What does Google say about misinformation?

OR Google Believes that long-term success in mitigating misinformation and foreign influence through social media is based on the development of a culture of cyber security throughout society, along with ongoing "collaboration" between industry, the technical community and government.

According to Google, such efforts must be combined with relentless efforts to educate users and organizations, from schoolchildren to seniors and corporate employees, on how to ensure their online presence and to "apply critical thinking to the information they see and consume".

The comments were made with the submission of a proposal by the company [PDF] in the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media of Australia. The proposal also contained an overview of the company's work to address coordinated influences and other attacks coming from governments.

When submitting the proposal to the committee examining the risk of foreign intervention on social media, the Google she said she was taking her responsibility "very seriously".

“The way companies like Google "Addressing these concerns has an impact on society and the trust that users have in our services," the company said.

"We believe we should start by providing transparency in our policies, inviting feedback, enabling users to understand and control their online engagement, working with policymakers, civil society and academics around the world. the world to develop sensible, effective policies and procedures. ”

When submitting the proposal, the Google stated that its algorithms can not determine whether a content is real or not, nor can they assess the intention of its creator, reading only one page. He said of course that there were clear cases of intent to manipulate or deceive users.

For example, a news site that claims to contain "reports from Canberra, Australia", but whose activity it covers appears to be from Eastern Europe, may not be transparent to users about its features, or that they can trust her to learn first hand. ”

From the beginning of 2020, the Google He said he had seen a growing number of attackers, including those from Iran and North Korea, falsify news agencies or journalists. In April of this year, the Google sent 1.755 warnings to users whose accounts were targeted by a government attack.

OR Google It also reported that it detected 18 million malicious programs and e-mail messages in Gmail per day for COVID-19, as well as more than 240 million daily spam messages related to the virus.

"Our learning models have evolved to understand and filter these threats and we continue to block more than 99,9% of spam, phishing and malware from reaching our users.

"We have a significant responsibility to our users and the societies in which we operate to limit the efforts of those who seek to disseminate false information on our platforms."