that fake news was harming society
GOOGLE last night admitted directing cancer sufferers to bogus cures and dodgy medical advice.
The US web giant’s head of news Richard Gingras said there was “no question” that fake news was harming society.
And he said Google wasn’t just facing problems with fake news.
He said Google also faced problems with sites posting fake medical advice that appeared in search results.
He gave the example of bogus cancer cures found by patients searching the internet for information about their conditions.
In a landmark hearing in front of UK MPs on a trip to Washington to investigate fake news Mr Gingras accepted that the “issue of misinformation” was undermining people’s trust in Google.
Asked if fake news was harmful to society, Mr Gingras told the Commons Culture committee: “Without question it can be harmful.
"And I think of misinformation in a broad range of areas - not just in news and politics.
"As I note, people come to Google every day for instance looking for medical information.”
But in a landmark hearing in front of UK MPs on a trip to Washington to investigate fake news, Google bosses vowed to spend tens of millions more to combat fake news.
It came after committee chairman Damian Collins challenged head of public policy over claims it only spent 0.1 per cent of its massive advertising revenue on taking down false content.
Juniper Downs, YouTube's global head of public policy, insisted it was reinvesting “tens of millions of dollars” into tackling fake news.
But she was unable to say what proportion of the revenue raised by Google’s video channel was used to combat misinformation.
Ms Downs also admitted that YouTube directs viewers to misleading and even false information through its “recommendation” algorithms.
And she also said the recommendation service made no distinction between adult and child users when suggesting further viewing, though she stressed that it required users to be 13 or older in order to sign in.
A separate YouTube Kids service included features to help parents control younger children's use, she told the MPs.
"We don't look at adult consumption versus child consumption," Ms Downs said.
"The recommendations are based on the video that is being watched and content that's associated with that video or the watch history of the individual signed-in user."
YouTube - which is owned by Google - was "intrinsically motivated" to address public concerns relating to issues like children seeing inappropriate videos or watching for excessive periods, she said.
"It is the top priority for YouTube as a company," she said.
"We don't need extra motivation to get this right.
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"It is mission critical for the business to address these issues responsibly and that's what we are committed to doing."
But Mr Collins retorted: "We have heard the expression 'top priority' a lot.
"If we judge the company based on what it does rather than what it says, the top priority is maximising advertising revenue from the platform and a very small proportion of that is reinvested back into dealing with some of the harmful content."